A Midsummer Night's Dream: Cherry Pound Cake...

When life gives you a bowl of cherries you must make this!

Here she is... fresh out of the oven... sprinkled with powdered sugar
because powdered sugar makes everything look prettier!

And because my little fingers couldn't keep to themselves and I had to cover up the little dent I had created... You can't tell anymore, can you??!!

This cake is chock full of moistness... it's rich and dense despite the fact that I had lightened it up some...

Again my little fingers get in the way...
it's hard to shoot a slice of cake when someone keeps nibbling away at it!

I had a bowl of cherries in the fridge. The kids are all gone and they are on the verge of being overripe. Some of them already are. But they are all bursting with flavor and I will never get to the bottom of this bowl. My kids are funny about fruit and the minute it becomes anything less than firm the stuff won't pass their lips. And well, I hate to waste anything so I usually toss my fruit into the freezer for future smoothies, or I toss 'em into a mixing bowl with some butter, sugar, eggs, flower... You get the picture!


And I had a craving for a good cherry pound cake. I searched the web and I found nothing I liked... nothing appealed to me. I remembered this fantabulous Eggnog Pound Cake that I have featured here on my blog and decided to use that as the basis for this recipe. But I felt the need to lighten things up a tad, what with it being summer and all... 


And so I tinkered and toyed, fiddled and faddled and WOWZA... did I ever do good. Now I have to let you in on a little secret. I replaced some of the fat with a cup of cottage cheese. Yes, cottage cheese! Now, don't wrinkle your noses at me. It works. It works well. Trust me here. 
Seriously, this one is to go down in the Pound Cake Hall of Fame. Seriously this is like a Celebration Cake... bring it to a party... butter up your new boss... Trying to score some serious points with the cute brown-haired boy in the cubicle next to yours? Bake his this and he will ask you to marry him right there on the spot! This cake is guaranteed to take you places... trust me!


Equipment
stand mixer with paddle attachment (or hand mixer and large bowl)
12-cup Bundt pan, or tube pan 

Ingredients
2 sticks unsalted butter
3 cups (525 g) granulated sugar
4 eggs
3 cups (339 g) flour
1 tbs vanilla extract
1 cup of low-fat cottage cheese
2 cups of cherries, pitted and cut into small pieces Powdered sugar for sprinkling, optional

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 325° F/165° C.
2. Cut butter into chunks and cream. Gradually add sugar. Add eggs one at a time then vanilla.
3. Blend well and add the flour. 
4. Stir in the cottage cheese, start on low and then high to break up the curds.
5. Carefully fold in the cherries, mix slowly and thoroughly 
5. Pour into prepared pan and place in the preheated oven. Bake for 90 minutes.
6. Allow to cool 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
7. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve. Also good with a scoop of ice cream on the side.

Nutella Buttercream Frosting

I know, I know... I am a terrible food blogger. I made a promise and I have not kept up my part of the bargain. It's no excuse, I know, but life has been very busy lately. Luckily I have a couple of days to slow down and catch up. Today is Alexander's Half Birthday. I have decided to celebrate it but he has no idea. I baked a chocolate cake last night while his older brother gave him a bath. While I baked Rebecca ran down to the basement to wrap the small gift I had gotten him.

Today I made the frosting. The best, EVER, frosting I have EVER had.

I love Nutella. I cannot get enough of Nutella.
We all love Nutella. So I decided to make a Nutella frosting. I saw some recipes online but they seemed just so-so. I liked the idea but they lacked in true Nutella flavor. So I toyed around until my taste buds deemed my recipe to be perfect. I think you'll agree. You'll have to!

Nutella Buttercream Frosting
1 stick of butter
2 cups of confectioner's sugar
4 tbs milk
3 tbs cocoa powder (unsweetened)
ONE CUP of Nutella!

In a large mixing bowl fitted with a paddle, cream together butter and sugar. Add to the mixture the milk and the cocoa powder. Mix well. Finally beat in the Nutella. Beat on high so frosting gets nice and fluffy.

DO NOT eat all the frosting out of the bowl before you put it on the cake!

