Inktober day 13 - Drink. I was always wondering how on Gaia Barret ever though leaving his 4 years old adopted daughter to run the booze bar in slums is a good idea.
Day 14 - Trunk. As someone who had botany at Uni, I can say that dumbapple trees are the most weird plant I’ve ever seen! Also, a good opportunity to draw Angeal and Gillian together.
Does it ever get mentioned what Banora apples taste like or shown what it looks like in the middle???
Like I’m just wondering if it is an APPLE apple or like, a star apple which do come in purple in real life. I know it’s shaped like stereotypical apple.
Adding these pics for what a star apple looks like
Oh don’t even worry about it, I was out seeing Wicked with the besties yesterday anyways! Yessss yess fellow language enthusiast! I have always been addicted to languages, I have such a bad case of linguist brain lmaooo
OH MY GOD YOURE RIGHT it would probably be some sort of pidgin language! I wasn’t really thinking about that before but that actually pulls my thoughts together so well! You’d get Rhapsodoses and Hewleys in the same place because it’s just a mishmash of people from all over the place, plenty of different cultural backgrounds! Raghhshd yes you should articulate more of your thoughts 👀
I commissioned @wowa-bublord for a piece from the first chapter of my fanfiction Unsugared Taste, because I thought it really fits her vibe… and I was right! They picked their favourite part and created this lovely short comic that made me fall in love with my own story once again. Thank you Bubby for your time and talent! ✍🏻
Consider commissioning him too or helping his family with a donation here. And if you can’t, remember a reblog is free. ❤️
[[MORE]]A slender figure emerged from a tangle of branches, stumbling and grumbling: “I’m sick of it.” Angeal pulled himself up and held out both hands to help his struggling friend; Gen grabbed them and managed to get free from the bush.
“You’re bleeding, Gen,” Angeal snorted, examining a pale wrist, “again”.
“Shut up”.
They plopped on the grass side by side; Angeal wasn’t letting the topic drop: “Gen, you cut yourself in there”.
“Fine!” Gen practically threw the bleeding wrist into his lap, eyes rolling back in frustration. Angeal trailed a finger along the wound, a delicate touch that drew an hiss nonetheless; he instinctively brought it to the mouth and slightly sucked away a drop of already coagulating blood, then he turned it around and left a swift kiss on the back of the hand: “you will survive!”
“Fuck off”.
Still working on the art asks from a little while ago, this is a small preview of the next one <3
Is this the first confirmation of Banora’s actual location? Or have we had this before?
There’s always been Mideel-esque vibes right? But has there ever been an official pinpointed location?
Loving FF7 Ever Crisis so much ❤️
Oh it’s absolutely Genesis if it has to be one of the three of them.
Everyone speculates on the First’s love lives, they’re public figures by design and their images are carefully curated by Shinra and their fan clubs. Genesis especially has very weird and rabid fans because of his parents weirdness, neither of them being very good at being parents in the first place and having no problem letting their publicist invent romances for him.
He doesn’t know how to explain that he’s asexual, it’s the late 90s and that just isn’t floating around as something even resembling normal. He does want romance - he deeply wishes someone would quote poetry at him for once instead of comforting himself with it.
Genesis doesn’t have many friends, aside from the many parasocial relationships his fans have with him. He’s had more than one stalker, he’s been sexually harassed on the train at least once and no one did anything to help him - they actually took pictures because they thought it was a PR stunt.
He never does manage to find someone who wants him for him, obsessions with Loveless and Materia and all, until maybe after DOC when the world has changed so much and most people have forgotten he ever existed.
He finds himself freed of public scrutiny as he tries to look himself up online, finding only a brief mention on a history of agriculture website about him basically inventing pasteurization as a child. That’s nice actually, being known for creating something that changed the world in a good way.
Now maybe he can find someone to love with no expectations of him, letting him finally be himself.
GUYS MY PRINTED DUMBAPPLE FABRIC CAME I AM SO EXCITED
BANORA SHIRT IMMINENT
Also, also, I’ve officially launched my Redbubble store! So now you can wear your silly little purple apples with dreams and honour wherever you go.
