Help! My Camera is Possessed!

It was a perfect kind of morning with nothing to do but cook for tonight's dinner in a a leisurely fashion and catch up on some housework. Since I never got to have a proper Rosh Hashana meal, I decided to make this week's Shabbat dinner more festive than usual. It's suddenly rainy and cool here, perfect weather for Elizabeth's Vegetarian Pastitsio which most of my family adores. I started a batch of apple challah and then moved on to dessert. I've never had a particularly good honey cake but they are the classic Rosh Hashana dessert so when Deb posted a recipe on Smitten Kitchen promising that this was unlike all other honey cakes, I took her at her word.

I tweaked the recipe slightly, most noticeably replacing the called for whiskey with rum and Cointreau as that's what I had on hand. Also, after reading all the comments about caved-in tops, I reduced the baking powder by one teaspoon and ended up with perfetly domed, golden, fragrant honey cakes. I was bummed that I failed to oil the corner of one pan properly and a little bit of the cake remained behind. But the unsightly wound in the cake allowed me a taste and yes, this is not like other honey cakes. I was excited to photograh my lovely, golden creations but my camera has apparently been taken over by demons. Not only did it refuse to focus properly, but it kept snapping pictures without my pushing the button, giving me weird images like these:Luckily there are the usual gorgeous shots over at Smitten Kitchen which are much more likely to inspire you to go into the kitchen than my own photos.