Best Ever Blueberry Muffin Cake

In the midst of holiday baking madness I had completely forgotten that I had offered to bake muffins for three class breakfast parties. In addition to baking gifts for 23 teachers and staff members, I now had the (dreaded) chore of baking muffins for roughly for 48 kids and 6 teachers. Time was of the essence... I needed to make something quickly that would be ready the following morning. The problem was, I was running out of time. I had an hour to clean up and get myself ready to bring the kids to school for their Winterfestival performance. There was noooo way I could bake that many muffins in that time. I also knew that by the time we got back home it would be too late and I would be exhausted. So I did what any lazy home chef would do. I made the batter (I tripled the recipe) and stored it in the fridge. The next morning, at 6:00 am, I got up and poured it into three round cake tins. Sheer genius I tell you!!!

I followed this recipe, which is my all-time favorite, and baked the cake rounds for about an hour. When they had risen and were a beautiful golden brown on top, I took them out of the oven, let them cool a few minutes and transferred them onto plates. I wrapped them in foil and amazingly they were still warm when the kids had them at school. All three cakes were devoured... not one morsel left over for me!

(No picture of the end product... I was way too much in a rush!)

Eggnog Pound Cake

In looking for goodies to give as teacher gifts I came across this recipe which seemed to scream out to me! It is simple and fabulously delish!

Equipment
stand mixer with paddle attachment (or hand mixer and large bowl)
12-cup Bundt pan or tube pan or two large loaf pans, 6 small loaf pans greased and floured


Ingredients
2 sticks unsalted butter
3 cups (525 g) granulated sugar
6 eggs
3 cups (339 g) cake flour
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup (240 ml) eggnog

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoon golden rum or rum extract (But you could add more!!)

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 325° F/165° C.
2. Cut butter into chunks and cream. Gradually add sugar. Add eggs one at a time.
3. Stir together flour and nutmeg. Alternate flour and eggnog: one cup flour, 1/2 cup eggnog, one cup flour, the rest of the eggnog, and then the rest of the flour. Keep the mixer going slowly, scraping down the edges as necessary.
4. Stir in  the vanilla and the rum,
5. Pour into prepared pan(s) and place on the cookie sheet in the preheated oven. Bake for 90 minutes.
6. Allow to cool 10 minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
7. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve. Also good with a scoop of ice cream on the side.

If using mini loaf pans check for doneness after 30 minutes, and then every 5 minutes or so, depending on how high you have filled them and whether you have used them (as I did) in conjunction with a regular sized loaf pan.

Delicious Lowfat Banana Chocolate Chip Cake Not From Scratch!

I tend to stockpile things when they go on sale. At least I do at the grocery store. And, during the holiday season it seems that all the good stuff (ie baking!) goes on sale. Yesterday I was at my local Stop&Shop and saw that all the boxed Pillsbury cake and brownie mixes were on sale for just $1 a piece! Doctored up, these can be turned into the most fabulous and decadent treats. So I picked up a few (dozen) boxes... Ok, slight exaggeration!

I had two rotten bananas in the fruit bowl. They needed to be used immediately or tossed to make room for the new ones. I'm a bit tired of banana bread myself, so I decided to doctor up a box of yellow cake mix. My result was spectacular and I was not able to stop after just one piece!

Ingredients:
1 box of packaged yellow cake mix
eggs, as specified on package
water, as specified on package
1/3 cup of lowfat (or fat free) sour cream in lieu of butter or oil
1/2 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips
2 (or as in my case 1 and a half) over-ripe bananas

Preheat oven to 350 -- or as package indicates

In your mixing bowl add cake mix, water, eggs, sour cream and bananas. Mix thoroughly. Fold in chocolate chips. (Can it get any easier than this?!)

Spray pan of your choice with a non-stick spray and pop into the oven per directions on your package. Remember, different pan sizes require different cooking times. (I used a springform and baked for 1hour.)

Test for doneness... let cool about 10 minutes or so before serving. This is a very soft and gooey treat and unless completely cooled it will stick to your knife.

A Birthday Cake for my Littlest Hero!

Alexander turned 5 on Tuesday. He wanted a red fire truck Birthday cake. Had he not had one for the past 3 Birthdays I would have indulged. But I got bored. And I wanted something easy. Simple. Let's face it. I'm lazy. I even bought a packaged cake mix. The kids prefer it. I made the frosting from scratch though. Nothing beats homemade frosting. Especially when it is peanut butter! And the middle of the cake is filled with melted chocolate and roasted marshmallows. I totally did good this year!