Get it on an apron and make your food leftovers king Angeal proud, or strut your stuff in leggings and wear it fabulously like Genesis would. ;)
CRISIS CORE REUNION DUMBAPPLE PATTERN LET’S GOOOO-
yes I’m going to get this printed on fabric to make a shirt out of and you can’t stop me
It had been raining nonstop during the week.
Standing by the window and exhaling the smoke of yet another cigarette through his nose, he averted his gaze from the nubilous welkin above to the wooden sill upon which sat an overflowing ashtray and a bottomless tumbler of brandy.
It had let up for now, but it was nowhere near the end of it. Regardless, it suited his mood-or lack thereof-just fine. What he couldn’t understand was why they had to come to Banora-of all places on Gaia-during the monsoon season.
[[MORE]]When he wanted to actually think about it, however, he knew the reason. There were just facets to the situation that he had trouble piecing together.
“I think you’d better stop now.” was the kind-hearted remark. “You’ve turned yourself and the house into a chimney and me into smoked fish.” In another world, at another time, he would’ve been hard-pressed not to grin at the jovial statement, or at the very least, smiling brightly… Now, he just acquiesced. No words, no expressions. Just extinguished the cigarette. It was almost finished anyway.
It took his fingers some time to leave the stub there and cradle the glass instead. Knocking the rest of his drink back, he looked over his shoulder at the reason he was where he was and not somewhere else. He didn’t know where that’d be, but it was a moot point now…because Angeal had drugged him, dragged him all the way here, and promptly made himself scarce for the past several days.
His eyes landed on Buster Sword which was-and had been-lodged into its customary scotch in the ground.
“That sword is our family’s pride-”
Gillian’s face had been the first thing he’d seen upon awakening. While he had been disoriented, she’d made sure to slowly explain where he had been. While he had been panicking spectacularly, she’d made sure to soothe him like she used to when they’d only been little boys, made sure to keep him grounded to the here and now by her gentle yet callused hands.
It had been nothing like old times.
Sure, he hadn’t lost his shit as he otherwise would have, but it was there…lurking in the shadows; his sanity was hanging by a thread, and it was only for Gillian’s sake that that thread hadn’t snapped already. To the aforementioned woman’s credit, she hadn’t asked anything, hadn’t made any attempts toward getting him to open up or make any sort of small talk; not that she ever did. She was giving him as wide a berth as she and her homely chalet could provide…but that didn’t mean she was ignorant, that she was uncaring. Those grey irises were as observant as they’d always been. Genesis’ defenses had been up all the way, however. It was a state of unwilling cohabitation…
He would have preferred his first time at the Hewley’s after all these years to have been in better circumstances. As better as they could be…which was probably not by much.
He hadn’t left the house at all. The first few days he’d spent confining himself to the parameters of Angeal’s bedroom and resenting every waking moment, every breath, everything. When he’d been comfortable stepping over the threshold into the living room, he’d been content to watch life go on around him from within the wooden frames of the same window he was standing behind now. Because while he was alive, while he was breathing…he preferred to have been dead, to have died on that fateful day; or if not then, to have died over and over and over again, and again, and again during-…
Pain.
His whole life was wrought from it, physical, mental… It didn’t make much of a difference if one took out the acuteness of it aside, if one took the nuances of the locutions used to differentiate them from one another. Pain was pain, be it inflicted by his parents- foster parents -or by them . Maybe it was the single veritable fact about human-
-He was not human-
-more pain-
“ -Genesis! ” It wasn’t the distress coloring her tone that pierced through the fog of his thoughts, or maybe it was. Maybe it was the shard digging into the palm of his hand, but it didn’t matter, not anymore at least. The hand at the small of his back was both tentative and steady at once, nudging him toward the sink; Gillian the picture of patience, as always. It made him grit his teeth, the force with which he was clenching his jaws making them hurt because he couldn’t stop that train of thought about who Angeal had taken after in terms of being so forbearing.
