Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday to Me

My parents gave me the best gift ever this year--an Excalibur food dehydrator!  And, here's the best part...they had it delivered to them.  My mom will be handling all of my resupplies for the hike and will be doing all the dehydrating as well!  Hopefully I can squeeze in a pre-hike trip to visit them and play with help prepare some meals in the dehydrator.

I found it interesting today that my mom texted about wanting to experiment with cabbage in the dryer...and I wanted to dry some cake!  I suppose between the two of us, I will have a pretty well-rounded menu.  The temptation became too great today, so I baked a spice cake using applesauce in place of oil (fats are not supposed to be good for drying).  I cut it up in small pieces and I'm trying to dry it in my oven.

Supposedly after they are dry they can be processed in a food processor or blender until they are powder-like.  Then, small amounts of hot water can be added to reconstitute the cake.  No, it won't be light and fluffy, but might just taste like a cake right out of the oven that was cut into before it cooled.  Yes, I know all about that :)  I've even been known to eat "cake" before it goes into the oven.  Hmmmm...maybe I could just skip a step and pack cake mix...