What Will YOU Achieve in the Coming Year?

"If we write our dreams and goals down, we dramatically increase our odds of realization. If we share them with others, they become potent and alive."

~ Kristin Armstrong 

What are your plans for 2014? What do you hope to accomplish? Does writing it down and sharing with others really help you achieve your goals?

Last year at this time, I wrote down and shared three things:

• I started Project DO to help me declutter and organize
• I committed to being prepared for Christmas (and birthdays) well ahead of time
• I jumped onto the Cake-a-Week bandwagon

 

Should have all been doable, right? I mean, really...won't I be decluttering and organizing during my regular cleaning? And wouldn't it be pretty easy to be prepared for Christmas way ahead of time if I just focused a little? And making a cake each week would be fun!

 

Well...

After a full year of Project DO and my formalized Christmas Prep, I've realized a few things. Firstly, I'm no good at documentation. I'm good at doing but fall down on the job when it comes to taking photos and posting about my progress. At first it's fun, as evidenced by the early posts. But then the novelty of talking about it wears off and I just quietly go about my business.

So did I accomplish my goals? Pretty much! I was mostly prepared for Christmas by Halloween and this is the lowest stress year I can remember. I also made some good progress on getting rid of stuff and neatening up what's left. But both these are ongoing projects. Christmas comes every year so I'll be prepping throughout the year every year. And there will never be an end to decluttering and organizing! But I'm not going to press myself to write about the minutiae. Who wants to read all the nitty gritty details anyway? I will try to do periodic updates, however, and will be sure to share if I find something especially cool.

As for making a cake a week - what insanity was that? We're a bunch of middle-aged folk who don't need the extra calories! But it was sure fun while it lasted.

As for the coming year, I'm giving myself until the end of January to come up with my 2014 goals.

Easy and Delicious Blackberry Cobbler

Homemade blackberry cobbler - yum!

August is here and we've got blackberries ripening all around. We're not at the height of the season yet but it's getting close!

If you've got blackberries and want to make an easy dessert, look no further. I've used this recipe for over 40 years and it's always a hit. Giving credit where credit is due - thanks, Mom!

Ingredients:

• 2 c blackberries
• ¼ c butter
• ½ c sugar
• 1 c flour
• 2 t baking powder
• ¼ t salt
• ½ c milk
• ½ c sugar (yes, another ½ c!)
• 1 c berry juice (crush some berries and add water to make a full cup, if necessary)

Directions:

1. Cream butter and ½ c sugar.
2. Mix flour, baking powder and salt together and add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. Stir until smooth to form a thick batter.
3. Spread batter in greased 8"x8" pan and top with berries.
4. Sprinkle ½ c sugar over the berries and pour juice over top (yes, really - pour it over the top!).
5. Bake 45-50 minutes at 375 degrees F.

I don't even have to ask for a rating on this one - I know from previous experience that it's a favorite and rates just below cherry pie, so we'll say 12/10 served plain and 14/10 if you add a scoop of vanilla ice cream. How's that for creative ratings?

Easy Pumpkin Bread

With pumpkins on the vine, I thought it might be a good idea to do something with some of last year’s pumpkin. I usually make muffins but my favorite recipe only calls for ¾ cup and I had 2½! So I improvised and came up with two loaves of delicious pumpkin bread. The following recipe is my modification on several and the next time I make it, I’m going to modify it even more and cut the sugar down to 1 cup. If you have home-pureed pumpkin, use the recipe as is. If you’re using the canned stuff (plain pumpkin, NOT pie filling) add ⅔ cup water with the wet ingredients.

Ingredients:

• 3¼ c flour
• ½ t baking powder
• 2 t baking soda
• 1 ½ t salt
• ½ t nutmeg (optional but yummy!)
• 1 t pumpkin pie spice
• 2 c sugar (I’m cutting the sugar in half next time)
• 4 large eggs. beaten
• ½ c oil
• 2½ c home-pureed pumpkin
• 1 c chopped walnuts (optional but put them in, ok?)

Directions:

1. Mix the dry ingredients (sugar too!) together with a wire whisk.
2. Stir in the wet ingredients with a wooden spoon.
3. Stir in the walnuts.
4. Pour the batter into 2 greased loaf pans.
5. Bake 50-60 minutes at 350 degrees F.

As usual, this was a big hit and scores right up there with banana bread at 8/10. Enjoy!

Super Simple Banana Nut Bread

Banana nut bread - yum!

At this rate, I'll be lucky to post a cake a month! Well, my intentions were good but life got in the way. And I tanked on a few pounds (not from eating cake, fyi) so didn't feel like having regular extra desserts. But all excuses aside, we ended up with some overripe bananas, so...

Want a super simple banana nut bread recipe? Well, look no further! Try this delicious treat the next time you have a few overripe bananas. And if you don’t have nuts, or just don’t like them, go ahead and leave them out.