The discordant cacophony of water rushed through the pipes before making its way to the faucet.
Cool.
Tainted by crimson as it welled in the basin before going down the drain.
“Now, now, open your fist so we can get those nasty shards out.”
Azure irises made a slow trek from where Gillian’s calloused fingers cradled his hand to her visage as she urged him to comply yet again.
“Come on now.”
It was as though he was seeing her for the first time during the past several days. World-weary lines were etched into her kind-hearted face, her salt-and-pepper hair now much more like that of her son… It was wrong, not seeing how she had aged so much, but it wasn’t as wrong or as bizarre as not seeing how Angeal had. So maybe it was his bemusement, or perhaps something within him relented that Gillian finally managed to prise his fingers open one by one…plucked those shards out from where they had lodged themselves as carefully as she could… Somehow, they ended up sitting behind the only table inside her home with a first aid kit, and she made a studious task of bandaging his hand even though she knew that he could heal it if he wanted; that it’d heal on its own regardless.
“Whe-” It took him a few tries before he could actually speak, his voice rough from disuse. “Where is he?”
Busying herself with putting the items she had used back in place, Gillian didn’t reply, and for some reason, he couldn’t help but get the impression that she was not only evading the question but also avoiding his gaze.
Looking at his bandaged hand while he flexed it and unflexed it a few times, the redhead averted his gaze to Mrs. Hewley’s retreating back. It was strange, referring to her on a last name basis…bizarre even… And then, all of a sudden, Genesis decided that perhaps, just as he had left the bedroom, it was probably time for him to leave the house.
He couldn’t shrug off the heavy-and quite unexpected-cloak of disappointment, of despair that weighed him down as he stood up and made his way toward the wooden door; gazing at the pride of Hewley’s family for a long moment as he did and reminisced about that time he’d asked Angeal why he didn’t put it on a stand.
“I couldn’t ask my parents for something like that after they had just given me a sword.”
The downturn of his lips was involuntary, but-…
“He said you’d know.”
Glancing over his shoulder and through a fringe of auburn tresses, Genesis nodded slowly, and it was many things all at once. He wasn’t sure if all of them were conveyed, but as he closed the aperture-upon which hung a wreath of dried wild flowers-behind himself, he didn’t see the somber smile on Gillian’s lips.
It didn’t take him long at all to find his best friend’s hiding spot, but it had felt otherwise walking through the cobblestoned pathways of the small town.
Genesis hadn’t expected them not to have noticed his presence during the week he’d stood watch framed by the wooden window, but it had delayed the Rhapsodos’ inevitable swoop long enough just fine. Walking among the people, however, was a surefire way to summon them as quickly as he could call on the very Ifrit himself.
He wasn’t expecting their presence, wasn’t expecting them to come looking for him, not really, but that was a story for another day. And while he could tell himself that he didn’t care, a distant yet insidious voice was cautioning him otherwise.
Regardless, he needed to get this out of the way…there was a very high probability that he was required to lie in some bed, but whether it was of his own making or of others, Genesis didn’t know. What he did know was that he had to do it before he could deal with yet another clusterfuck of catastrophic proportions. Which was why he was standing at the edge of a cliff awaiting his quarry with two bottles of as strong a liquor as his earring could buy.
Angeal wasn’t there.
Indeed, ‘there’ was a place he’d known, their favorite haunt as childhood friends in fact. The twinge of nostalgia that came with that knowledge was overshadowed by a muted thrill, the ghost of the times he did reconnaissance back at Wutai war, and the rush of adrenaline when he’d found the younger man’s campsite. But that didn’t change the fact that the bittersweet feeling was still there.
