Pink Lemonade Cake

I've been wanting to try this recipe since I saw it on a BHG magazine cover last April. It's supposed to be a "Spring/Summertime" type cake but since it's pink, I decided to make it for Valentines Day/my aunt Erika's birthday.

I followed the directions almost to the letter and I think it turned out pretty well. The frosting was kind of melting so I put the whole thing in the fridge until it was time to serve. I'm not a big fan of marshmallow personally so I would say I've had better frosting in my life but most everyone else seemed to think it was great. Mammaw was quite enjoying dipping strawberries in the leftover creamy goodness.

Pink Lemonade Cake and Lemonade Butter Frosting Recipes - Better Homes and Gardens

Our party was small and about half of us were dieting and only had tiny slivers. Nevertheless...it seemed to be a hit.

"Duhs"

I've made a lot of lists in the past few weeks. Making lists helps me cut down on stress because if I have something important to do, but don't write it down, it plays in may head repeated until I do. Worse than having Rebecca Black's "Friday" stuck in your head. To help me hone in on what's most important, I've been making even more extensive lists than usual so I have less things floating around my brain and distracting me. Shopping Lists, Wish Lists, To-Do Lists, To-Don't Lists, etc. All kind of like Dumbledore's Pensieve. Once I get something out of my brain, it's easier to decipher and deal with.

One of my lists ended up with the title "Duhs" at the top of it. This was a list of things that I should be doing regularly (if not every day). The list includes but is not limited to:
Mommy/Son therapy time
Mommy/Son snuggle/giggle time
Mommy cooking practice
Exercise
Weekday Cleaning Schedule

The list doesn't actually contain that many lofty goals if I were to really focus on what's most important and not let bad habits and laziness run my life. Some of the items I'm already good at and some I'm not. Some of them are really vital and others could be skipped, but I'm learning that I'd rather not suffer the consequences that come from letting them go completely.

My "Done List"

I've been spending a lot of time on Pinterest lately. (I know I'm not the only one!) That site has got to be one of the most addictive things ever! At least for an OCD *nut* like me. I finally decided that I needed to make some "rules" for myself to channel my pinning obsession. My main rule includes the use of my "To-Do List" board. It's a board where I repin things I've pinned onto my other boards that I would like to actually do or make in the immediate future. This gives me easy access to my immediate goals so when I'm in a productive mood, I can cut right to the chase instead of getting lost in an endless sea of pins. The "rule" I've been trying to live by is that I'm not allowed to pin anything new unless I've done something off my "To-Do" board in the last week. In other words, if I go a whole week without actually USING the resources I'm pinning, I'm not allowed to waste time adding more. 

This is an exclusively self-imposed rule. I really can't say if I've been officially sticking to the week time frame or not, but having this goal in the back of my head has helped at least some. The only real documentation I have so far of the things I've done is moving them from the To-Do board to my Tried It and Loved It or Experiences Worth Having boards. So I wanted to post more about it on here and motivate myself to keep going. So here are the things I've done since I started this goal-oriented approach to pinning. :-)

Recipes Cooked (with Kevin's help):

    

Long-term Project Begun:

Ingredients Purchased:

     

Family Activities Done:

(Link to pictures on family blog)

If any one happens to read this and is inspired to make a similar board (or just set more goals), I do have a piece of advice: start small. It's GOOD to put recipes on your "To-do" list that won't require major shopping trips; ones that use stuff you have on hand already. Pin things you're already planning on doing anyway, like I did with the Corn Dawgs family activity. This is NOT "cheating". This is just a way to find motivation by having linked resources handy and to aid in making your inner awesomeness an outer reality. The awesomeness is something you already have, the list is just a way to remind yourself. As my old buddy C.S. Lewis always says, "Do not mistake it for the thing itself: and if it does not help you, drop it."

Cake!

A couple Sundays ago I volunteered to bring a sheet cake to the Missionary Zone Conference to be held Friday the 13th at noon. After my minor cupcake success of early May 2011, I thought for sure I could pull off making the cake from scratch. Well, to make a long story short, the missionaries received cupcakes from Publix instead.

I got halfway through the recipe, I'd even already separated the egg whites and had my other main ingredients sitting in their bowls. Then I realized that I really wasn't halfway through the recipe. I still needed to beat the egg whites and fold in gently and about 50 other things stood between me and getting this cake to the church on time. 11:05am + who knows how long to finish the batter + 35 minutes (at least) for cake to bake + 15 minute drive time + cake due at the church by 11:30am = stop trying to make this work and go buy something else to bring! I shoved the perishable ingredients back in the fridge and went to Publix for the second time in a 1 hour period. Hence the cupcakes. I'm sure they enjoyed them, I didn't hang around long enough to find out.   

But as I said, I already had the batter in the works and I didn't want to waste any of the ingredients. So when I got home later that night (after various additional errands and outings), I pulled those egg whites back out of the fridge and finished my little project. 

Recipes:

Frosting:

Cooks.com - Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Cake:

Martha Stewart - White Sheet Cake

I took my time and followed the recipes exactly and it turned out pretty well. As you can see it's just a basic white cake with chocolate frosting so nothing fabulous but, as Kevin so astutely put it, I "didn't mess it up." I'm definitely getting better at this. What should I try next?

I baked again...

