Ali’s Favorite Macaroni Salad and Apple Coffee Cake

I was busy this weekend with legitimate human activities and illegitimate 22 year old activities (nothing illegal! Just consumption of fermented beverages; do you have any idea how they ferment black licorice?) So to sum it up, I was cooking my contributions for Easter Sunday, on the morning of Easter Sunday. I did a quick shopping trip, grazing on some cheese samples in the process and returned home with around an hour to complete my cooking offerings. The Apple Coffee Cake (Aunt Debbie) takes 1 hour to cook alone, so I knew I was screwed. I started mixing up the batter and was utterly confused by the recipe. It had 1 stick of butter and 2 Tbsp. of butter and the instructions told me to use the butter in the batter, but then told me later to put half the butter in a greased pan. I thought really? Why would I put half the butter in the pan and make a cholesterol swimming pool? This can’t be right. I call the cooking authority (my Mom) and in a panic try to relay the issue. She had me read the recipe to her word for word, until she stopped me and said, “Batter, Jenna, put half the batter in the greased pan, not butter!” That makes much more sense! I thank her for sorting out the typo mistake and continue cooking. I throw together Ali’s favorite Macaroni Salad (Linda) without trouble and get it in the fridge. To see if the cake was done, I was to put a toothpick in and see if it comes out clean….hmmm, I don’t actually have a toothpick. I search the kitchen for anything that might be useful and settle on Kabob skewers. It seemed rather ridicules to use a foot long stick to check, but at least I didn’t get burned! Easter dinner was lovely and by chance the family ended up with 5 desserts! So by the end of the day, we were stuffed and ready to eat like actual rabbits.