Applesauce raisin nut coffee cake for truly desperate times

Between Zed's hair-raising end-of-the-semester disasters (not yet over despite the semester ending almost a month ago) and cold icy rain and an incredibly nasty phone call from my neighbor telling me I am "the most inconsiderate person in the neighborhood" because I have a donkey (oops), things were bad enough.

Then, to make matters worse, in the car yesterday I looked casually towards the water bottle in the cup holder. Not really a water bottle, actually a many-times-recycled diet coke bottle, you know how narrow those necks are? Since it's been so cold, the water was frozen...

... and frozen in the ice was a drowned mouse, frozen in the act of treading water, its nose raised desperately, its tail below, its legs in paddling position. How did a mouse get in my car? How did it squeeze itself into the water bottle? It reminded me of those corpses in Pompei.

After not sleeping all night because Zed had dropped his flash drive (with the ONLY copy of the paper he's writing) in the woods last night, to soothe my shattered nerves, I had to bake this morning. I reached back through time for something I used to cook for my brothers when things were bad. Enjoy.

Applesauce raisin nut coffeecake 1 cup flour 1/2 cup raisins 3/4 cup broken nut meats 1/4 ts salt 1/2 ts baking soda 1/2 ts cinnamon 1/2 ts cloves 1/4 cup soft butter 3/8 cup brown sugar 1 egg 1/2 cup applesauce Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the egg, spices, and soda. Stir in the applesauce and 1/2 cup of flour. Dump in the raisins and nuts on top of the wet stuff, dump the remaining 1/2 cup of flour on top of the raisins and nuts so some of the flour dusts through and then stir it up. Put it in a buttered 9x9 pan and cook at 350 for somewhat less than half an hour. Yum.

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