Monet First, Then Cake

 

My friends Julie and Dave subscribe to some online lectures from the art historian Paola Vojnovic and they invited me to join them at their house on Saturday for a session on Monet and Japan.  It was a fascinating lecture about how Monet was influenced by Japanese art to the point of designing his garden in Giverny after a Japanese garden.  The expert giving the program was Ross King, an author and art historian who has written a book "Monet: The Water Lily Pond".  I got to thinking that surely I have a photo of one of Monet's garden paintings featured during the lecture and sure enough here is one I took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He featured a number of other Monet paintings during the lecture and he discussed how Monet wasn't they only artist inspired by Japanese art.

I decided since Julie invited me to join the lecture, I should bring something for all of us to enjoy.  I baked my first French Apple Cake of the season.  It's one of my favorite fall/winter cakes.  I think of it as being more healthy than most cakes because it contains more apples than cake batter.  It's not hard to make.  In fact, the hardest part of this cake is peeling the apples.  You can find the recipe here.