A military issue tent that housed a sleeping bag-cold, hours now. The firepit, however, was what piqued his interest; specifically the residual magic left from the elemental spell. It was due to the rain, of course, same with the waterproof rucksack that housed some clothes and rations. So, Angeal either ought to have left most of his belongings at HQ or left them in the rundown shed at the back of the house. The former probability opened up a whole new variety of possibilities; because perhaps the ivory-haired man wasn’t here to stay…maybe his resignation was something temporary until the situation that had called for it was resolved in one way or another. Regardless, his mind didn’t dawdle on those speculations for too long…
And he was indeed standing there for a long time, for as long as he could; until it was almost painful to stand upright, so he sat. Long enough that his brain moved from being a totally blank slate to wondering whether his quarry would ever show up or not…and then he did.
The rustle of the bushes gave him away, but whether it was something Angeal had intended or not, Genesis didn’t know.
“Genesis.”
And he didn’t care, not at this point.
He didn’t turn to acknowledge the younger man, at all, simply raised his bottle to drink straight from its neck. He was too far gone to differentiate between the possible reasons for the grimace that twisted his lips but not enough to forget about this when tomorrow came. A part of him wished that the world ended before another day could go by, but that was but a fool’s hope…and he no longer had the luxury of thinking that way.
“Speak.” He demanded hoarsely yet quietly over his shoulder. “Start from the beginning.”
A moment passed and then another. It seemed that at this rate, both of them had a lot of time to spare…a lot of time to kill. It suited him just fine; it wasn’t like he had anything better to do but stare at the horizon where the nebulous sky met the steely line of the ocean.
Finally, there was a rustle of fabric, the sense of forward motion… Weary , Angeal seemed weary as he made his way toward the spot Genesis had been occupying on the boulder they had sat upon many a time before; down, next to him, and the knee-jerk urge to lean his head on the younger man’s shoulder like the redhead had every once in a while back then cut across the haze in his mind. Something ripped, much akin to a tapestry, and behind its tattered edges Genesis could catch glimpses of something but he couldn’t face it now…so, he let alcohol cloud up the arena of his psych even more.
“When you went missing that day, Shinra was quick to declare you MIA…” There was a gravid pause, before Angeal heaved a sigh and continued. “Well, they were quick to move for announcing you KIA, but Sephiroth and I…we…we went for broke, nearly broke ranks to get the board veto President’s order and he… he literally struggled for all he was worth to keep it that way until we could find you alongside the war effort. Nobody thought to rework the strategies, plans, nothing, because when the board wasn’t bickering over gil, they were bickering over why it was taking us so long when we were up to our knees in blood at the front.” In his peripheral vision, Angeal rubbed his face a couple of times, exhaling rather loudly as he did. “It was after a particular messy fight that the tables were turned…but we didn’t suspect it until it was too late.”
“The ambush.” Genesis whispered to the ether, looking away toward the vacant side of him at nothing in particular.
“No one sur-…”
“ Get on with it! ” issued through gritted teeth, it was the first time he was making any direct eye contact with the ivory-haired man whose expression was nothing short of agonized. But the reason behind it kept slipping through his grasp and into the recesses of his mind.
“I don’t know the specifics of what happened, I told you, I wasn’t there, but we got there when it was pretty much over. We looked everywhere, no one spared any effort but we couldn’t find Sephiroth. When the General of the Crescent unit finally came out with the claim that he was the one whom Sephiroth had seen last, Wutai was already halfway across the Western continent.”
At this, Genesis could no longer remain sitting where he was, but Angeal was already continuing, and he damn right had to because the redhead had asked.
Apparently, it was in a bed of his own making that he had to lie.
“I tried to keep the front with Zack, but they seemed to know everything. The number of men, the weapons in every stronghold…they had built them, so infiltration was plain sailing when they held all the cards. They pushed us back, encampment after encampment, and then, they decided not to stop at Wutai when they had it all restored. By that time, we were all tripping over each other trying to pull SOLDIER and infantry into some semblance of order so we could just hold them back.”