I made these cupcakes again yesterday to take to my in-laws mothers' day dinner. I ran out of time so I ended up bringing the icing bowl with me and frosted them there. In all the rush I also forgot to grab the filling out of the fridge. So they were fillingless and without cookies on top (my son finished the mini cookies off days ago) but the point of this post is they were still a hit. Kevin even said he liked them better the second time around. I'm feeling better and better about my baking skills as I practice on this recipe. Probably doesn't hurt that I get to eat the icing as I go. That is some good icing, let me tell ya. You should make some, you know you want to...

I baked today...

My facebook feed "fed" me this utterly drool worthy recipe from TidyMom yesterday morning. 

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes! 

I never randomly choose to bake (it's got to be Kevin's birthday or something) but I knew I had to taste these cupcakes. Which means I would have to make them. I later realized that one of my visiting teach-ees DOES have a birthday today. Yay for random inclinations that leave me with awesome things to share. 

(Happy Birthday J! These are coming your way!)

The recipe calls for 6 and half sticks of butter and has a filling that includes sweetened condensed milk. Rich rich rich. So I went ahead and halfed the recipe for the cupcakes themselves, that way I'd end up with just 12 instead of 24. Since I didn't half the filling and icing recipes, I have leftovers of those but I can keep them in the fridge or freezer and use them with fresh cupcakes another day. Other than that I followed the directions exactly. Just pop on over to TidyMom for the must have recipe (and maybe tell her I sent you.)

My first attempts at icing. I tried to get fancy. (Fail.)

 Still not professional grade but better yeah?

Kevin came home and liked but didn't completely love his cupcake. We have somewhat different tastes in food (and various other things in life). You'll definitely need a glass of milk close at hand to combat that richness we were talking about. Yummy yummy yum yum! I'm so glad I decided to bake today!

Fresh Bread!

If you've been following me on Facebook or Twitter you know that my awesome hubby gave me an early birthday present last Thursday. As always, he had found a really good deal on something and needed to order it in a timely manner. He didn't actually mean to give it to me early but this was the outer box it came in.

Kevin had told me he ordered something for my birthday so I knew not to open any packages that came in the next few days. What can you do when the box says what it is, though? It came while Kevin was at work so I could have just left it on the front porch and pretended I didn't see it. I've long since determined that I'm not a good enough liar for that kind of thing, though. So when he got home that night I said, "I really hate to burst your bubble, sweetie, but I think my birthday present came today and it says what it is on the box. Thank you for the bread maker." He was a little disappointed but he was kind of impatient for me to try it to make sure it works anyway. 

We went and got ingredients Friday evening so we could try a plain white loaf. The bread maker has a timer feature so you can put the ingredients in and walk away and it will start the process by itself about 4 hours before you want the bread done. So we put in our ingredients and set the timer so the bread would be ready Saturday morning around 9am.

Results

Waking up to warm, fresh baked bread is officially one of the best things ever. 

So yummy!

Since then we've made two more loaves for a grand total of three loaves in three days. The machine is so easy to use. (And as the Georgia summer is approaching it's especially nice to be able to make bread without having the oven on heating the house up.) So far we've tried plain white bread and plain wheat bread and we like the white bread better. We have a whole bunch of this stuff in our food storage, though, so we're getting a grinder and we're going to try some honey wheat and cinnamon raisin and other recipes until we find a wheat recipe we love.

Do you have a favorite bread recipe (wheat or otherwise)? Do tell!

Link to Pillsbury Giveaway!

I'm one of those people who "never wins" anything but I still like to enter giveaways for things I'm interested in. 

So here's a link to Tidy Mom's most recent giveaway. Pillsbury is offering  four different baking products and and an HD Flip camera to one lucky Tidy Mom reader. There are 6 different ways to enter and I already had five of them covered because I follow Tidy Mom's blog semi-religiously. So go check it out! Just remember what we talked about last week and make sure to include me in your acceptance speech if you win. ;-)

Valentine’s Breakfast for Dinner

I wanted to make these Cinnamon Bun Pancakes I found over at HowDoesShe for breakfast this morning. I was planning on doing them heart shaped and the whole nine yards but I ran out of time. So instead I made them for dinner.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to make seriously good heart shapes with the spout on my mixing bowl so they came out just regular. But I think the cinnamon was enough to make them special for Valentines Day. Kevin liked them a lot and said he was happy they weren’t too cinnamon-y. And the Grand Poobah Picky Eater himself clearly thought they were great.


Score one for the mamma. Maybe I’ll get the hang of this cooking thing after all.

Cooking tip

You know how, when you’re cracking eggs into a bowl, every now and then a tiny little piece of the shell breaks off and lands in the bowl? Grrr, right? Because then you try to get it out, either with your finger or some other nearby utensil and no matter how quick you are, the thing is bobbing and weaving and you just can’t get a hold of it! Well, here to the rescue is a little trick I learned in Home Ec. in about 7th grade.

Use one of the big pieces of the shell as a scoop!

It still takes a little finesse, but (probably for the same reason the little piece of shell runs away from you when you chase it) the big piece of shell slices right through your lovely collection of egg whites and lets you pick that sucker right out of there.

So there you have it, from the “I don’t know how to cook” queen herself, a cooking tip. Enjoy.

5 Year Plan

Last year all the way back in March I started a list that I called my 5 Year Plan. I didn't get very far on it before I decided I wanted another baby and morning sickness was reintroduced into my life. But I wanted to put that list on here as a jumping off point for this new blog. So here it is all nice and linked for future reference.