I’m sick this Sunday. I don’t know if it is strep, or stress, or a cold, or the flu. But my husband is working today and soon two toddlers will be home from Sunday School. So, maybe today mommy will take a nap with them.
But, why not send up some link love for your weekend:
Even though we just celebrated his for real birthday, this lemon poppyseed cake we may just need to make because.
Each week I have my husband pop us a huge bag of popcorn and the boys and I snack on it all week. Cheap and healthy. Here is a new one for me with a favorite spice I usually put on chicken.
This is a bit of a different week for us, but I still always want to be about using my creative nature in the kitchen for my family and others.
And lest you think I always cook, the drive-thru ladies at our neighborhood McDonalds and the guy at Wendy’s know us! And our boys love making them laugh and saying hello!
A pound cake for a special person and a guest coming over (real whipped cream on the way, folks)
Fall equals apples to me. And I had a reason to make a cake today: because I had a bag full of apples. And I had a spice cake mix so all I had to do was run to my neighborhood Publix and get some cream cheese. Because we all need some good creamy rich cream cheese frosting every now and then right?
This is simple and moist and definitely a winner. Enjoy tonight!
Moist, perfect fall cake with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting
Ingredients
1 boxed spice cake mix
3 eggs
1 cup water
⅓ cup vegetable oil
3 cups chopped, peeled gala apples
1 8oz package of cream cheese
2 cups powdered sugar
1½ tsp vanilla extract
4½ T unsalted butter
Instructions
Mix cake according to box instructions.
Add in apples before baking.
Spray pan and cook according to box instructions.
Let cool.
Mix cream cheese and butter.
Add in vanilla
Add powdered sugar until frosting is smooth.
Frost cake.
Eat.
I cut circles out of the cake and just set a double layer and made naked cakes with just layers of cream cheese frosting. Sprinkled some cinnamon on top.
Weeks ago when I was starting to plan for Elijah’s second birthday party – I knew school buses had to be involved. He knows how to say the word school and says it to everything from the city buses, school buses, SUVs, semis, etc. We got him a school bus at Old Navy a few months ago and that’s all he talks about now.
I just wanted to do cupcakes because I figured a school bus cake would be too difficult. And we didn’t want to spend the money on one. And this is one of the reasons I love my Mister: he wanted to do it.
I baked two yellow cake mixes, cut them in the shape of a bus, put the crumb coating on using canned frosting, and made yellow buttercream for it, then he took it from there. It was so fun to watch him tediously pour over the cake to make it right for his son. That is one of the ways he loves his son.
My Mister is multi-talented, now I can add cake decorating to the list. We are thinking of ideas for Sebastian’s first cake in a few weeks.
Thanks to my former co-worker (and friend and running buddy) for her expertise on cake decorating. And truth be told – the cake was delicious and all but a piece of it was gone!
One of the true joys about living near the mountains is picking apples. We actually picked apples in Canada on our honeymoon. So fun to do something you enjoy with the man you enjoy most in the world.
Picking apples is great exercise and you get healthy food out of it – just don’t get most of your exercise from doing squats to pick up the ones from the ground. Worm eaten apples aren’t worth it.
I also remember crab apples. My grandparent’s dirt road used to be lined with apple trees and we would run up and down the roads, getting dirty and eating sour apples. Ah, the joys of childhood.
I can’t wait to take my boys apple picking – to see their joy when they can hold what they pick in their little bitty hands and hold it up as if to say This is my apple! They love wandering around with anything in their hands, so apples will be just the treat for them!
This recipe is topped with some delicious additions to make it even better. First, I most give a shout out to the Mister. He said he would like this cake better with a caramel sauce. I’ll work on that babe. Talenti Gelato is amazing and their containers make great desk accessories – and its made right here in Marietta where we live. Their Tahitian Vanilla Bean is rich and deep. (Side note to any Talenti people reading this: can my boys and I come do a tour and taste testing?) Then I tried my hand at melting down red hots in apple juice – and it worked as a chewy magic shell. It basically made the dish pretty.
For this week’s edition of Sundays in the South, I am featuring I recipe I finished up this morning.
I am definitely from the South. And if there is any dessert that is commonplace in the South, especially the Deep South, it is pound cake. Unfortunately, pound cake might rank right up there in my just-never-asked-for-desserts. Unless you are this one particular pound cake found at a tiny bakery in a tiny town off I-40 in North Carolina.
Ketchie Creek Bakery serves an amazing Five Flavor Pound Cake with a rich and smooth buttercream which I would take over most any dessert in the world. You get a huge piece and need to split it with about 4 friends, but man, it just melts in your mouth.
But, this pound cake features two of those flavors…lime and vanilla. I made it today for our family reunion and my Dad’s comment “Its dense and moist.” Exactly what a pound cake should be.
I tweaked How Sweet Eats recipe of this – I thought it was too lime-y, so the recipe you see below makes that adjustment. Also, I didn’t have a vanilla bean, so I upped the amount of vanilla. The end result was still tangy and smooth.
While in Louisville this past week, my friend made a delicious cake. My husband requested that I make it when we got home. I took it to your small group since I had the meal this past week. So delicious!
1 box yellow cake mix (13×9 pan size)
1 straw
1 can evaporated milk – 12 oz
1 can sweetened condensed milk – regular size can
1 can cream of coconut 15 oz
1 pint heavy whipping cream
3-5 T of sugar
lime zest for top of cake
coconut (optional)
Bake cake according to directions (I needed eggs, butter, and water for mine). Let cool. Poke holes in the top of the cake with the straw. Mix together the three milks. Pour over the top of the cake. Set in fridge to get cold. Mix the whipping cream until the consistency of whipped topping forms. Add in the sugar. Then spread this yummy cream over the cake. Set in the fridge for a few hours before serving.
You can add additional lime or coconut to this cake and/or decorate the top of it with shaved coconut or lime zest curls if you would like.
Semi-homemade dessert/brunch/breakfast. This is good – but to me it tastes just like a normal cake – in a different shape. It should be good with the amount of eggs in it. The chocolate isn’t overwhelming (I didn’t put the glaze on it – it probably would be too sweet). Even though it didn’t come out the best, I’m still taking it to the office tomorrow because I can’t see throwing money completely down the drain. I hope some of it gets eaten at least.
It does annoy me when magazines don’t put their name on the top or bottom of pages. I don’t know where this came from, but here you go:
1 butter cake mix
1 8oz container (light) sour cream
3/4 c canola oil
2/3 cup sugar
4 eggs
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
Mix all but the last two. Pour into a greased and floured bundt pan – half the batter. Combine brown sugar and chips – sprinkle in (see picture). Top with remaining batter. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes or until done. Let cool, remove, cut.
The sugar and the chocolate helps the chocolate chips from sinking. I would maybe even put a little more – but I doubt this will make it into a rotation. Although good for a quick yummy eating because most of the stuff will be handy or cheap.