Christopher offered up his army toys so that I could do an army themed cake.
Seriously. This could not have been easier!
My easiest Birthday cake to date!

The middle layers. After the cake was baked 
(per directions on the box)
I "roasted" marshmallows under the broiler for a couple of minutes...

And melted chocolate... think Smores!
My sister in law has an amazing recipe for graham cracker cake.
But remember, I am lazy!

Melt the chocolate so that you have a nice smooth chocolate bar in the middle of your cake...

Put the two pieces together and frost...
(Click here for peanut butter frosting recipe.)

YUM!

Strawberry Rhubarb Cake

In keeping with what's fresh and local I decided to pick up some rhubarb. Strawberries are not quite yet in season here, but I managed to get some at the store for a steal! I wanted to use strawberries and rhubarb together but wanted something lighter than a strawberry rhubarb crisp or pie... This was the perfect treat! This cake is light and airy and, because it is made with yogurt, is incredibly moist. This would be lovely served warm with a lovely cinnamon or vanilla ice cream, or with a cup of tea in the afternoon or even with your morning coffee!

Ingredients:

2 eggs
1 C sugar
1/4 C canola oil
1/2 C yogurt
2 1/4 C unbleached flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1 C rhubarb, cut into small pieces and coated with 1 tbs sugar, set aside
1 C strawberries, hulled and cut into small pieces
Optional -- 3 Tbs granulated sugar OR 3 Tbs Powdered sugar OR  3 Tbs Cinnamon sugar

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees
In mixer beat together eggs, sugar, oil, yogurt and vanilla until well blended.
Add baking powder and flour and mix well.
Fold in rhubarb and strawberries.




Grease a Springform pan with butter or non-stick spray and pour batter into pan.
If desired* sprinkle granulated sugar or cinnamon sugar over the top. Or sprinkle with powdered sugar once the cake has been baked and cooled.
Bake for 1 hour.
Let cool 20 minutes prior to serving.


*To make cinnamon sugar simply mix 3 Tbs of granulated sugar with 1 Tbs of cinnamon.

Let them eat cake... for breakfast!

I'm not that mother who gets up early to have fresh French Toast, Western Omelettes or Belgian Waffles hot off the iron press for their kids every morning. I'm a morning girl, but I can't be bothered. And I am lazy. If you have been following me for a while you know that I am much more apt to make all these wonderful goodies over the weekend and have them made and ready to go during the week. I love my freezer. I use my freezer. After all my breakfast goodies have been baked (and cooled), I toss them into Ziplock bags and take them out when needed, as needed, about 15 minutes prior to serving. I just pop them into the oven at a low temperature and they taste as though they have been made that morning. I do this with waffles, French toast, muffins, scones and other breakfast pastries. I strongly urge you to get to know your freezer. You'll become fast friends and lovers!

We had a busy non-stop-and-gogogo weekend. We had soccer games and parties and no time for any food prep. (This morning the kids had leftover toasted baguette with butter and jam. No complaints though!)

Mondays are my days to recover from busy and hectic weekends. i clean and tidy and organize. I plot and plan my grocery lists. I often try to see what I have at home so that I can avoid the whole shopping thing altogether. It's fun to see how you ca stretch a week's worth of groceries!

Today I am also baking an oatmeal raisin breakfast cake. I'm hoping that the word cake gives my breakfast treat an all new appeal. But after all, isn't a muffin or a scone almost like a cake anyhow? Isn't a muffin like a cupcake without the frosting? And if I incorporate fruit and oats into my breakfast treats, they're somewhat healthy, right? Well, this is what I tell myself, at least!

I'm hoping this comes out... it's in the oven now and smells divINE!

The beauty about this recipe, a lazy mother's dream, is that you can dump all the ingredients in all at once!


Oatmeal Raisin Breakfast Cake

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Ingredients:
3 cups of unbleached flour
2 cups of oats (not instant)
2 cups of sugar
1 cup of canola oil
3/4 cup of low fat or skim milk
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
4 eggs
2 cups of raisins

In the bowl of your mixer, add all the ingredients. Mix well.
Pour into a greased bundt or Angel food pan, place in oven and bake about 1 hour.

