16-45: Colonial Apple Cake

16-45: Colonial Apple Cake

Looking for a way to use up some apples? đŸ 🍎 16-45: Colonial Apple Cake is an easy way to do that with some very classic-looking results. This even looks like something American colonists would have eaten (take it from a former U.S. history teacher).

16-45 Colonial Apple Cake

I made this to take to a get-together, but it’d even be nice as a simple birthday cake or for a dinner party.

EDIT: 16-45: Raspberry Tartlettes is also #45 for Group 16–someone at Simply Delicious messed up their numbering.


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17-36: Grandma’s Spice Cake

17-36: Grandma’s Spice Cake

I don’t know about you, but my grandma is not much of a baker. Or a cook. In fact, if it can’t be cooked in a microwave, she’s really not that interested. However, someone at Simply Delicious must have had a grandma who liked to bake, since they included 17-36: Grandma’s Spice Cake.

I suppose they called it Grandma’s Spice Cake because it’s “old-fashioned”. Regardless of if an actual grandma baked/created this, it’s actually pretty good.


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6-40: Peppercorn Chicken Breasts

6-40: Peppercorn Chicken Breasts

Here’s one I’ve made in the past–there’s even my Sharpie notations to prove it. I remember making 6-40: Peppercorn Chicken Breasts for my mom, since she’s not a red meat eater and I was making another recipe from this book for everyone else that was heavy on meat. I’ll cover that one eventually, and update this to reflect that. 😉

My notations claim that it’s easy. It is, when you use the right ingredients. If you don’t, it gets a bit tougher



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3-2: New England Clam Chowder

3-2: New England Clam Chowder

3-2: New England Clam Chowder is one of two recipes that I cooked and photographed before I took an extended break from cooking for this project. Therefore, my memories of the process of this dish may be a little fuzzy, but I think I’ll make some sense of it.

Clam chowder is something that I’ve loved since I was a kid. My husband is from New England and when we go back to visit, it’s always an anticipated treat. We made a pretty decent clam chowder in the restaurant I worked at, too, and this recipe comes pretty close.

Of course, it’s mandatory that it be referred to as chowdah–say it right!


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11-12: Creamy Sautéed Shrimp

11-12: Creamy Sautéed Shrimp

Alright. This is my FAVORITE recipe out of this entire book (at least, as far as I know). My mom always referred to it as “Shrimp Something”, but its official name is 11-12: Creamy SautĂ©ed Shrimp. 

You can tell by the state of the card how often we cooked this recipe. This was always a big deal for me when I was a kid and my mom would make this dish.

I also cooked this one for my husband (then-boyfriend) when we were first dating, as a “here’s who I am” kind of a thing. What I’m trying to say is that this dish has a lot of feels attached to it.


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4-19: Twice-Baked Potatoes

4-19: Twice-Baked Potatoes

Here’s another potato recipe for you. I had a LOT of potatoes to cook. This was the complement to 11-16: Indian Fried Fish, which I posted a few days ago.

4-19 Twice-Baked Potatoes

This one got stuck to the page before it in the book–hence the destroyed-looking card. You can still see the important parts though–these are mighty tasty. My notes indicate I made it in a chipotle-style a few Christmases ago–we’ll do it legit for this one. For science. 🔬


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4-23: Mashed Potatoes with Broccoli

4-23: Mashed Potatoes with Broccoli

The fourth of the 4 dishes I made before I left for my trip a few weeks ago is from Book 1, Group 1 (Appetizers & Starters), Subgroup 4 (Potatoes & Vegetables), Card #23: Mashed Potatoes with Broccoli. I made this dish to accompany 6-4: Easy Stuffed Chicken Breasts and to use up some CSA veggies.

4-23 Mashed Potatoes with Broccoli

They ended up being kind of
boring. I realize neither mashed potatoes nor broccoli are EXCITING things, but this dish needed a lot of help.


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8-18: Tangy Beef Rolls

8-18: Tangy Beef Rolls

Catching up after a few weeks of IRL obligations. Let’s get back to it.

This was one of the 4 recipes cooked in the batch I mentioned in 17-28: Pound Cake. I was making a large amount of food to store up while I was gone for a week, and one of those recipes was 8-18: Tangy Beef Rolls. Sounds deliciously 80s.

Book 2, Group 2 (Main Courses), Subgroup 8 (Beef) gives us card #18: Tangy Beef Rolls. How do you resist something beef-related that describes itself as “tangy”? Mine didn’t come out as classy as the one in this picture, but it was still definitely edible. And somewhat tangy.


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17-28: Pound Cake

17-28: Pound Cake

I went on a cooking spree and made 4 recipes last night. 17-28: Pound Cake was the last of what I cooked, when we were scouring the house looking for a dessert. 🍰

Hey! This one has MY handwriting on it! I said it was good a few years ago, let’s see if it’s still good.

Spoiler alert: it was. 🙂


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6-24: Mushroom-Almond Chicken

6-24: Mushroom-Almond Chicken

6-24: Mushroom-Almond Chicken tasted okay, but looked
odd. I’m not sure why mine came out mauve, but there you go. The picture below is definitely not mauve. This recipe was cooked in tandem with 6-8: Curried Chicken, due to an abundance of chicken.

As I mentioned before, mine came out in a slightly mauve color, which doesn’t seem to be the case on the recipe card photo. I don’t know where I went wrong, but at least it was edible.


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