Lichen - Tumblr Posts
This is not a recipe blog. But have some cake and also what I thought about while I made it.
Spiced Apple Bundt Cake(s)
Cake Ingredients:
3 medium apples, chopped
1 c. maple syrup
3 eggs
3/4 c. brown sugar (I used dark)
1/2 c. butter, softened
1 Tbsp vanilla
3 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground allspice
(Optional) 1 c. chopped walnuts
Icing Ingredients: (will make more icing than you need so maybe half this unless you want extra)
1 c. powdered sugar
1/4 c. milk
8 oz cream cheese
2 Tbsp vanilla
pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg as desired
Instructions:
For the cake, begin by mixing the apples, maple syrup, eggs, sugar, butter, and vanilla. (Bold Ingredients) In a mixer the apple bits may jump out of the mixer so cover it with a towel or duck!
Mix all the other cake ingredients together and add into the apple mixture.
Grease your Bundt pan really well. Bake a full cake for 1 hour at 350F or mini Bundt cakes for 45 minutes. Overfill the mini Bundt cake pan a bit so that the icing can sit inside the cake.
For the icing mix all the ingredients together. Ideally, it is a little bit goopy so you can fill the mini Bundt cakes but also get a good drip to make it pretty.
This cake is also awesome with caramel sauce.
Hey everyone, now that we have cake, want to know a fun fact? Much like the way that this bundt cake is just okay without the apples and the apples are just apples without the cake, Today we get to have this wonderful combination of apples and cake AND either caramel or cream cheese icing (or both if you’re feeling saucy), and we get to think about lichens.
What’s a lichen, you may ask? Or you may not ask, because you already know, or because you are not interested, and in that case you can skip this bit and just think about cake. But for those of you still here, a lichen is, in its simplest form, a symbiotic relationship between an algae and a fungus, with the fungus providing structure and protection and the algae providing extra food with the ability to photosynthesize. Lichens grow on rocks and trees and pretty much anywhere else, and are among the very first organisms that colonize a place after a disaster such as a forest fire or a volcanic eruption. Because of this they are often called pioneer organisms, and they are able to persist in environments far harsher than post-volcanic wastelands. In fact, the poster child of natural resilience, the tardigrade, looks like an absolute wimp when compared to some species of lichen, which can withstand several orders of magnitude more radiation than our dear little water bears. Lichen are resistant to many kinds of damage, and there are several species of lichen whose presence can be used as a surrogate to determine the overall air quality in a region.
But wait, you say, back up. Species of lichen? Didn’t you just say that a lichen is two separate organisms? How can a lichen be a species? Would you list a great white shark and her loyal remora as a single species? Of course not. While they both benefit from their symbiotic partnership, they are also perfectly capable of existing separately. Such is not the case for many species of lichen, which have spent so long living in tandem that the individual fungi and algae can no longer live apart. Thus, a single lichen is classified as a species, and not two individuals.
This is what is beautiful about the humble lichen. It can look like nothing but a dusting of greenish powder, or it can hang off of trees in curtains. It can be sent to space, frozen, boiled, and irradiated, and will rebound faster than anything else even where disaster has devastated an area. However, take those two individuals apart and they may well falter and fail under the same stressors just like everything else. And just so, everything in the world will struggle on its own without the support of another. Lichen builds the communities we thrive in, and in itself is a tiny community, proving every day, in every corner of the world and beyond, that we are stronger together.
Thanks for the idea, @vroom-shroom, and thanks for helping me make everything a two person job.
ROCKS AGAINST THE SKY 202308181246224RT1
Contrast between the hardness and rigidity of the rocks against the flexibility and lightness of the sky.Location: La Cerdanya, Catalonia, Southern Europe. Fine Art Prints
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☘️ Some moss I saw on my hike 𝟐
𝕾𝖔𝖒𝖊 𝖒𝖔𝖘𝖘 𝖋𝖗𝖔𝖒 𝖒𝖞 𝖍𝖎𝖐𝖊 3
I think I should start to post it weekly
Lichen and berries 🍄
Moss from my wanderings
Runic stone
Moss from my wanderings
Wild heather flower
I saw on my hike in the mountains
Moss & lichen PNGs.
(1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.)