Probably the Best Cake You Will Ever Taste!

Looks like our very hectic weeks are coming to a close!  Both of my older 'babies' have graduated from preschool and kindergarten and we have already begun our summer vacation.  I am still poring over this last sentence, as I cannot believe that this milestone has come up already.  It sounds so cliche, but it is so very very true.  I think about this all the time, and the way that time has just flown by really, honestly, just blows my mind.

I met my husband eleven years ago and we are going to celebrate ten years of marriage this October (I know you did the math!).  I remember so well our early years, er I mean, months of dating.  I remember what I wore on our first date to the Bluewater Grill (happy to say the dress still inexplicably fits?), our first camping trip together, what he wore when I met him, our cross-country trip across the US, and first time meeting his family in Hawaii.  That was a decade ago.  Seems like last Tuesday.

So here comes the scary thought:  ten more years are going to fly by.  My son will be SEVENTEEN.  You know, college prep, SATs, applications, girlfriends (shudder), and a host of other things I have absolutely no clue about right this minute.  Many a tears have rolled down my face just at the mere thought of this.  I remember one night when he was three months old.  I was rocking him and staring at him, and I remember thinking that this tiny little young stage he is in is so fleeting.  And here we are now, my growing boy with enormous feet, paling around with his friends, and telling me about his crazy-intense interest in jets and airplanes.

The good thing is that all these small moments are seared into my memory.  In between all of the necessary duties in everyday life as a parent, we can still find these precious patches of memories in our everyday lives.  We need to remember to stop and take a minute to look into their eyes, give them dinosaur-sized hugs and enormous, juicy kisses. 

So where's the cake recipe?  I posted this on Facebook today and I got a couple of requests to share the recipe.  I found it on another great blog by Alicia Paulson: she is this amazing, creative multitasker and artistically talented in embroidery and crafts.  She also bakes the BEST chocolate cake with the BESTEST EVER frosting.  I have used it for most of the kids' b day parties.  What I love best about it is that it works like buttercream and has no shortening.  It uses flour and milk as a base and gets whipped up with butter and powdered sugar to create this sinfully heavenly culinary dream that for some reason people call merely 'frosting'.  It's a party in your mouth, people.

OK, so I did make a little modification.  I layered some caramel in between all these layers of chocolatey goodness.  Look, I even drizzled some on top in a neat little cross-hatch pattern, wow!  I loved how all the caramel mess just oozed out of the sides.  The messier the better!

PS= the caramel was supposed to be homemade, but apparently it is really hard to make caramel.  I had the candy thermomoter and everything, and I let it go a hair of a degree higher in temperature because the dentist called (is this a sign to reconsider the caramel???) and I got distracted.  So long story short, the caramel came out of a jar from the store :(

Here's the recipe, courtesy of Ms Paulson and her fantastic blog, rosylittlethings.typepad.com:

Hershey's Deep Dark Chocolate Cake
2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup Hershey's cocoa (I use either the regular or the Special Dark, whatever I happen to have)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup steaming hot (brewed) coffee
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour two 9" round cake pans.
2. Stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in large bowl. Add eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla; beat on medium speed of electric mixer for 2 minutes. Carefully stir in boiling water and coffee (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pans.
3. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans to wire racks and cool completely.

Cloudburst Frosting
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup WHOLE (it has to be whole) milk
1 cup softened butter
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups sifted confectioners sugar
In a small pan, gradually add the milk to the flour, whisking them together into a totally smooth mixture — you don't want any lumps here. Simmer (barely) until thick over low/medium heat, whisking constantly so you don't get any lumps. (Do not walk away from the stove for even a minute — trust me. If you do get lumps, just push it all through a sieve.) You want it to be the consistency of pudding. Remove from heat and let it cool completely but NOT in the refrigerator (Mom says if you put it in the fridge it won't work). Let it cool for a few minutes, and then push a piece of plastic wrap down on the surface of the mixture (so a skin doesn't form) and let it sit on the counter for an hour or two or three until it's completely cool. Cream together the butter and almond; add the confectioner's sugar and beat on high for several minutes until it is very fluffy. Add the milk/flour mixture and beat until it is super fluffy. The frosting will sometimes appear to separate when you add the milk/flour mixture, but just keep beating it on high until it whips up into smooth, fluffy clouds.

The flour and milk 'base' of the frosting. 

Hershey's chocolate cake batter can also be consumed like so ;)

Here is that cake again, just in case you missed it the first time.

Enjoy!

The Basics of Old-Fashioned Homemaking: Cooking and Sewing

Last week I was asked to do a large order and finish it by Thursday.  I got the email on the Monday right before that.  I gotta tell you, I don't think I have ever worked this hard.  I had to basically cram two weeks' worth of work into three tiny days.  Actually, two and a half days since I had to deliver them on Thursday.  I love a challenge!

Once again, thank God my mom was around to scoop the kids up and take them to her house.  I had the whole house to myself to yes, watch MORE on-demand movies and keep on truckin' with the order.  Thank GOD my husband was around to help me do the prep work of cutting, staging, die-cutting, etc etc etc.  We were a little workshop for those three days, tinkering away with our budding little business.

My Genevieve bridal cap seems to be a hit so far.  24 of them?  Coming right up!

I have this little process that I seem to go through when I do somewhat large projects like this.  The first two or three items always go ever so slowly, my hands can't seem to wrap themselves around getting the technique down.  I get a little clumsy.  Hence, I get frustrated.  But then, something happens after a few more tries, and it's almost like my hands and fingers mold themselves into the correct approach to getting the work done in less time.  Then my brain goes into skill mode and I become this little machine.  That's when I can start thinking about other things besides how to get a thread through a needle (yeah, it's that bad at first).  My mind is in this working trance that eventually takes me to the creative side of my headspace, so now I can do two things at once.  I can use one part of my brain to sew and assemble, and the another part to think about other things, like oh, cooking, going for a run, bike accessories, throwing out cleaning the kids' playroom, and the like.  Today, it was pumpkin muffins.

I am pretty sure I have ADD to go nicely with my OCD...

I tried to do the whole 'gluten-free' recipe, so I used the gluten-free flour I had in my pantry.  I also had some barley syrup, thinking that maybe it would be better than any brown or white sugar.  It is actually very sweet and has a nice nutty flavor to it.  I usually prefer brown rice syrup though.  That stuff is like honey, so sweet.  I gave some to my mom to try, and she had a very hard time believing that it was made only of brown rice and filtered water.  Too good to be true?

That barley syrup came out like caramel, it looked so yummy! 

I liked the way the muffins rose, and I let them cool for a while.  The only thing that I probably should have done differently was maybe add more of the flour.  I lined them with some cupcake liners, and they were a little difficult to take out;  very sticky, a good quarter of the muffin was still left in the liner.  If anyone out there reading this (is anyone reading my blog?) has any suggestions, please let me know!

They tasted very good though.  Maybe next time I will also sub out the eggs and use ground flax seed instead.

Here is the recipe if you want to give it a go:

Gluten-free Pumpkin Muffins
1 egg (or a teaspoon of ground flax seed with one tsp water)
1 cup of barley syrup (or brown rice syrup)
12 oz of canned pumpkin puree
1/3 cup applesauce
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup gluten-free flour (or more?)
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup quick cook oats

Mix together the egg (or flaxseed), pumpkin, syrup, applesauce, and vanilla. 
In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda and powder, and cinnamon.
Mix the two together, then fold in the oatmeal.
Pour into lined muffin tin at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, or at least until you see them brown on top.
Cool them off completely.

See you next time!