The gravity of the situation was just sinking in, but did he feel any remorse? His mind was sluggishly putting the scattered puzzle pieces together… And now it made sense…the couple wearing Wutain garb walking freely in Costa Del Sol… It had been strange at the time, but the significance of it had been lost on him up until now. Pivoting on his heel, Genesis ran a hand through his hair before uttering quietly, urgently. “Where is it now? The Wutain border?” Something within him was pleading silently for Angeal to say that they had managed to push them back…not because he had any loyalties to Shinra, not because he felt necessarily patriotic, but because this wasn’t something he was prepared to accept…he couldn’t face the consequences of such magnitude…he couldn’t deal with the knowledge that all the years he’d lost and all the sweat and blood they’d shed had been all in vain…and more importantly Sephiroth’s-…
“-the middle of Gunasamigla ocean. The entire Western continent is theirs.” It wasn’t at all dissimilar to being physically hit, like being thrown down on the ground when you least expected it. Winded, Genesis could do nothing but stare as Angeal slowly rose to his feet. “They brought Leviathan in, and without you, without Sephiroth, and with me-” a vague gesture with his hands toward himself. “-being like this, it took Sister Ray to bring it down. But,” another infinitesimal yet no less gravid pause. “It took the whole cannon down with itself.”
There were a myriad of questions floating in his head, but Genesis didn’t know where to start, didn’t think if he managed to open his mouth he’d accomplish anything but, possibly, looking dumb. He wasn’t left to his thoughts for too long however, because the ivory-haired individual before him turned to face him then; and it was a cautious, weary thing, as though Angeal feared turning on his heel any faster would somehow unbalance their already tenuous rapport.
“They made President Shinra sign a peace treaty and an abdication order.” Sapphire eyes were still avoiding him when something within the redhead whispered ‘Good’ , but that righteous flicker was quickly extinguished by the coagulation that was his inner turmoil. “No one cared about the Northern continent, so they left it as it was. In the South, though, your father-”
“-foster.” Genesis ground it out and it came out hushed, because only just now he’d found his voice, found some way to breathe .
Angeal looked flummoxed for the duration of an entire minute before he managed to compose himself enough to speak. “He found it high time that he declare independence; Wutai moved in his favor, ‘liberated’ them from Shinra’s rule-”
The redhead couldn’t resist the urge to scoff.
“-They seemed to have had enough by then to leave Mideel alone. Your fa-”
“-foster father.” Genesis warned, and Angeal looked somewhat apologetic before continuing.
“Yes, sorry, he’s the governor now.”
There was a lull in the younger man’s explanations within which both of them were gathering their thoughts. It was too much…too much to take in all at once, and somehow, the first coherent thought that made its way to the forefront of his brain was why and how Angeal had been able to keep this from him for so long. Unable to really dwell on any of these, Genesis opened his mouth only for both of them to utter the same query at once.
““How?””
Deciding not to acknowledge the unvoiced remainder of the question, the redhead made a gesture with his hand. Thankfully, the younger man was quick on the uptake.
“How what?” The dismissive expression fleeting across Angeal’s features was a rare sight. “How I ended up looking like this?”
Genesis could only nod hesitatingly, suddenly unsure if he really wanted to hear the answer to that.
“It’s noth-” The ivory-haired man abruptly cut himself off. It was even more bizarre when those broad shoulders hunched forward, the individual in front of him turning on his heel in order to-wearily-make his way back to where they’d been sitting only minutes ago.
It felt like hours, like ages that they’d been stuck up here, separate from the rest of the world as they had always been, down to their very definitions…down to their very origins. Outside, down below, life was going on as it always did, but here, now, the very sky was crumbling around their ears.
Pressing his lips into a thin line, Genesis abruptly looked up…his gaze piercing as he tried to contain his sudden onset of rage, as he willed away the urge to place all blames on some higher power who just sat in their lofty heavensward perch…
A droplet spattered against his visage. Then another, and another one again…
Why did it feel though, that the goddess herself was laughing at them?
“That fight at Fort Nonneung… I got wounded… Hell , even Sephiroth was more worse for wear.” There was a gravid pause. “It didn’t heal…” When Angeal continued anew, there was a strange emotion coloring his tone… Was it regret? “After the battle, after securing the fort, he left me there to hold it and advanced further ahead. No one knows whom they attacked first, maybe it was us, maybe they flanked Sephiroth from behind before closing in on us…” An overloud yet tremulous exhale. “Goddess knows how many times I wished it was Sephiroth who got wounded that day…even though it didn’t heal, even though it got me where I am but he’d at least be ali-!”
