The Cake

I meant to post this yesterday, but we had almost nice weather over the weekend. I ended up doing a lot of work in the veggie garden, followed by an afternoon of hand stitching, and by then my hands were in no shape to do any typing! 

The family that I grew up in has a certain cake recipe that has become the required cake for birthday celebrations. I don't actually remember a time when my Mother didn't make it for birthdays. I think the recipe came from one of those little cookbooks that you get in the checkout line at grocery stores. It may have been a Pillsbury Bake-off  Cookbook. I have a vague recollection that the original name of the cake may have been something like "Confetti Cream Cake", but in my family it is just known as "The Cake".

Little kids often don't start out liking the cake, but as they begin to grow up, their judgement improves. Of course, if they help making the cake, this happens sooner. You'll see why.

The cake itself is not very light or sweet.

What it is, is a perfect receptacle for absorbing all this goodness.

When we were little, we all wanted the job of grating the chocolate. We used a knife to scrape it, and a lot got melted and eaten. When I got older, I used a vegetable peeler, which works a little better. This time I used a new grater, which allowed me to put more of myself into the cake than I intended.

The nuts get chopped, which is the least messy part of the job. Then, the maraschino cherries get pulled into pieces. I used to try to cut them up, but it's really easier to just use your fingers to break them up. Although, the red juice everywhere makes the kitchen look a little like CSI. Can you imagine how sticky my camera was at this point?

The cream is whipped, and some of it is combined with sour cream, cream cheese, and all those other good things. That is the "Confetti Cream". The two cake layers are split into four, and then are filled with the cream mixture. 

The last of the cream is put on top, and the sides have the plain whipped cream applied. My cakes usually look a little wonky at this point, but nobody really cares.

This year I put the cake on my Grandmother's cake stand. This was guaranteed to elicit repeated tellings of the story of when the kids were little, and I flipped the entire cake (and cake stand) upside down. These are the times when you really love your family.

Of course, it's all over much too soon. If you can make the cake last until the next day, it will taste even better, as the flavors meld, and the cake absorbs them.

Here is the recipe, in case you are interested in trying it out.

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The Cake

5 eggs                                                                   1 tsp vanilla

1 cup flour                                                            1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder                                        1 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Grease and flour 2 nine inch cake pans

Beat eggs and vanilla at high speed until foamy. Gradually add sugar, continue beating until thick and ivory colored. This takes about 5 minutes, do not under beat. Fold in dry ingredients. Pour into prepared pans, and bake 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from pans, and cool completely. When cool, split each layer in half.

The Cream

2 cups heavy cream

8 oz package cream cheese                              1 cup sour cream

1 cup sugar                                                           1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp cinnamon                                                 

 3/4 cup shaved chocolate bar (its easier if it's frozen)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts                                   

 1/3 cup chopped maraschino cherries

Beat cream until thick, blend with 1/3 cup sugar. In a separate bowl, beat cream cheese with sour cream, remaining sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon, until smooth. Stir in cherries, chocolate, walnuts. Fold half of whipped cream into sour cream mixture.

Assembly

Top one cake layer with 1/4 of confetti cream mixture. Add another layer of cake, another 1/4 of con. cream. When you have all 4 layer s of cake on the stack, put the remaining 1/4 of the confetti cream in the center of the cake. Spread out to about an inch from the edge of the cake. Spread remaining whipped cream around the sides of the cake, and up over the first inch of the top, meeting the confetti cream.

This is really good with chocolate ice cream. I hope you enjoy it as much as we do.

Weasley On Wednesday

My bunny man really gets into his hay, as you can see here.

He never burrowed like this, until he lost his eyesight. Now, he gets so far under the hay, that it can be hard to see him.

And of course, when he gets out of the litterbox, a lot of the hay comes with him. Fun times!

"What hay? Where? I don't see no stinkin' hay!"

 On a completely different subject, you may be wondering whatever happened with this week's Sunday Dessert. Well, through a miscommunication with the Husband over use of the oven, it ended up being a Monday dessert. It was a spicy lemon pudding.

Unfortunately, it was not a success. I thought the flavor was great. The texture was odd, sort of souffle-ish, sort of like lemon meringue pie with the layers mixed up. It got stranger as it got cooler, which may be why the recipe said to serve it warm. The Husband unenthusiastically said it was OK. The two kids in the house didn't take more than one bite. Oh, well. There is always another Sunday....

It is school vacation week, so the schedule is very off. So far the only sewing being done is the hemming of this years prom dress.

There are way too many miles of skirt on this thing. And if you've ever tried to pin up one of these dresses, you know that every breathe the person wearing it takes, or even a cross-eyed thought, can make the hem change position, and be uneven. And once the pins are in, they like to come alive, and slither back out of the slippery fabric!

I keep telling myself that at least it's the last time I will have to hem one of these, conveniently forgetting that I promised to re-hem last year's dress, to make it fit a young lady who wouldn't have a dress otherwise. When it is finally all done, these girls are going to be such beauties.

Just a note:

Over the next couple of weeks, I have some family stuff going on. Posting (and blog reading) is going to be a little erratic. I will do as much as I can, and I promise to catch-up at the end of that time. I just wanted to let you know, in case you are expecting to hear from me. 

Sunday Dessert

I meant to make this post after dinner last night, but I made the mistake of sitting down on the couch. We had such a beautiful weekend, that I spent a lot of time cleaning up the garden. I guess all the fresh air caught up to me! I did wake up in time to give Weasley his evening eye drop, though.

When I was a kid, we either went to my Grandmother's house for Sunday dinner, or else my Mother cooked a large meal. At some point after I went off to college, Mom decided she'd had enough, and declared Sunday to be pizza night. After I had my girls, I began to understand. Several years back, I told my husband that either he would cook on Sunday night, or we would go out.

So, he cooks about two thirds of the time on Sundays. He doesn't like to think about it till the last minute, so sometimes we eat some interesting concoctions. Occasionally, he waits until we are standing around him, turning him into pork chops with our eyes, before he remembers. I think there was only one time where he left it so long that I took myself out to dinner, and left him with the hungry kids. As long as I'm not cooking (or maybe more importantly, not trying to figure out what to cook for yet another meal), its OK with me.

Not cooking the meal leaves me a little energy for being creative, and I often will make dessert for the Sunday meal. Last week we had blackberry cobbler, to use up some of the too many blackberries still in the freezer.

This recipe was from my trusty old Betty Crocker cookbook, now 25 years old (Eleventh Printing, 1984), and starting to lose pages. I use this recipe a lot. And of course, a scoop of ice cream helps almost any recipe taste better.

This week, I tried a recipe  I hadn't used before. It is a Chocolate Mocha Shortbread, from Mom's Big Book of Baking, by Lauren Chattman (2001). The recipe was easy to put together.The resulting cookie seemed more chocolate than mocha to me, and the texture seemed more brownie than shortbread. The smell was so fantastic, that it was hard to wait till the cookies were cool to cut them apart. I will be making these again.

Now, what to make next week.... Any suggestions?