Tasty Tuesday: Italian Cream Cake

This last week was my father in law's 70th birthday. We were able to go to Seattle and help with a surprise party for him. One of the cakes that my mother in law served was an Italian Cream Cake. Hannah loved it. So I'm sharing the recipe here. I'm not sure the original source. A cube of butter is a stick of butter, or a half cup. Let me know if you make it!

Italian Cream Cake
Serves 10-12
1 cube butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
5 egg yolks
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flaked coconut
1 cup chopped walnuts
5 egg whites, stiffly beaten
Cream-Cheese Frosting, recipe follows
Extra chopped walnuts, garnish

1. Cream butter and shortening. Add sugar and beat until smooth. Add egg yolks and beat well.
2. Combine flour, baking soda and salt and add to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk. Add vanilla. Add coconut and nuts.
3. Fold in beaten egg whites gently. Pour batter into three greased and floured 8-inch cake pans.
4. Bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near center comes out clean.
5. Remove pans from oven and cool for 8 minutes; then remove from pans to wire racks. Let cool completely. Prepare frosting and spread between each layer and over the top and sides of cake. Sprinkle frosting with extra chopped walnuts. Cut in thin pieces since the cake is rich.

Cream-Cheese Frosting:
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cube butter or margarine, softened
1 pound powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Beat cream cheese with butter or margarine until fluffy. Add sugar slowly while beating and beat until smooth and fluffy. Add vanilla beat to combine.

Organic Outreach for Families by Kevin and Sherry Harney

Organic Outreach for Families is part of a series of books written by Kevin Harney that is based around the idea of our homes, churches, personal lives being lighthouses for Jesus.
This edition is based mainly in rearing your children and interacting with them. With some practical advice on how to arrange your home and budget to be an inviting place for younger generations.
One of the prominent ideas within the book is extending grace, to your children and to those in your neighborhood. There are numerous stories of events that occurred where the parents could have brought the hammer down on their children and their friends, but instead chose grace and it resulted in trust instead of fear.
It is clear that the Harney family is unique in the extent to which they have answered this call for their home to be a lighthouse for the Gospel, but the tips they give make it something that any family can work towards.
As two introvert parents raising a very outgoing child, some of the concepts are beyond our reach, but there are plenty of other aspects raised in regards to parenting that made the book a worthwhile read.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Tasty Tuesday: Sweet Blueberry Biscuits

I didn't eat these, well, I did taste them but I didn't eat a whole one. I wanted to  though. They looked smelled and the little bit I tried tasted delicious. The reason that I'm sharing this recipe from See.Try.Eat is because my family loved it so much that between the two of them, they ate about six biscuits in one sitting. It was pretty intense and they finished off the rest the next day or so. Here's the link to Sweet Blueberry Biscuits from See.Try. Eat

I would warn that you should NOT crowd the middle. There is an urgh that runs so deep that sees that big gapping space in the middle of your cast iron skillet and you think "It's got room, I can fill it!" but don't. It will require your biscuits to cook longer and they probably will still be a bit gooey in the middle. And you might think to yourself, "I don't really need to put that sauce on these, do I?" The answer is yes! Gild the lily as they say. It's needed in this recipe.

So in wrapping it up. Make these, they are awesome, worth every effort you would have to put forth in order to get them in your mouth!

Monday Mess

So, today's mess is a forgotten blog. My best advice for dealing with that is to not put up one of those "I can't believe that I haven't blogged in a gazillion years! WOW! I promise, I'll write more often! XOXO" posts. Either write something or don't. All of us blog readers out here in cyber land understand that things get busy and that people don't write, it's okay, no need to apologize, just get on with what you're going to do with yourself. Though if you're pretty sure that you aren't going to be writing on your blog again, forever, then that's something you might want to share with your readers.
Hope you have a great day! I have an awesome recipe to share tomorrow. It's so awesome that I might just add it later today. It has blueberries! YUM!

Monday Mess

I have Calphalon pots and pans. I've collected them over the years, prefer the nonstick varieties, though I do have one stainless steel pan of theirs, it rarely gets used. I love their stuff. I especially love their warranty and how they stand behind it, no questions asked. We got the starter set when we were first married, it had a ten year warranty, by the time our ten year anniversary started rolling around, they all needed to be replaced, I shipped them in and we got a whole new set. I love a company that stands by their word.

What does any of this have to do with a mess? Well, they all have to be washed by hand. I don't really know what would happen to them in the dishwasher and quite honestly, I'm not interested in finding out. So at the end of the meals that I actually cook, I have to run a sink of warm water and soap. I use Dawn, maybe because my mom did and maybe because I've used a couple other brands and just keep coming back to it time and again. I buy the green one, I like the smell.

So here's the mess part and maybe you already do this, but it was something I figured out WAY too late in life so I'm going to share. After all the dishes are done, I take that soapy water and I use it to wipe down some things, specifically my stove and my microwave. Doing it after every meal means that I rarely have to spend more than a few seconds cleaning either of them.

About once or twice a year, I will make a sink full of bubble and then use at just to clean the outside of the cabinets and dishwasher. If anyone has any tips on really cleaning a dishwasher I'll take them. I've done that whole vinegar and baking soda skulking around Pinterest, it didn't really do much for me.

What do you do to save time cleaning?

Thankful Tursday

I'm thankful that my husband doesn't have any scheduled events this week starting this evening. It's been a crazy busy 2013. Honestly, I'm thankful that no one died this week. Well, no one that Joel had to bury at least six deaths in two and a half months is a lot.

I'm thankful that Hannah is enjoying her new art class. Not that it's making her other studies better, but it's encouraging that she's willing to work at something she's gifted with.

I'm thankful for a warm home and food for purchase that is just a few miles away.

What are you thankful for?

Tasty Tuesday: An Everlasting Meal

As I was sitting eating a bowl of lentils topped with an over easy egg, heavy with cumin, I thought, OH, It's Tuesday, I should share about this.

I'm not talking about the meal itself, but the change in thinking that helped the meal become part of my day. A few weeks ago, my husband and I went to the library and sat and read some magazines. We're exciting like that. Well, one of the articles that I read mentioned a book, called An Everlasting Meal:  Cooking with Economy and Grace. The article was from Tamar Adler, who is also the author of the book. The idea that got me was wasting less and saving more money on food. I requested the book from the library and have been enjoying every chapter.

It is not a cookbook, though it does have quite a few recipes. What it is, at its heart is an invitation. It is an invitation to once again, enjoy cooking and to rethink the way that you look at what food you have in your home. It is an invitation to be creative in the kitchen and to enjoy the dining table.

The surprising thing is that since I have read this, we have spent less on groceries and thrown away less food. I can't tell you exactly how that has occurred  because on the outside, nothing much has really changed, I still plan meals and go to the grocery store once a week. But maybe it's just the way that I think about the meals before we purchase and the use of the things that we have in our home. Who knows. What I do know is that I've been eating lots of tasty things lately, like a bowl of lentils dressed with a farm fresh egg.