Let cool for a good 20 minutes before removing from pan and serving. It was good! Satisfying without being rich and slightly sweet without being too sugary. Totally not healthy, but this was delicious with a little bit butter melted over my warm piece!

Strawberry Tea Cake made with Greek Yogurt

Springtime is here and fresh, ripe strawberries are in (the grocery stores) abundance. I find myself buying new batches before we can even finish what we have. Today was such the case so I decided to chop up the older berries and put them to good use in a cake. I had no idea how on earth this was going to come out, but it was fabulous! I love the texture and the flavor that the Greek yogurt added. Light, fresh and a perfect Spring or Summer day snack with a cup of tea. I would even serve this for breakfast. And when blueberry season arrives and blueberries are in abundance I will use them instead of the strawberries... and then when peach season comes... You get the idea!

1 1/2 - 2 cups of diced strawberries
3 eggs
1 cup of granulated sugar
2 1/2 cups of flour
1 cup of Greek yogurt (I used Trader Joe's 2%)
2 tsp baking powder
2/3 cup of canola oil
2 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl beat together eggs and sugar, slowly add the oil and mix well. Add yogurt and vanilla mix well. Gradually add the flour and mix well. Fold in strawberries.

Add the batter to a greased (I use Pam) tube pan and bake for 1hr.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Rainy Day Cake

 

It's been raining since Thursday. Today is Monday. There's a small pool in the basement. We are lucky. We have power and our house has no damage. A nasty storm came through Southwestern Connecticut and Southeastern New York. Hurricane-force winds uprooted trees and dumpsters and tossed them upside down... some landing on houses others landing on cars. Electrical wires are strewn across town like crepe paper streamers. Roads are blocked by electrical poles and trees. Or flooded. We were spared and we are lucky. But we have some restless natives. Christopher had a friend over. Alexander wouldn't leave them alone. I came up with a million and one activities to do with him. He wanted nothing to do with them. Then I mentioned baking and he wanted to use the hand mixer. So we decided to make a chocolate chip cake. Of course it had to be out of a box because for some reason Alexander thinks cooking out of a box is so much fun. So to please him and because I am the Queen of Lazy Cuisine (ooh, can I Trademark that?!!) I brought out the box of yellow cake mix. And some eggs and some milk and of course the chocolate chips. Alexander wanted to add something else and so naturally I thought of peanut butter!

This is a low cal treat! (Bwahahahahaha!)

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix
3 eggs
1/3 cup of oil
1 cup buttermilk or 1 cup of milk plus 1 tbs vinegar
1 cup of peanut butter
1 bag of chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

If you don't have any buttermilk you will want to make some by adding 1 tbs of white vinegar to 1 cup of milk. Let stand 5 minutes

In a large bowl add cake mix, oil, eggs, buttermilk and mix well. Add peanut butter and chocolate chips. Mix well.

Pour batter into a Bundt or tube pan and bake for 1 hour.

Let cool about 20 minutes.

Despite the milk, eggs and peanut butter this cake is light and airy!

National Peanut Butter Lover's Day!

I heard on the news that today is National Peanut Butter Lover's Day!
So  I am reposting this recipe for Peanut Butter Frosting!
Add to a chocolate or peanut butter cake for even more peanutbutterier goodness!

Ingredients:

1 1/4 Cups of peanut butter, smooth or chunky, but NOT freshly made or all natural

1 stick of butter, room temperature

1 cup of confectioners sugar

Using a handheld mixer, mix until ingredients are well combined and the texture is creamy and smooth

For a quick and easy peanut butter cake, use a white or yellow boxed cake mix, follow directions and add 1 cup of smooth peanut butter!

For more peanut butter recipes be sure to check my side-bar.

Cranberry Sauce Pear Cake

I made a batch of cranberry sauce about 2 weeks ago. It's so easy to make that even though I do love the canned version I wanted to make my own. I was in a Pre-Thanksgiving mood so I cooked up a chicken, whipped up some gravy and cranberry sauce that I served along with wild rice and baby peas. It was such a delicious meal and we were all so happy to have the house smelling like the holidays.

