Here is the final recipe I used for our wedding cakes:

10-inch round pan
(Make 2 cakes, as you will need to stack them)
Ingredients:

• 1¼ cup All Purpose Gluten-Free Flour
• ½ cup Coconut Flour
• 1 tsp Xantham Gum
• 1¼ tsp Baking Soda
• 1¾ tsp Baking Powder
• ½ tsp Allspice
• ½ tsp Cinnamon
• ½ tsp Nutmeg
• A pinch of Cloves
• 1 stick Butter
• 1 cup White Sugar
• 3 tbsp Brown Sugar
• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 3 tbsp Non-Dairy Creamer (Flavored: Vanilla Caramel)
• 3 Eggs
• 2 Cortland Apples – cored, skinned, and finely chopped
• 1 Jar of Apricot Preserves (Unsweetened)

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease your pan. Dust the pan with Rice flour (I used Sorghum because we had a lot of it)

In a medium bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (flour, xantham gum, baking soda, baking powder, spices)
Set aside

In the bowl of your mixer, cream the butter for about 1 minute or until softened.
Add both sugars and beat for about 2 minutes.
Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until well incorporated.
Blend in the creamer and vanilla extract.
Turn mixer on low and add the dry ingredients, half at a time, beating after each addition until they are well absorbed.
(You want a smooth, even consistency)

At this point, the mix will be very thick and sticky.  Don’t worry.  The apples will loosen the mixture, and as they cook, they will release more moisture.  It will be difficult to pour into the pan, but not impossible.  I considered trying adding an additional egg, or some additional milk/creamer/fruit juice, but haven’t tried it yet.

Remove the bowl from the stand and gently fold in the apples.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until the tester comes out clean and the cake pulls away from the edges of the pan.

Once the cake has cooled, use a cake leveler to remove the rounded top portion of the cakes.  Spoon the apricot preserves onto the top of one of the cakes.  Flip the other cake on top of the first, so that the cut sections of each cake are touching, with the layer of apricot preserves in between.  

Then apply your chosen frosting (I cheated and used boxed buttercream frosting.  I believe the brand was Wilton’s.  It’s not bad for coming out of a box).

This cake was modified from a cookbook that I have, so I cannot take full credit.  I received many compliments on this cake (for which I am humbly grateful), so eat, and enjoy!

As if there wasn’t enough to do and worry about lately.

The other day we decided we just cannot bring the rabbits with us to Poland.  To start with, we can’t bring them on the plane with us, so that means they have to ride in cargo.  They will probably end up on a separate plane, and could, like luggage, get lost or delayed.  In addition, it’s is a total of 10 hours of travel, during which time they will not be fed or cared for, and will be riding in a section of the plane with no temperature control.  Plus it will be very loud, and there could be other animals in close proximity.  So for 8 1/2 hours, someone’s dog could be trying to eat them. 

But, in summary, the rabbits might not even survive the trip.  If they do, then we have to care for them in a foreign country, and if we ever travel (which we will), then we will need someone to care for them, which might not be possible since most of the people we’ll know will be on the same schedule.

This news bummed me out a bit, but I think made Jess even more sad then me.  Neither of us are thinking about it too much, but when we have fun with the rabbits, you can’t help but think of it.

Fortunately, Jess’ parents will take care of the rabbits while we’re gone, so we’ll still get to see them once in a while.

I’ll have to leave my plants behind, too, but I was expecting that.  And, while not nearly the same kind of emotional attachment you get for an animal, I am going to miss them.  It sounds weird, but when you put a lot of time and care into raising something, it’s never easy to see it go.  But Steve will be taking care of some of them for me, and I know he’s good with plants.

But wait, there’s more!

I had forgotten about my impending meeting with Fay Butler, a master metalworker in central Massachusetts.  I stumbled across Mr. Butler’s website while looking for info about Jesse James, of West Coast Choppers.  Both use the Yoder Power Hammer, which was made by one of the companies whose website I was redesigning.  The original intent was to swap links.  West Coast Choppers never got back to me, but Fay did.  Not only that, but he invited me out to his shop, and has a good deal of information he’d like to share with me. 

While I am very excited about this meeting, I’m also very scared.  I tend to be more on the shy side, especially around people I don’t know well.  But I want to represent our companies, as well as learn as much as I can.  I don’t have much to offer, so I’ve been trying to gather whatever I can that might be good for me to know in advance, or to bring with me.  So far, I have very little, and feel underprepared.  But I still have a few weeks.

So.  Right now, within the next 4 months I’m:

• Getting ready for the wedding this Saturday
• Then preparing for a meeting with an expert on a product one of our companies used to make that I didn’t even know about until a few months ago
• Then getting together a camping trip for Memorial Day Weekend
• Then having the big wedding reception/going away party/4th of july party at my parents house on July 5th
• Then moving to Poland (and all of the preparation that goes along with that)

It’s all fairly evenly spaced, but there’s not much time to slow down in there.  Especially when I’m also trying to maintain my taekwondo skills by going to the gym as often as I can, so that when we get to Poland and meet with the coach of their national team (I’ll get to that another time), I don’t get my ass handed to me.

Also note that there’s no honeymoon on that list.

When this is all over, I’m taking a nap.

 So I tried out a Peanut Sauce recipe that I came across online so I could have something to flavor my spring rolls with.  It’s surprisingly simple, and it worked really great.  I made a few minor modifications so far, and plan on playing with the recipe.  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp Unsweatened Natural Peanut Butter
• 2 tbsp Wheat-Free Soy Sauce (IMO – better than wheat based)
• 1 clove Garlic, finely chopped
• ¼ cup Water
• 1 tbsp Brown Sugar
• Lemon Juice (roughly equivalent to the juice of half a lemon.  I just shot from the hip on this one using straight lemon juice – I’d say roughly 1-2 tbsp)

To make, just mix all of the ingredients together in a non-stick pan over medium heat and stir constantly until the peanut butter melts, and everything stirs together.  As the mixture cools, it will thicken, but not solidify.  Use hot or cool, makes little difference (just don’t burn yourself!) so long as you enjoy it!

Yet again IE sends me on a wild goose chase. 

I had just added a video using Jeroenwijering‘s Media Player, and all of a sudden I was getting an error from IE saying "Internet Explorer Cannot Open the Internet Site". 

After a little digging, I found out that this is caused by a parsing error involving javascript in the body acting on an object in the body, or something similar to that. 

The solutions were to move the script to the beginning or end of the body tag, or outside of it all together, which didn’t work that well for me, or to add defer="defer" to the script tag.  I liked that option, and apparently so did IE.  Problem solved and now I can get on with my life again. 

[EDIT]

I think you must also make sure the script is not contained in the object that it is modifying.  For instance, my script was rewriting the contents of a DIV.  I had the script inside that DIV and even with the defer flag set, it was getting errors.  Once I moved the script outside, it seemed to work fine.