I don't know what's gotten into me, but I've been a little obsessed with baking these days. I think maybe I inhaled too much flour from my fairly successful first attempt at banana bread, or something. Last week when we were at [where else but] Ikea, I finally scooped up a loaf pan and Gui suggested I make a cake in it. For me, cakes aren't made in loaf pans - they're made in round, flat cake pans, perhaps layered and generously frosted with icing. But when Gui says cake or gateau he's pretty much referring to anything that's cake-y or cake-like, but not necessarily round nor iced. So, I thought, why not give it a try? Luckily I stalk one of the greatest recipe websites that always has the answers to my what-should-I-make dilemmas and found an easily adaptable recipe for apple coffee cake. It sounded heavenly and was exactly the kind of cake I was hoping to test out my new loaf pan with. I added some freshly ground nutmeg, used half cassonade (free-flowing brown sugar) and half regular white sugar, upped the cinnamon by a teaspoon, and did everything by hand (I have a hand mixer, but wanted to see if I could do it the old-school way). The hardest part was converting all of the amounts to liters and grams, which took nearly an hour to figure out. It turned out pretty well, and thought that the apple made it appropriate to serve at the 4th of July party we hosted. It was finished off, and the day after the party, one of our guests commented that she dreamt about my cake. I think I'll convert the recipe to metric units and make it again soon...maybe for Bastille Day.