I love to spread leftover cranberry sauce on turkey sandwiches. I love the sweet and tart flavor it lends to to the savory flavor of the turkey. But a roaster does not yield too many sandwiches and I found myself with all this leftover cranberry sauce that I did not want to toss. So I created this cake. And when everyone was asking for seconds and thirds I decided I should blog about it and share the recipe with you. Hope the recipe is accurate... I forgot to take notes as I went along!

Directions:

Heat oven to 375 degrees F for approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes, test for doneness after 1 hour.

OR 350 degrees F if cooking in CONVECTION oven (as I did) for 1 hour
(My oven has a convection setting and I have started baking and roasting on this setting and love it!)

Ingredients:

3 cups of flour
1 1/3 cups of sugar
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla (I eyeballed it)
4 eggs
3/4 cups of canola oil
3 medium pears, peeled, and cut into bite sized pieces
1 1/2 cups of cranberry sauce (recipe below) the kind with the berries

* In your mixer's bowl add flour, baking soda and sugar and mix well
* Add oil, eggs and vanilla and mix well
* Add cranberry sauce, mixture will turn purple!
* Gently fold in pears

*Pour mixture in to a tube or bundt pan
*Place in preheated oven for time mentioned above

*Remove and let cool 15 to 20 minutes before serving

*Sprinkle powdered sugar over the top

Enjoy!

I served this cake in the morning for breakfast the following morning. I liked it better warm (had a sample the night before! I warmed each slice in the microwave for about 15 seconds prior to serving. This would make a fabulous tea cake as well. And a fabulous gift to bring your host and hostess if you are going away this holiday season!

Care to have a slice?


How to make Cranberry Sauce

This simply cannot get any easier!
You'll need:

1 bag of fresh cranberries
1 cup of water
1 cup of sugar
Optional, add 1 - 2 teaspoons of orange rind

In a medium saucepan add your ingredients and stir over medium heat until sugar and water mix together and berries start to pop open. Cook for approximately 10 minutes. Remove from heat Mixture will start to thicken as it cooks and will continue to thicken as it cools.

If you are a cranberry lover as I am, you might also want to try Rebecca's Colonial Cranberry Cake or my Cranberry Raisin Cake

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Swirl Cake

Lore has it that Lucy Van Pelt made this every year before her brother Linus went off to pay tribute to the Great Pumpkin. You never saw it, but Linus kept a slice or two hidden in his blanket to snack on when it got dark, cold and lonely out there.

Ok, I totally made that up, but Lucy and Linus totally should have! Because this cake rocks and I urge you all to make this at home!

The best thing about this wonderfully moist, pumkinny, chocolaty delicious cake is that is couldn't be easier to make! You'll need:

1 package white or yellow cake mix
1 package (3.4 oz) Pumpkin Spice pudding mix (New and Seasonal!)
1 cup of canned pumpkin
1/2 cup of canola oil
1/2 cup of water
3 large eggs
3/4 cups chocolate chips
1/8 cup of chocolate syrup
2 Tbs cocoa powder

Place all ingredients in a large mixing bowl EXCEPT the chocolate syrup and the cocoa powder. With an electric mixer beat on medium until all the ingredients are well mixed.*

Divide the batter in half and pour half into another mixing bowl. In that mixing bowl add the chocolate syrup and cocoa powder. With the electric mixer, beat until all is well blended.

You can use any pan you want to: loaf, bundt, springform or tube pan.

Grease pan very well and pour the batters in alternating, one at a time so that you can create a swirled effect. The pumpkin batter is a bit thicker, so I used a spatula to help spread it in a swirly pattern. I repeated these steps until the pan was filled (quite high!).

Put the cake in to a preheated oven of 350 degrees. The baking could take anywhere from 45 minutes to over an hour depending on the type of pan you use. The loaf pan required 1 hour and 15 minutes to bake. The best thing is to keep checking. If you have a wooden skewer use it as you would a toothpick. Insert into the center of the cake and it should come out clean!

Let the cake cool for about 20 minutes before service.

* I totally forgot to add the chocolate chips into the batter, so they were added after the fact in layers. One layer of chips was placed in the middle of the cake and the other on top. It was not what I had planned, but it was tasty indeed!

