Strawberry Shortcake Cake

Well I was on The Pioneer Woman's website... AGAIN.. getting some ideas for 4th of July food and ran across this recipe for Strawberry Shortcake Cake.

As I read through the recipe, I knew it was going to give me fits! I'm not great at layered cakes in general, but I'm especially horrible at them when you only make one layer and are instructed to cut that layer EVENLY in half with a serrated knife.

I don't do anything straight across. 

Look at any picture I've hung in my home.

Ever wonder why all of my bulletin boards had slanted letters at varying heights?  Because nothing I do is ever straight.

I blame my scoliosis and the fact that one leg is longer than the other.  I think I see the world slightly slanted.  Are you buying that?

Nevertheless, I decided to make the dang cake.  Why?  Because it's red and white... and the 4th of July is rapidly approaching.  I knew I could throw on a few blueberries and--- VOILA!--  a patriotic dessert.

It's a holiday after all, and holidays demand festivities.  You don't have to have fun... but you better be festive!

You don't like scooping out pumpkin guts?  Well suck it up! It's Halloween and we're carving a pumpkin!

The tedious nature of making gingerbread houses gives you anxiety?  Too bad. Take a strong shot of egg nog, slap a smile on your face, and get busy.  It's Christmas!

What do you mean you don't like pecan pie?  Be thankful and eat it! Happy Thanksgiving!

Fourth of July??

Well that's bike parades in the 100+ heat.  Illegal fireworks on the driveway that scare the children and make me worried that the neighbors might call the police.  And desserts that are red, white, and blue.

True, I could've made sugar cookies and topped them with red and blue sprinkles, but I was determined to go the extra mile.  Thankfully I had enough foresight to realize this was gonna be a disaster so I made it today...just so this cake wouldn't ruin my day on the actual 4th of July. :)

I should've taken pics all along the way for you to really understand how bad this was.

Everything went fine until I had to cut it in half.  Then the cake fell apart. 

The middle of the cake was underdone so I took a spoon and scooped out the raw batter.  It is not an exaggeration when I tell you that there is no center to my cake anymore.  I plugged the gaping hole with icing, but just understand--underneath all that goo, this cake is  actually shaped like a donut.

I made the icing in a bowl that was WAY too small for all the sifted powder sugar.  I ended up with a thick giant ring of sugar on my counter.

It was like a chalk outline of a dead bowl.

I did my best and my best was so sad.

 This picture doesn't do it justice.  As bad as this icing job is, it's covering a MULTITUDE of sins.  I'm kicking myself for not documenting all along the way.  You'd have been yelling at your screen, "Give up, Julie!  This isn't your thing!" 

But I'm stupid tenacious and persevered.

Happy [upcoming] 4th of July, everyone!  I hope your patriotic dessert turns out better than mine.

What if I stick a flag in the middle of it? Do you think it'd look better?

Witches' brooms

My first Halloween-ish  dessert this week. 

Witches' brooms. Can you tell they're supposed to be brooms?   

They're as dense as they look.
I think, with the pretzel, the cookie, and the chocolate, each weighs about a pound.  :) But the kids like them. 

The best part of baking

Licking the bowl.
Love the "thumbs up" from Caroline. That's the way I feel when eating anything chocolate too.

My first cheesecake

And it's Oreo. Mmmm.
AND I got to use my food processor for the first time to crumble the oreos for the crust. :)
So you can tell that the back part of my oven gets hotter than the front, but, overall, I'm happy with my first springform pan usage.
This was much better than trying to be kosher!

So.....

It didn't come out of the pan cleanly. But it tastes fine.
And I have mixed berries to put on top, just before serving. And you know what they say-- berries cover a multitude of sins.
(I'm sure someone somewhere says that.)

Passover Seder

Tonight I'm going to my first Passover Seder. My sister and her husband had one last year and wanted to do it again this year.

No, we're not Messianic Jews. But it's important to Hilary to have the Passover meal tonight like Christ would've at what we call "The Last Supper". I think this is a very meaningful thing for my sister. And I'm interested to see what this is all about.

My job for the meal tonight is dessert. In an attempt to show that I'm a team player and am on board with Jewish traditions, I made an effort to be kosher.

I failed but I made an effort. (To be honest, I'm not entirely clear on what makes something kosher.)

I'm making an Amaretto Angel Food Cake. I wanted to keep dessert light since we'll be eating lamb tonight. And for some reason, lamb sounds rich to me. I've only eaten it once before and can't really remember.

I needed 14 egg whites for my cake and bought eggs without even considering that there might be such a thing as a kosher chicken that lays kosher eggs. Well there is.

But I had already bought 18 regular eggs and so I decided that it would be ok. We're not actually Jewish, after all. And I did check the egg whites for blood spots... something Google told me to do.

I am, however, using Cake Meal instead of regular flour.

It's kosher. See?

Sorry that the pic is turned. Trust me it says "Passover approved".

But then, upon further inspection, I saw this....

5/8 cup of cake meal = 1 cup of flour??? Oh, great. I need 1 1/4 cups of flour. So I need to know what 1/4 of 5/8 is. And I can't remember how to do that! I know "of" means "multiply". Do I cross multiply? Get a common denominator? Help!!

Thankfully I'm married to a math guy who remembers this kind of stuff that I always assumed was pointless information when I was in school. And he did a little math for me this morning.

After going through the trouble to do the math, he asked again, "Now why are you trying to be kosher? We're not Jewish."

I know, I know.

I'm not sure if there's such things as kosher vanilla, kosher cream of tartar, kosher sugar. And I don't know if Jewish people drink Amaretto, but I know they drink wine, so I'm hoping that wine vs Amaretto is like saying tomato/ to-mah-to.

I did need a pinch of salt and look at what I found! Didn't even know I had it.

I wondered why I owned coarse kosher salt and then I saw the corner of the box...

"Perfect for glass rimming". Margaritas. THAT'S why I have kosher salt. Makes sense to me now.

So.. anyway.. I'm using semi-kosher ingredients, flour substitutes and what not, to make a cake I've never made before. Anyone care to place a wager on how good this is gonna taste?? (yikes)

It's in the oven now. I'll show you what it looks like when it's complete and take a few pics at Passover tonight.

Shalom!