Lemon Blueberry Cake

I promise - last lemon use.  But this is a really good one - Lemon Blueberry Cake.

I first saw this as one of those Delish videos on Facebook and I just had to try it.  This was absolutely the best cake I have ever made from scratch (although I can't say I've made too many).  The recipe comes from Natasha's Kitchen, although I did modify it a bit based on the baking pan.  Her original recipe called for a springform pan, but I don't own one.  I do own a tube bundt cake pan, and based on the modification of her recipe, I was able to create this yummy cake. 

If you are a more serious baker and have a springform pan, use the link above to find her recipe.  If you are using a bundt pan, here's how to make this awesome cake:

Ingredients

3 large eggs

1 1/2 c. granulated sugar

1 1/2 c. (12 oz.) sour cream

3/4 c. light olive oil or vegetable oil (I used olive oil)

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. salt

3 c. all purpose flour

3 tsp. baking powder

2 Tbl. lemon juice

Zest of 1-2 lemons (1 Tbl.)

3/4 Tbl. corn starch

18 oz. (3 pint containers) blueberries*

Powdered sugar to dust top

*Natasha warns against using too many blueberries because it gets too heavy at the bottom.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and lightly grease the pan with cooking spray.  Beat the eggs and sugar with an electric mixer until thoroughly blended.  Add the sour cream, oil, vanilla and salt and beat until smooth.

Mix the flour and baking powder together and slowly add to egg mixture, about 1/3 at a time until completely blended.  Add a tablespoon of lemon juice and lemon zest and blend.

Rinse the blueberries and in a separate bowl, gently toss them with the cornstarch and the other 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. 

Spoon about 1/2 of the batter into the bottom of the greased pan and then layer the blueberries on top.  Repeat with the remaining batter and berries so you end up like this:

Bake for 55 minutes and after the pan has cooled a little, gently flip it over onto a plate. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

This cake makes a great coffee/pound type cake.  If you do use a springform pan or frozen blueberries, check Natasha's Kitchen for the correct measurements.  By using the bundt tube pan, I had to increase the quantities of the ingredients.

We will definitely be making this cake again, certainly in the early Spring when our lemons are abundant and blueberries from Chile are plentiful!  Enjoy!

cindy

Adventures in Fundraising - Gourmet Meals for a Year

As some of my readers may know, I am the chairperson for the Mission Campaign for our youth choir, Pueri Cantores St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and my husband is the director.  We are raising money to travel to Rome on December 26 and sing for the New Year's Day Mass of Peace with Pope Francis!  It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for 46 singers, ages 8 through 18, and it's even more special because we will be sharing the experience with 5,000 young singers from every continent!  I get the shivers every time I think of the trip for my 2 kids.

We had some pretty intense fundraising activity last Spring and are gearing up for our last push before we make our final trip payments in mid-October.  We did a number of "basket raffles," and made about $3,000.  As one of our "basket raffles," we raffled off 12 months of homemade gourmet meals, one per month.  Our winner was a nice couple in our parish choir.  I've made several of these meals and although it is a bit of work, it's fun for me.  I wouldn't call my self a gourmet cook by any stretch (don't tell them that!), but I can follow a recipe and enjoy trying new ones.

This month's menu includes:

Cucumber Ginger Sesame Salad
Honey Mustard Chicken
Rice
Garlic Parmesan Mashed Cauliflower
Meyer Lemon Pound Cake
Peach Raspberry Sangria

I've linked two recipes to the items above (none are original to me!).  The other items I found inspiration, but in the end changed them in favor of my own recipe.  One of those was the Cucumber Ginger Sesame Salad:

It's very easy - cucumber, carrots, edamame and toasted sesame seeds.  I used a store bought Asian Sesame dressing.  The best part of this recipe was cutting the cucumber.  Using a potato peeler, I worked around the top of the cucumber to make twists that are so pretty! Before mixing them with the other ingredients, I laid them out to dry a little.  I hate when cucumber salads are watery because of the cucumbers.

  

These meals are delivered on the third Sunday of every month.  I try to make extra of everything so I can feed my own family as well.  This month I started about 24 hours before delivery with the pound cake and sangria.  I will admit I'm cheating a bit, using a store bought mix. This one is from Krusteaz and if the smell while baking is any indication, this is going to be seriously yummy!

 






I have always wanted to make sangria, especially a white peach version.  For the fruit, I used 2 yellow peaches and 1 white nectarine with raspberries.  Then I added 1/2 c. of peach schnapps, 1/2 c. of brandy, 2 12 oz cans of 7-Up and 2 bottles of Moscato wine. That will make about 10 good servings of sangria. A good sangria requires at least 8 hours to mix and I'm gave mine 24. And oh, it was worth the wait!

I was also pleased with the Honey Mustard Chicken (see link to recipe above).  I served it over white rice.

Hey, if you appreciate this fundraising suggestion, the recipes or just my blog, we would love your support.  Our YouCaring fund is HERE and even the smallest donations are appreciated!

Cindy

It's Peep Time

When I was thinking about writing this post, my initial thought was to announce that today (the Thursday before Easter) is the day to open your package of Peeps so they will be stale by Easter.  Long after my older siblings stopped eating Easter candy, they still had to have their stale Peeps.  I personally am not a huge fan of Peeps, but some folks are just fanatics about it.

