The Evolution of a Cake

It's called That Damn Cake because of the year I made so many. Sixty-three, I think. Or four. But like so many things you do over and over, it has evolved. Through mistakes or ingredient shortages. And this version is, trite as it may seem, new and improved.

I actually made this for a friend (whose birthday party I missed) last week. Turns out? She gave up sweets for Lent. I will NEVER get used to these Catholics! (I actually thought they all quit drinking for Lent.)

Really the Best Strawberry Cake
1 Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Butter Recipe Golden cake mix
1 small box jello
2 whole eggs
4 egg whites
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 package frozen strawberries
1 box confectioners sugar
1 stick butter, room temp
3-4 ounces cream cheese, room temp
2 tablespoons cherry preserves

Dump frozen strawberries into a bowl and chop. Let thaw.Preheat oven to 325. In large mixing bowl combine cake mix, jello, oil, eggs, whites and one cup strawberries. Mix to combine and then beat for two minutes, scraping down sides. Grease (WELL!) and flour a tube pan. Bake cake for one hour. Remove from oven, let cool in pan for ten minutes and then invert onto a cooling rack. Cool completely.

While cake is baking, beat 1/2 cup strawberries, butter, cream cheese and confectioners sugar until light and fluffy. Refrigerate. Combine remaining strawberries with cherry preserves and set aside.

After cake has cooled, use a long serrated knife to slice it into two layers. Spoon strawberry/preserve mixture onto the bottom layer. Spoon dollops of icing over the strawberries and top with the second layer. Ice the entire cake and refrigerate.

Chocolate cake in a cup

This is so lame. SO very lame...but it has been the hit of the weekend (and in all fairness? It IS good.)

My mom sent this; I'm guessing some recipe site sent it to her. The point was that maybe the kids would have fun with it, so this afternoon when The Nice Kid checked her email and found it, she decided it was too cool not to try. And it WORKED. It made a mess...it runs over in the microwave and we had to leave the cup in the sink to soak but for the effort involved? This is great. And the Wow! factor is cool.

Minute Chocolate Mug Cake

1 Coffee Mug, lightly sprayed with cooking oil
4 tablespoons flour (that's plain flour, not self-rising)
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional)
Small splash of vanilla

Add dry ingredients to mug and mix well. (The mug TNK used is slightly oversized, but nothing special.) Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips if using (TNK couldn't find any so we didn't use them) and vanilla, and mix again. (If you have it, Madagascar vanilla would STAR here.) Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts (we have a small microwave and it took six minutes.) The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but that's okay. Allow to cool a little and tip out onto a plate if desired; we ate it out of the cup with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the first bite space.

Fresh Berry Cobbler

Southern Living published a recipe for an easy blackberry cobbler in the July issue, which came last week. We have ACRES of blackberry bushes, which is what happens when you have a farm and you don't...farm. Every year, one weekend day, we pack up and go pick blackberries. Picking real blackberries off wild bushes is NASTY...everything bad you ever read about it is true. There are chiggers in them thar bushes. There are mosquitoes above them. There are snakes lurking in the depths...the saving grace is that when you have a pack of kids, the snakes tend to leave as soon as they hear the commotion. Those that are too dumb to slither off make themselves fair game for the dogs...and that's a whole 'nother entertainment committee.

ANYWAY. The recipe in the magazine looked interesting...I hate that cobbler topping where you take one cup milk, one cup flour and one stick butter, mix it all together and pour it over a dish of canned peaches. I HATE that stuff. This topping, however, had more of a crumb texture so we decided to give it a try. (For a family that doesn't usually do dessert, this season is a LOT of fun.)

Problem is, blackberries won't be ripe until the week of the Fourth. We have some bushes in our side yard, and they're pretty loaded, but only with bright red (re: not ripe) blackberries. So we took the last of the peaches from the peach farm, about 1/2 cup raspberries the fat little toad next door hadn't poached, and about...12?...ripe blackberries and made a cobbler. Nice, very nice. Not nice enough that when we pick the first real batch of blackberries I won't have to do that double crust, prebaked interior crust, lattice thing, but still really...nice.

Easy Fruit Cobbler

Lightly grease an 8-inch square baking dish and fill with four cups of assorted seasonal fruit. We had peaches, raspberries and blackberries. Sprinkle with 1 tablespoon lemon juice. Stir together 1 egg, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup all-purpose flour, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. (I added a couple of gratings of fresh nutmeg into the topping because...that's what I do.) Sprinkle over the fruit and drizzle with 6 tablespoons melted butter. Bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes, or until lightly browned and bubbly. We served ours in a bowl, with a scoop of Blue Bell vanilla bean ice cream alongside, slowly melting and seeping into the fruit.