-they were rolling on the ground the next instance, Angeal’s temporary stupefaction working in Genesis’ favor as the redhead tackled him to the ground, hands gripping the younger man’s collar so hard they were shaking.
In those infinitesimal moments that he deliberated on what to do, the tense silence between them was filled with their heavy breaths and the lazy pitter-patter of rain. Azure irises were locked with wide yet pain-laced sapphire ones; and Genesis was tired of seeing that look, wanted to wipe it away, but how…
Maybe it was too much to ask. Maybe neither of them had the luxury of being normal again…not that they ever had.
Normal.
The sneer that contorted his visage had nothing to do with the man below him as he slowly lowered his head. To his credit, Angeal didn’t flinch away, followed his movement with his eyes- worried , but that was nothing new considering the ivory-haired man-until they were only a couple of inches apart.
“Don’t you dare utter his name when you gave that mockery of him a chance to breathe.” This the redhead hissed, and when his companion was about to reply, Genesis cut him off, his voice rising in volume. “You say you wish Sephiroth was wounded instead of you so he’d live…” There was a multitude of things he could do, but he decided to spit next to the younger man’s head before abruptly rising to his feet and throwing venomously over his shoulder; “ Bullshit- ”
“-We had to fight a group of them when we went down to retrieve Hojo! I had to kill half a dozen men wearing my friend’s face… No simulation, real flesh and blood… Can you even imagine how that feels like, Gen? And his-possible biological-father was there, right next to me, cutting down versions of a son he’d never met only for Ms. Crescent to come between us and Hojo…just so she could preserve the only one left.” Now this, this made him freeze in his tracks; made him turn around and level the younger man behind him with a look that was potentially bordering on the wrong end of unhinged at the moment. “It was torture! Dealing with Hojo only to end up having to spare that copy was torture, more so for Valentine, but he tried reasoning with her… And believe me, if there was anyone who could’ve changed her mind, it’d have been him.”
Too much… It was too much. Frozen as they’d been, facing each other and staring down one another, it seemed like they had finally run their verbiage dry. There was no use pushing his point because Angeal’s viewpoint seemed forever skewed…forever blind to those glaring holes in the dogma, to those pitfalls…It was obvious that there was more to this when it came to Shinra being so lenient with a shadow of-what amounted to-their perfect weapon living and breathing within their very bowels… A dirty little secret…just as they had been.
The bed they’d made for him was only disguised as one… It was actually his coffin. So be it.
“あなたは私が死ぬのを眺めた…” It was whispered, more like a thought spoken out loud but there nonetheless. Genesis repeated it once more, holding the younger man’s gaze with his own.
A severe frown, an intense focus. This, at least, he could contend with, finally seeing that look gone from those sapphire eyes. No more morose silences, no more hunched shoulders, and no more pain.
Good.
“よう 相棒” Opened his arms wide because this was finally the Angeal he’d come to know. However, the expression that gradually pulled on his lips next was unnameable, because while it resembled a smile, there was no mirth behind it… Ugly, it was an ugly scar, an unhealed and festering wound…opening up and spilling pus. “結構。ついに心を決めたというわけだ” The bewilderment, the confusion on the younger man’s visage was something bitter, but Angeal had already chosen, and so would he. “幼なじみの意思は尊重しよう、しかし…” Slowly but surely, Genesis turned his back on the one whom he used to call his brother, his best friend, uttering over his shoulder before stepping into the treeline. “そっちの世界で生きていけるのと？”
He’d drink his cup to the lees.
