Happy Birthday Granny!

My grandparents have been visiting us for the past week and we've had wonderful quality time together playing games and sight seeing. I was so excited to have my Granny with us on her birthday, as we are usually states away. She is such a special person to everyone who knows her, and I felt lucky to be with her to celebrate her 76th birthday!

I made a Sour Cream and Lemon Pound Cake for her birthday cake since she loves lemon desserts. I had a hard time figuring out what to make her, as she kept insisting I bake something the rest of us wanted (like um, chocolate!). Well that wasn't going to happen, it was HER day! The cake came out delicious, but doesn't look very pretty. I would make this again... I followed some recommendations in the comments for this recipe and tripled the lemon zest, added a little more lemon juice, and topped it with a glaze (powdered sugar, lemon juice, and zest). Here's a picture of how it turned out... As usual I had trouble getting it out of the pan, so I just flipped it upside down which actually did better I think for the lemon glaze.

Happy Birthday Granny! I love you more than I could ever put into words.

Hilarious Cake Wrecks

I've been meaning to post about the blog Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong for a while... I subscribe to it in Reader and then every once in a while check them out. A few nights ago I couldn't sleep so I stayed up late catching up on the past few months. It may have had something to do with the fact that it was 2 AM, but I was laughing so hard I was crying! It's not just the pictures of the horrible cakes gone wrong, but the commentary that is just the icing on the cake (har har).

I was going to post some favorites but I couldn't choose and I'm out of time... Check 'em out. Browse around... http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/. Oh, they even have a book!

Share favorites in the comments!

Baked Fudge = Chocolate Heaven

Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate... fudge. Baked fudge. Topped with vanilla ice cream. OMG. Thank you Pioneer Woman for this recipe!

These pictures do not do it justice because a) I'm not a very good photographer, b) I didn't pour the fudge in the ramekins cleanly (though I TRIED), and c) these pictures are of the day after leftovers! I wish I had thought to wipe the condensation off the ramekins before taking these snapshots, but oh well.

This dessert was heavenly. It is a keeper, and I will be making it again... for a special occasion... because each serving has a 1/4 stick of butter and 1/4 cup of sugar! I did alter the recipe slightly... I used Sucanat instead of processed sugar, and whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose (white) flour.

The not so pretty, yet tasty Rum Cake

This week is John's birthday week! For weeks I asked what kind of cake he wanted me to make for him, and he finally decided on Rum Cake. So here's a picture of the not so great looking, but very moist and tasty Golden Rum Cake I made (minus the nuts). We found the recipe on allrecipes.com. I had a hard time getting it out of the bundt pan. I have no idea what the deal is lately... the last few bundt cakes I've made have not come out well and it doesn't seem to matter how well I grease and flour the darn thing. Oh, and just in case you're wondering this is no where near clean, I made it according to the recipe since I didn't want to experiment with his birthday cake!

Forgive the bad picture... it was taken with my iPhone because it's just handier than digging out the "real" camera.

Zucchini & Banana Bundt Cake

I recently have become a huge fan of the Pioneer Woman, thanks to my friends who introduced me in their own blogs. Well, PW just launched a new site called Tasty Kitchen, a community website where users can search/browse all kinds of recipes, upload their favorite recipes to share, and rate ones they try out themselves. I love it! Last night I spent 30+ minutes browsing - drooling over recipes - and adding ones I wanted to give a try to my "recipe box". Since today I have the day off, I decided to jump right in this morning and put to use the beautiful zucchini sitting on my counter. I tried out this Zucchini & Banana Bundt Cake, with a few modifications to make it healthier. Usually when first trying out a recipe I follow the instructions to the T... but I was feeling it this morning and went for it. It came out really well, very moist and tasty - husband approved! The original recipe is by bakeaholic and can be found here.

Here are some pictures I took of mine... I had some trouble getting it out of the well greased and floured, non-stick bundt pan *rolling eyes*, so I'm grateful that it looks as good as it does! My modifications are listed at the bottom of the post.

So yummy!

Here's a list of the substitutions/modifications I made to make the recipe mostly "clean":

• 1 cup vegetable oil = 3/4 cup apple sauce, 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups sugar = 1 cup organic sucanat, 1/2 cup organic sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour = 1 1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour, 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• I added 1/2 tsp vanilla extract, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon
  

Clean Banana Bread

So what do you do with 4 overly ripe bananas? Make Banana Bread of course! We wanted to try a recipe out of Tosca Rena's new book The Eat-Clean Diet for Family & Kids, and this was the perfect opportunity. It came out a mess, as you can see below... but it was very tasty! Here's a picture of the results after trying to transfer it to a rack for cooling, and eating off of it...

Not very pretty but it is really good - and clean! We will be trying this recipe again. I'm still not convinced my husband greased the pan... The picture is not nearly as nice as my husband's but hey, it's not bad considering it was taken with my iPhone.

Mmm... COOKIES!

I have been wanting to experiment with making a healthier version of chocolate chip cookies for a while now. Today I finally searched for some recipes and pieced my own together that is fairly "clean" (relatively speaking). I'm so impressed with the results, and so is my husband! Here are some pictures of my Whole Wheat Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies...

Here's the recipe I pieced together:

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup brown sugar (next time I will try half honey, half brown sugar)
1/2 cup butter (I used Smart Balance)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp milk
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 generous cup old fashioned rolled oats (I read somewhere that regular rolled oats are best for chewy cookies, and quick cooking oats give you wimpy cookies)
1 1/4 cup dark chocolate chips (I used Ghiradelli 60% cocoa)

Cream the butter and brown sugar (and/or honey) together. Add the egg, vanilla, and milk and stir until it's all combined and creamy. In a small bowl, stir all the dry ingredients together and then slowly add them to the wet batter. Mix, then add chocolate chips, and mix again. Spoon cookie batter out on parchment paper lined cookie sheet (cheating I know, but so much easier). I used a generous tablespoon per cookie. Bake at 350 degrees about 12 minutes, until the cookies are nicely browned.

Mmmm... so so good, and I don't feel guilty for eating them!