Summer is good.

(The picture is one The Not Nice Kid drew of the blackberry bushes when she was four. We use it on the labels when we make jam.)

Zabaglione...and raspberries

Sometimes everything just...comes together. And supper last night was a meeting of all things good. Fresh mesclun greens out of the garden. The artisanal bread thing is LOVELY...I'll get into that in a couple of days. And then, for dessert, we had fresh peaches and raspberries off our bushes...with zabaglione. Heaven in a dish. The small children actually groaned.

Zabaglione
6 egg yolks
3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup champagne (or white wine, but if you use champagne then you have to open the bottle and if you open it, well, then...you have to drink it.)

In a double boiler (or a metal bowl set over a pan) over simmering water, beat the egg yolks and sugar until thick and lemon colored. Add the champagne and beat until mixture coats the back of a spoon. That's it. The only trick is NOT to let the water boil...the eggs will scramble and it's not even passable. You can also add, with the champagne, a spoonful or two of Grand Marnier, or a couple of gratings of orange zest. I added a couple of turns of fresh nutmeg, just because I put fresh nutmeg in almost everything.

You did WHAT to St. Patrick's Day?

The first thing I did was the wrong day...the 17th was a Monday so my buddies came Saturday night. We had the Seafood Bisque and even though crab was on sale I threw in crawfish too because...I like it that way. I DID do homemade Irish Cream and oh, honey. It was a hit. The Potted Cheese was a hit. The corned beef, cabbage and potatoes were hits. But where I normally make bread pudding? I didn't. I can't remember why I didn't; I just know I didn't. Instead we had banana bread, with goat cheese spread. Not sure why or at what point I decided this was appropriate but there wasn't any left so it must have worked! Didn't it?

The trick to banana bread is really, really ugly bananas. We are NOT talking speckled here; those babies have to be black. Ugly black. Smelly black. Throw-away black. It's a color in the Crayola box, trust me.

Best Banana Bread
1/3 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 large bananas
1 stick butter at room temperature
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
2-1/3 cups self-rising flour
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Stir soda into buttermilk and set aside. Cream bananas, butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs, soda mixture, spices and salt; mix. Then add flour and beat just until smooth. Fold in nuts. Bake in a WELL-greased and floured tube pan at 325 degrees for one hour.

Goat Cheese Spread
1 3 oz package goat cheese
1 teaspoon fresh thyme...lemon thyme is best
1 teaspoon orange zest
Blend ingredients with a fork. Serve as a spread for banana bread.

Supper tonight...Banana Pudding

All my kids were here...so we're feeding the multitudes. We had steak and shrimp...steak on the grill and the barbecued shrimp from a previous post. French bread with dippin' sauce. Salads.

But then...what shall we put out for dessert? Quickly? And good-ly? The Big Kid grew up an only child for 15 years, so she got the star treatment for a long time. And one of the old favorites, from waaay back, has to be:

Real Banana Pudding

2 tablespoons flour
1/2 cup sugar
2-1/2 cups milk
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 medium bananas
1 box vanilla wafers
1 large egg
6 egg whites
2 tablespoons sugar

Spread half the box of vanilla wafers in the bottom of a two-quart casserole. Thinly slice bananas over the vanilla wafers and top with the remaining wafers. Combine flour and sugar in a heavy saucepan, add one egg and enough milk to make a smooth paste. Add remaining milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, just until mixture starts to bubble. Remove from heat and add butter and vanilla. Mix well and pour over bananas and wafers. Make meringue with egg whites and two tablespoons sugar, spread over pudding and bake at 350 ° until lightly browned.

Ummmm. Banana pudding. This is one of the great pleasures in life and it DOESN'T have instant pudding in it. Slice the bananas really thin, so they meld with the pudding; and WATCH IT while it's in the oven. Be sure to use a rubber spatula to spread the meringue, so that you can make those lovely peaks. If you DO burn the top, and I've heard of people doing that, you can just peel off the burned part and rebrown.

Oh, and do not use madagascar bourbon vanilla with this recipe. It clashes.

Image borrowed from: llcskitchen.blogspot.com/2007_06_01_archive.html