あなたは私が死ぬのを眺めた = You watched me die
“よう 相棒。結構。ついに心を決めたというわけだ。幼なじみの意思は尊重しよう、しかし…そっちの世界で生きていけるのと？” = Hey partner. Good. So it means your heart is decided. As childhood friends I respect your choice. However, can you live in that kind of world?
a while ago my parents were sorting out stuff I left at theirs when I moved out
and they found this Banora White tree cross-stitch I did when I was like 17 🥺
The town we know as Banora was originally a site where they were planning to put down a reactor - likely because, like Mideel, the Lifestream flows close to the surface there. The underground caverns had likely been there from the beginning, but whether they were dug out or preexisting, their contents were the reason that no reactor was ever put down.
What did they find? You can just barely see it in Crisis Core, it’s definitely an easter egg. Can you make it out?
Looks semi-familiar? Try this:
That’s right. They found Emerald WEAPON.
Which, I suppose, is a Very Good Reason not to put in a reactor and risk waking it up. Depending on when it happened, Grimoire Valentine or Lucrecia Crescent could likely have told them what it was, but regardless, it was obviously a Big Sleeping Monster that you do not want to wake up.
Instead, they placed a town there, full of ShinRa employees, as a cover-up so no one would discover what they’d found. They named it Banora, and later people started moving in and fleshing it out into a legitimate settlement that would eventually come to be the little town in Crisis Core era that produced Genesis and Angeal.
Hi everyone!
Today we’re going to be baking a personal favourite of mine: Banora White Apple Cake.
Actually, when I first looked through Gaia Cooking, I was really excited to see an authentic recipe for this cake that didn’t also call for including Banora White apple juice. Love that stuff, but seriously, adding apple juice to apple cake is overkill. This recipe is much easier and has less modifications (if you’ve seen the one floating around online from those “health gurus”, you’ll know what I mean).
This recipe really leans into the tartness of the Banora White apples. We all know a good Banora White apple cake is moist and sweet without being too sweet, and this one delivers. As expected of this classic cookbook!
[[MORE]]BANORA WHITE APPLE CAKE
Ingredients
Apple Topping
¼ cup of honey
1 tablespoon of sugar
2 Banora White apples (as always, if you don’t have Banora Whites, Granny Smith will be fine)
Cake
½ cup of sugar
¼ cup of honey
1 egg white
1 cup of unsweetened applesauce
½ cup of buttermilk (buttermilk substitutes work well here)
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 ½ teaspoon of cinnamon
¼ teaspoon of nutmeg
½ teaspoon of salt
2 ¼ cups of all-purpose flour
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. In a nonstick frying pan, combine the ingredients for the apple topping, by first adding the honey and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Then, add the apples and cook on medium-low heat for about 5-6 minutes until the apples soften. Remove from the heat and set aside.
3. Now for the cake! In a bowl, add the sugar, honey, and egg white. Blend on medium until combined and frothy. Then, add the applesauce and buttermilk. Continue to mix until there’s a light froth.
4. Add dry ingredients to the cake mixture: baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and flour. My mixture looks chunky because I made my own applesauce, but if you have a smoother applesauce, yours probably won’t look exactly like mine pictured.
5. You can typically use any pan here, but I’ve chosen a 9-inch springform pan. Cover the sides and bottom with aluminium foil. Grease with a light cooking spray, oil, or butter.
6. Lay out the apples on the bottom and spread them evenly. This will form the top of the cake, so if you’re artistic enough, you can arrange them in a cool pattern. ;) I just tried to get mine to spread evenly, which is its own struggle as you can see!
7. Then, add the batter on top and try to spread it evenly.
8. If you used a springform pan, you might wanna place the pan on a baking sheet before you put it in the over. If you used a regular pan, then you don’t need a baking sheet. Bake for 40-45 minutes.
9. Once done, let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes before taking it out. Then the fun part: invert it onto a serving plate (aka flip it upside down onto the plate) and slowly, slowly peel the foil away. Reassemble any apples that have taken a fall.
10. And that’s it! Cut and enjoy :)
“i’m not a better person when I’m with you, but I’m better at being a person. i feel almost human”
A little gift for @nyx4 based on these beautiful words of hers.