The 3 basic items for this recipe!

Pumpkin Jell-O Pudding looks Mmm Good!

I'm Smitten with this Fabulous Apple Cake!

I made the most amazing and moist and delicious apple cake today. I've been looking for recipes for my $45 worth of hand picked apples. And yesterday I landed on this recipe by the Smitten Kitchen. It is to die for good. It is to die for amazing! My only regret was having not really read the recipe yesterday. I had all the ingredients except for the tube pan. So I used a Springform. It took a little longer to cook the inside and the bottom outside edges got a little overdone. But it doesn't matter now. I still think the cake was divine. Amazing. One of my all-time favorites! But next time I will make it using a tube pan.

Jewish Apple Cake

6 apples, her Mom uses McIntosh apples (I used freshly picked Macouns)

1 tablespoon cinnamon
5 tablespoons sugar
2 3/4 cups flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup orange juice
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
4 eggs
1 cup walnuts, chopped - optional (I used them and pulsed them through a food processor)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a tube pan.
Peel, core and chop apples into chunks. (Because the skin on the Macoun was so thin I did not peel the apples)
Toss with cinnamon and sugar and set aside.

Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones, then add eggs, one at a time. Scrape down the bowl to ensure all ingredients are incorporated.
Pour half of batter into prepared pan. Spread half of apples over it. Pour the remaining batter over the apples and arrange the remaining apples on top. Bake for about 1 1/2 hours, or until a tester comes out clean.

We served it warm... and it was oh so ooh la la delish!!!

A Perfectly Preppy Party Animal!

Forgive me if you read both my blogs and saw this post already. But I love this little guy! I made it last year for Alexander's class party. He loved it so much that he asked for his "Dragon" (it's really a gator!) as Birthday cupcakes for his class party tomorrow. (Was supposed to be last week but both boys were taken ill.)

I just love this guy! I got the idea from my Hello Cupcake cookbook. It really is easy and requires only a few basic items that are readily available. I used 2 cans (1 1/2 really) of white frosting that I colored green and 1 box of cake mix. I spread the frosting on each cupcake with a spatula, then piped the scales on afterwards. The teeth and eyes are made of marshmallow. The eye balls are Junior Caramels. The claws and nose are made from Sugar Babies. (Called for Banana Runts and jelly beans but I had a hard time finding the runts and didn't want a box of jelly bellies lying around.) The scales were made by using Andes Mints (because I could not find the square cookies that were suggested) each rectangle cut in half. After Eights would be great and Hershey squares work well too. If you like to bake but don't have a ton of time to dedicate and have kids you ought to pick up a copy of Hello Cupcake!

I made the Slumbering Children and the Spaghetti and Meatballs featured in the book... I even got a comment from one of the book's creators!

Simply Peach & Almond Cake

In advance, appologies for this photograph as it does not do this wonderful cake the justice it deserves. If it's summertime (or you live in Georgia) and the peaches are fresh and you need a hostess gift this is the gift to give! Plate it on a new, pretty platter and voila! I assure you this will not disappoint!

What I love most, since I am really one of the laziest people on the earth, is that this is made in one bowl... even better, just toss the ingredients in any order... no sifting, setting aside... nothing like that. This recipe really is as easy as 1, 2, 3! (Best part is that it tastes as though you've slaved all day!)

Preheat oven to 350... Then grab the following ingredients:

3 cups of unsifted flour (I used unbleached)
2 cups of sugar
1 cup of salad oil. (I always use Canola as it is healthiest)
1/4 cup of milk (I used 1% as that is what I had on hand)
3/4 cup of almond meal (you can make your own by pulsing whole almonds til smooth in food processor)
4 eggs
2 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 cup diced peaches, skin on

1. Place all ingredients in mixing bowl of large mixer (KitchenAid), Mix well

2. Pour mixture into a well greased tube pan or silicone bundt pan (2-3 loaf pans would work as well)

3. Bake for 75 - 90 minutes. Check for doneness using a wooden skewer if you have one. (If baking in a loaf pan, check for doneness after 60 minutes)

Let cool completely, at least 20 minutes before attempting to remove from pan (10 minutes if using a loaf pan)

(Rebecca's) Colonial Cranberry Cake

Rebecca's social studies assignment has to do with New England. She has two N.E related projects. The first is to create a brochure for a ski resort. The other is to bake something using either cranberries or blueberries, both native to New England. Since cranberries are seasonal we decided that we would bake something using cranberries. This recipe is two-fold. One of the key ingredients in this cake is cranberry sauce. The children will learn how to make a cranberry cake as well as cranberry sauce that they can serve for Thanksgiving!

