This week’s spotlight ingredient at Eat At Home Cooks is taco seasoning. Check it out here!
This is my go-to “fancy” dessert for any holidays. It is also my dad’s favorite so I try to make it for his birthday and Father’s Day as well.
I made this cake this past Thanksgiving and C’s 5 year old cousin offered me a million dollars for my “wecipe”. I told him that I would just make him another cake sometime. He even tried to sell his little toy cars to pay for it. How cute is that?!?!?
Italian Cream Cake:
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup cooking oil
2 cups granulated sugar
5 eggs, separated & room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk (I use the dehydrated buttermilk. You mix the powder in with the dry ingredients and use water in place of the buttermilk itself. It works great!)
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans, toasted
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and prepare two 9 inch cake pans. I have just recently started using Baker’s Joy spray and it is great!!! I highly recommend it, and, no, Baker’s Joy has no idea who I am or that I am endorsing their product. It is just good stuff.
With an electric mixer, cream butter and oil. Add sugar and beat until creamy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Sift together the flour, baking soda and buttermilk powder. Add the flour mixture, 1/3 at a time, alternating with the water (for the buttermilk powder), 1/2 at a time, to creamed mixture. Stir to blend after each addition.
Stir in the vanilla and nuts. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Fold the whites into the batter. Pour into the prepared pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a tester inserted in the center comes out clean. I have started weighing my cake pans with the batter so the layers will come out even. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then turn out to cool completely.
Italian Cream Frosting:
This recipe is actually a double batch of the frosting because I wanted it really thick and creamy. If you are not as big a frosting fan as I am, cut this recipe in half.
16 oz cream cheese, room temperature
8 tbsp butter, room temperature
1 1/2 to 2 lbs powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans, toasted
Beat the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add the sugar slowly and mix well. Stir in the vanilla.
To assemble the cake:
Place one cake layer on a plate and line the edges with wax paper strips for easy clean-up of drips.
Spread a thick layer of frosting on the cake and sprinkle with half of the chopped pecans.
Place the other cake layer on top and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides of the cake. Pull out the wax paper strips. Sprinkle the rest of the pecans on the top.
Here is a photo of the one I made for C’s family Christmas dinner this year. I “fancied” it up a little!
Posted in Cooking | 15 Comments »
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know most of the posts are about cooking, photography, books or gardening. Those are my favorite hobbies and what I enjoy writing about. I have never been a person who journals; I had a a little girl’s diary with a little gold lock on it (remember those) when I was a child, but most of the posts were about going to school or playing or something along those lines. I usually work through my problems in my head instead of writing them down, except to-do lists… I love to-do lists!
Anyway, back to writing. I started this blog almost two years ago and when I look at those old posts I realize that my writing has improved. I am still a long way from a good writer, but it is getting better. I guess I had better clarify by what I mean by “good writer”. My grammar and punctuation are usually good, but sometimes the content itself can be a little, I don’t know, dry. I read in a book years ago, that someone’s prose was not “prose-y” enough, meaning the writing was not very interesting. I want to continue to improve and grow in that area, and that has led to this post.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a blog post published somewhere that referenced a Wired magazine article about blogging. The title is “Twitter, Flickr, Facebook Make Blogs Look So 2004”. Click here to read the article in full. The gist of the article is that blogging is dying because it has been taken over by big business. The article also contains a link to the Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs and when I read the list, I realized what the writer was talking about, but (and this is a really big BUT) maybe what this particular writer is interested in is not what the “small” bloggers are blogging about. I wonder if he stopped to think about that. Even the blogs that I read that I consider BIG blogs are not on this list.
Also, I think there is a substantial difference between a “blog” and a “website”. Some pages that I read regularly started as blogs, such as The Pioneer Woman or Southern Plate, but in my opinion these pages are now actual websites with multiple pages, links and ads. I think the writer of this article is missing the big picture a little bit…small blogs DO still exist, they just may be harder to find and I think it has a lot to do with the subject matter you are searching for.
When I have searched for cooking or gardening blogs, there are many to choose from that are written by people just like you and me. They use the blog as a creative outlet or an online archive.
Also mentioned is how Twitter has kind of taken over where blogging left off. I don’t know about that since I don’t use Twitter. I have nothing against it, I have just not gotten “into it”. It is hard to post a recipe with multiple photos in 140 characters or less! :)
What does this post have to do about cooking or photography? Not much, but when I read that article, it actually made me a little mad. I know my little site is not on this article author’s radar, but it is on a few people’s. If they enjoy it, then I have done my part. I know I enjoy other “little” blogs that are still personal and relevant at the same time!