As I started the "research" for this post, I found a wealth of information about all the different ways to eat Peeps.  First I should address the "stale" or "crunchy" method as it is the easiest.  Open the package in advance and let them breathe.  That's it.  Simple.  In fact, here's a tutorial from "From Here to Eternity."

Preferences on Peeps are not limited to stale vs. fresh.  You can toast your Peep (it ain't pretty), but be careful - the colored part is flammable.  It does look yummy, though - you can make the Peep into a s'more!  You can even watch a video about it:

Peeps make great decorations for other desserts.  I've tried that myself and can say that bunny Peeps can hide a lot of imperfections on the side of a cake.  If you want to make this cake, get my recipe here:

You can wrap them in a blanket brownie as demonstrated by "Life Love & Sugar"

All these desserts have me in an Easter planning mood.  You too?  Well get going peeps!

Happy Easter!

Cindy

Peeps Easter Cake

If you look on Pinterest, you will see lots of Easter crafts, and finally, yes FINALLY, I am starting to get that crafting mojo back.  Not original crafts, mind you, but crafts!  I'm in the Easter mood so I'm going to be featuring some old and new projects I have done for Easter.  This one is from last year and I was SOOO proud of it.

It may not look so great to the serious cake decorator (just check some of the stuff on Pinterest), but it made my Easter guests smile.  Here's how easy it was:

I made 2 chocolate cake mixes and used 9" round pans.  (You can use whatever flavor of cake you want.)  Instead of filling up the pans with the batter, I only filled them about half way so the layers would be thinner.  You can also slice an already baked round (make sure to freeze it first), but I liked this way better.  Just make sure to watch the baking time - it won't take as long so don't burn your cake.  After your cake layers cool a bit, freeze them (or at least make them very cold).  I can't believe it took me so long in life to realize that a frozen cake is much easier to frost.  Duh!

Next, I used some white or cream cheese frosting and split 2-3 tubs into four glass bowls.  I like to have too much frosting instead of too little, so I used three tubs.  One I separated the icing into the bowls, I started experimenting with color.  I used food coloring.  If you are not used to dabbling in food coloring, I would suggest you read the package to get an idea of the ratios of the respective colors.  However, be very careful in following the box instructions for how much dye to use for icing - they really tend to overdo the number of drops needed!  Keep the same ratio of color to color, just don't use as much.  It's no fun to have your guests sitting there with dyed lips and tongues - yuck!

I managed to get pink, yellow, purple and blue with my dyes.  From there it was pretty easy.  I iced each layer with a different color, including between the layers.  Once my little rainbow was finished, I lined the outside with Peeps.  If you have trouble getting them to stay, use a little more frosting on the Peep.  I finished it off with robin's eggs, M&Ms and any other candy in pastel colors.  I ran out of time, but I wanted to dye a little coconut green (use only a drop of food coloring and mix with coconut in a Ziploc bag) to make some grass for my eggs.

If you don't like all the color on the outside of the cake, you can do the same thing inside the cake by coloring the batter - you just need to use white cake.  

So colorful, so springtime and so much fun!

Happy Easter!

cindy

Luscious Lemon Cake

I'm hardly a foodie and don't do too many recipes here, but I've been on a roll lately so you might just see more food here for a little while.  This weekend I tried something a little different, something I made up by combining a bunch of ideas from Pinterest and all those recipes that are populating Facebook these days.  This is a lemon poke cake with raspberry cream filling and lemon cream cheese frosting.  Interested in this yummy summer cake?  Read on.

You need:
1 box lemon cake mix                             eggs, water and oil (to make box cake)
1 package Jello lemon pudding mix        milk (to make pudding)
1/2 container Cool Whip                         raspberry preserves (jelly is fine too)
1 container lemon frosting                      1 container whipped cream cheese frosting

Make the cake according to directions in two round (8 or 9") pans.  When cake comes out of oven, poke each round multiple times with straw (or other hole-making implement) and pour prepared lemon pudding over the holes.  Smooth and remove excess pudding.  Refrigerate (because I like cold cake when I apply frosting).

Mix Cool Whip and raspberry preserves to taste.  I used about half a regular size container of Cool Whip and about 1/2 a cup of preserves.  I honestly can't give exact measurements because I mixed until I had the taste and consistency I wanted.  You want the raspberry taste, but not too strong.  Smooth liberally over one of the rounds.

Mix the lemon and whipped cream cheese frostings.  Note that I used "whipped" cream cheese frosting which you can find in the prepared tubs.  Unfortunately for me, I had to make add real whipped cream cheese (not frosting) because I didn't have enough frosting after my growing son ate most of it!  Mix the frostings, again to taste.  I would use more cream cheese frosting than lemon because the consistency is better with whipped cream cheese frosting and it cuts the strong lemon taste a bit.

Put the other round on top and frost the cake.  Voila!

I wanted to show a cross section so you can see the filling.  Note the frosting is clumpy because I had to mix in real cream cheese to make enough frosting.  It still tastes great, just isn't quite as pretty.  You can also heat the frosting and drizzle it over the top.

I'm pretty proud of this one so I think it's a keeper.  If you like a flavorful lemon cake, give it a try.

Cindy