Ingredients:

2 cups fresh cranberries

2 1/2 cups sugar

2/3 cup of water
3 cups of flour, unbleached and unsifted

2/3 cup of orange juice

1 cup of canola oil (it is heart healthy!)

4 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

3 tsp baking powder

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium sauce pan pour cranberries, water and 1 cup of sugar.

Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer. Cranberries will start to pop open. You can help them along by using a potato masher and smash all the fruit. Bring the mixture back up to a boil so that it thickens to resemble the consistency of cranberry sauce. (Hey, guess what you have just made!)

When sauce has thickened remove from heat and set aside.

In a large bowl combine (in no particular order):

Flour
the remainder of the sugar
Canola oil
orange juice
eggs
vanilla
baking powder and
your home made cranberry sauce

Mix well. Mixture will turn pink. Pour into 2 well greased loaf pans or 1 bundt pan.

Loaf pans bake for 1 hour and bundt pan bake 75 minutes. Test for doneness. Let cool 20 - 30 minutes before serving.

Do You Know how muChai Love You? Cake

I came up with this idea not too certain what the end result would be. Some of my creations are better than others! This one is fabulous -- agreed upon unanimously by those I have served it to. It's like eating a nice cup of chai tea, especially when eaten warm.

Ingredients:

3 cups unsifted, unbleached flour

2 cups of sugar

1 cup of canola oil

4 eggs

1/4 Cup of hot (boiling) water
1 tea bag

2 Tbs. of powdered Chai Tea mix

2 tsp. vanilla

3 tsp. baking powder

Preheat Oven to 350 degrees

1. Steep tea bag in hot water for at least 2 minutes
2. In a large mixing bowl combine all your ingredients -- in no particular order!
3. When tea has steeped pour the liquid into the bowl
4. Tear apart tea bag and put the tea leaves into the mixture
5. With a hand or stand mixer combine all ingredients -- the tiny tea leaves will pepper the dough

Pour into a silicone Bundt pan. (If you do not have one run out and get one! If you do not have a silicone Bundt pan you can place the mixture in to two loaf pans.)

Place in oven and bake for approximately 1 hr. 15 minutes -- you may want to test after an hour. (With the loaf pans test after 45 minutes)

When done remove from oven and let sit about 20 minutes before removing the silicone Bundt pan. If you try to remove it too soon the cake will crumble! Let cool another 5 minutes or so further.

Serve with a nice cup of tea, English Breakfast is a nice compliment, or a nice tall glass of milk!

Alexander's "Blue Flower Cupcake"

I always make cupcakes for the kids class parties. I try to make them each a little different. But this year, Alexander would not have it that way. He insisted on the flower cupcakes I made his siblings last winter. Poor kid has been waiting almost 9 months to have these cupcakes "with the lollipops and the worms!" The only difference is that I had to use the Blue's Clues cupcake papers. So these are Blue's Flower Cupcakes. And they are a little different.

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix
add 1 cup of vanilla yogurt
1 package of vanilla pudding mix

1 container white frosting (chocolate is OK too)

green food coloring (if using white frosting)

green sprinkles (or chocolate if using chocolate frosting)
DumDum lollipops (or any kind you please)
gummy worms

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1. Follow directions on the back of the cake mix and add the yogurt and pudding mix. Mix well.

2. Pour into lined muffin tins and bake per directions on package plus 3 -5 extra minutes.

Meanwhile:

Mix the desired amount of food coloring and frosting to acheive desired color, set asside.

3. Remove from oven and let cool.

4. Once cooled spread desired amount of frosting on each lollipop and add sprinkles. Place a lollipop in the center of each cupcake and a gummy worm someplace near the flower.

Makes about 18 cupcakes