Posted in My Thoughts |
Check out today’s spotlight at Eat At Home Cooks. It is one of my favorite ingredients…peanut butter! Yay!
Posted in Cooking |
Good morning, fearless readers! It is the start of another white and cold week here in South Central Kentucky, and we are expecting some more snow today and tomorrow and cold temperatures all week long. I know we shouldn’t wish time away, but I am missing some green grass and warm weather around here.
Recently, I have started planning springtime projects (at least in my mind) and I can’t wait to start on them! I see another raised garden bed and maybe a paver sidewalk or two as well in my future. Before the sidewalks can happen, C & I will have to extend a couple of gutter drain lines so that will probably be one of the first things we do.
Speaking of projects… since August, I have been trying to finish our upstairs. I decided since we had lived in our house for four years that it was high time to give those rooms some personality. When we built, we just used “builder’s beige” because it was easy at the time. Actually, it was Sherwin Williams “aesthetic white”, which I really loved since I used it in our living room, entry and kitchen. I decided the upstairs was the perfect place for some needed color punch. One bedroom is now purple, one is grass green, and the bathroom is a cucumber green. I promise before and after photos when I have the furniture in the rooms.
Speaking of furniture, we already had an antique cherry bedroom suite that I used in the green room, but I wanted a metal bed painted silver in the purple room. I don’t know if you have priced metal bed-frames or not, but they are not cheap!! Lucky for me, C’s mom had an old metal bed-frame in her attic and gave it to me. I have one great mother-in-law! I have just started refinishing it and hope to have it done in the next couple of weeks. Yay!!
As for food, I am trying to keep the sweet stuff to a minimum after the holidays, but it is so hard! I am still planning on one dessert a week, but I try to spread it around so I don’t indulge too much!
Leftover Pork BBQ
Hamburgers & fried potatoes
Pizza night
Salisbury steaks & roasted potatoes (I know I have made these 2 weeks in a row, but I love them!
Double Chocolate Snowball cookies (new recipe)
I am going to end on a cute note…here is Ellie snoozing on her new doggie bed!
Posted in Cooking, Menu Planning |
This is my absolute favorite holiday recipe! If I have this to eat, I don’t even have to have dessert. I got this recipe from a co-worker many years ago and it has been on the Easter/Thanksgiving/Christmas table ever since. I used to make it every time, but after C & I got married and I had other dinners to attend, my mom took over this recipe.
I took it back over, but I wish she was still here to make it for me. She discovered a great little trick to it as well. Neither of us liked to use the canned sweet potatoes because the fresh cooked is so much better. We boiled them for a while, but the casserole would always turn out runny. Mom discovered that by baking the sweet potatoes there was a lot less moisture and the casserole sets up much better.
3 cups baked and mashed sweet potatoes
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup additional butter, softened
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans, toasted
1-2 cups mini marshmallows
I baked 5 small to medium sweet potatoes at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. Just remember to pierce the skin to let the steam out. Mash the baked potatoes for this recipe.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9×13” baking dish and set aside. Combine the potatoes, sugar, eggs, milk, salt, vanilla and 1/2 cup of softened butter. Pour into the baking dish.
Mix the remaining butter with the brown sugar. Add the nuts and marshmallows and sprinkle the mixture over the sweet potatoes. Bake for 30 minutes.
Come join the fun at the My Baking Addiction and GoodLife Eats Holiday Recipe Swap sponsored by Kerrygold
Posted in Cooking | 10 Comments »
It is a new year and a new spotlight at Eat At Home Cooks! This week’s focus ingredient is broth.
Posted in Cooking |
I want to thank all of my readers for a successful blog in 2010 and I hope to continue to grow!
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,100 times in 2010. That’s about 10 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 138 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 253 posts.
The busiest day of the year was November 16th with 161 views. The most popular post that day was Cookies & Creme Cake.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were eatathomecooks.com, mybakingaddiction.com, goodlifeeats.com, southernplate.com, and thepioneerwoman.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for easy caramel cake, quick and easy caramel cake, velveeta cheese dip, hot cheese dip, and easy carmel cake.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
1
Cookies & Creme Cake July 2010
3 comments
2
Quick-And-Easy Caramel Cake October 2009
1 comment
3
Hot Cheese Dip November 2009
1 comment
4
Mississippi Mud Cake April 2010
5
Chocolate Cake with Cocoa Fudge Frosting August 2010
Posted in Uncategorized |
Picture Perfect Cooking 