A pot of gold

Happy Birthday to my baby boy! I can't believe you are already 8 years old; it's obvious that the age-freezing potion I spiked your cake with last year didn't work. You are a ray of sunshine in the life of everyone you meet. The Lord certainly blessed all of us with your birth.

To go along with my blond-haired boy's heart of gold I made him rainbow cupcakes to take to school.

What's that? You have a child with a heart of gold as well? Well, let me share the love and show you how to spend 3 hours in the kitchen making them rainbow cupcakes too!

Ingredients:
2 boxes white cake mix
Items needed to make cake (eggs, water and oil)

I made the cake mixes according to the box but of course, the rebel bit of blood running through my veins means I had to change it a bit. I cut the water down from 2 cups to 1 1/2 cups and used 1/2 cup of vanilla coffee creamer and I also added a bit of vanilla extract just to make it extra yummy.

Mix it up good and then let it sit for a few minutes while you get your mixing bags ready.

Divide the cake mix among ziploc bags. I used five colors, technically not a scientific ROYGBIV rainbow but I was getting tired. Little did I know, I was only beginning.

I mixed the color into the bags and then zipped them closed to mix.

Cut the corner of the bags to fill the muffin cups; I put just a thick enough layer to cover the previous color.

Bake according to the box temperature and time.

Frost with your desired frosting and sprinkles, if you'd like.
To make this frosting I mixed 3 sticks of butter, a splash or three of milk, two dollops of cream cheese, some vanilla and enough powdered sugar to make it all stick together. It is very tasty!

Mother Earth

I love Earth Day; and just to celebrate Mother Earth, I made cupcakes.


OK, so I was really making cupcakes for Matthew's birthday treat at school (which I will show you tomorrow) and with leftover cake batter I made these cupcakes. I'm so tickled with them that I'm thinking about making a whole batch of these next year and send them to school with the kids.

Easter Cake

I had planned on making this cake with the kids this weekend but they were downstairs playing so nicely that I decided to spend some therapy time in the kitchen baking; just me and my Kitchen Aid. There is one thing that I have learned beyond "never wake a sleeping baby" and that is never ask questions when all three kids are playing nicely.

J and I have done Weight Watchers for three months without any baked goods in the house so I thought we'd splurge this weekend...sort of. I took this recipe out of Family Circle magazine and tweaked it a bit. OK, after looking at the recipe and picture I guess I kind of took this cake as the inspiration and pretty much changed every part of it.

Original:
http://www.parents.com/recipe/layer-cakes/oreos-n-cream-cake/

Now my cake with changes made to be a bit more friendly to those of us who need to fit into the majority of the clothes hanging in the closet.

Cake:
1-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, lite margarine sticks, softened
1-1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1-1/4 cups buttermilk skim milk with 1 1/4 tbsp. lemon juice to make buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 2 8” circle pans.
Mix dry ingredients (first 5). Beat butter sugar and vanilla for 3 minutes, add eggs 1 at a time. Slowly beat flour into sugar mixture, alternating with buttermilk. (Begin and end with flour mixture.) Divide into two pans and bake 34 minutes. Cool 10 minutes and turn cakes out.
Bakers Note: If I had regular margarine sticks I would have used those. Due to my longing desire to fit into the clothes in my closet I only stock lite margarine sticks in the fridge. The batter gets pretty runny after adding the eggs when using the lite margarine but the cakes appear to have baked fine. Also, it took a bit of extra flour to make a cake batter consistency so either plan on using a bit more flour or a bit less buttermilk. Consider your kitchen a mad science lab!

Filling: (original filling completely scrapped)
1 container fat free Cool Whip
2 tbsp. cocoa powder
2 tbsp. sugar

Divide each cake layer in half.
Mix all ingredients until smooth and then spread 1/3 of mixture between the cake layers.

Frosting: (original filling completely scrapped)
1 container fat free cool whip
3 cups crushed Oreos

Spread cool whip over cake. Place crushed oreos on sides of cake.

The original cake is 13 points per piece (16 servings). My diet twist is 5 points per piece (16 servings).
I can say that the cake was completely gone in two days, so I guess it was edible even with the diet twist.