Ingredients:

• 3 or 4 ripe bananas, mashed
• ⅓ c melted butter
• ¾ c sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 t vanilla
• 1 t baking soda
• pinch of salt
• 1½ c flour
• ½ c walnuts, chopped

Directions:

1. Mix together mashed bananas and melted butter and then stir in sugar, egg and vanilla.
2. Stir baking soda and salt into flour and then stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients.
3. Fold nuts into batter and spread in a greased loaf pan.
4. Bake 50-60 minutes at 350 degrees F.

This is a favorite at our house and rates about 8 out of 10. (Not sure if that’s because it’s so darn good or if it’s maybe just that much better than eating the overripe bananas!)

Batman Cake!

This is not the normal cake-a-week post but we recently had a 5th birthday party for my favorite little man and I couldn't resist sharing. This cake is just too cool!

To make your own Batman cake, you'll need a special pan. It seems this pan is out-of-print, so to speak, so do a web search and get it from eBay or somewhere. If you need instructions for using the pan and decorating the cake, Wilton has them posted online.

Any of you who have done cake decorating already know how nasty black frosting tastes. Not to worry - Wilton to the rescue! You can buy black ready-to-eat in a tube (got mine at WalMart). Don't know how Wilton did it but it really does taste ok. And if you're not in the mood to make any of your own icing, you can buy it all pre-made. And they have screw on decorator tips that fit right on the tubes! How clever are they? Thanks Wilton!

Homemade Cherry Pie

Homemade cherry pie from homegrown pie cherries!

Ok, I know this isn't a cake. And it wasn't my week to make the cake-of-the-week either. But it was my hubby's birthday and I suspect the main reason he married me is because I'm a pie cherry tree heiress and have been picking pie cherries and making cherry pies since I was a teen. Could you deduce that cherry pie is his favorite?

So what's the deal with pie cherries anyway? Can't you just save a ton of work and used canned filling? Well, yes, I suppose YOU could. But not me! I love tart pie cherries and nothing else will do for cherry pie. The stuff in the can may be convenient but...

Cherry pie making secret weapon

Anyway, each year we pick, pit and freeze pie cherries on cookie sheets and then put them in zip top bags. When it comes time to make a pie, I have a secret weapon I'd like to share. It's my blow dryer. I pour the frozen cherries into a big colander inside a big bowl and 'toss' them with a wooden spoon while thawing them with my blow dryer turned on high. That way, I get the cherries thawed and ready to cook into filling without them turning brown. And I also get the juice needed for future pies drained out of the colander into the bowl, ready to freeze in ice cube trays. How clever am I?

Tried and true cherry pie recipe

Even though it's not a cake and it's not my week, I'll share my Cherry Pie recipe. (Think of it as a bonus!)

Ingredients

·         1½ c sugar

·         ¼ t salt

·         ¼ c cherry juice

·         4 c pie cherries

·         1T butter

·         ¼ c corn starch

·         ¼ cup cherry juice (yes, a second ¼ cup)

Directions

1.      Combine sugar, salt and ¼ cup cherry juice and cook to a rolling boil.

2.      Add cherries and butter. Bring back to a boil (this may take a while) and cook 2 minutes.

3.      Stir together corn starch and ¼ cup cherry juice to make a smooth paste and add to boiling cherry mixture. Cook until thick, stirring constantly (this may happen almost immediately.

4.      Let cool while you make the pie crust.

5.      Bake 30 minutes at 425 degrees F.

As for our rating, I don't even have to do a poll. I can tell you with absolute certainty that this delicious homemade cherry pie rates right around 15 on a scale of 1-10. Seriously - 15

Pear Breakfast Cake

Pear Breakfast Cake

Am I on a cake-for-breakfast roll or what? And I don’t even eat sweet stuff for breakfast. But we had some sliced pears in the freezer and I found a recipe for Pear Walnut Ginger Bread in the most excellent Fresh Fruit Quick Breads by Joyce Middleton so…

As with the Cinnamon Raisin Coffee Cake, I used the recipe as inspiration only. In fact, I really changed this one! For starters, I didn’t include ginger… or walnuts… It was a big hit, though, so my modifications must have worked.

Ingredients:

• 1½ c flour
• ½ t baking soda
• ½ t salt
• ½ t cinnamon
• ¼ t allspice
• ¼ c oil (but you can use applesauce, if you want)
• 1 egg, slightly beaten
• ½ t vanilla
• ¾ c pear juice
• 1½ c sliced pears

 

Directions:

1. Combine the dry ingredients, preferably with a whisk but a fork will work, too.
2. Combine the wet ingredients and stir into the dry ingredients just until mixed.
3. Stir the pears slices into the batter and pour into a greased loaf pan.
4. Bake 50-60 minutes at 350 degrees F.

Beings I only used half the pears I thawed out, I guess the guys will be getting this again real soon. But I doubt I’ll hear any complaints. And as with most of my cake-a-week efforts thus far, this one rated a 7.5, the difference being that it was a solid 7.5 – no averaging numbers to get the rating this time!

Cinnamon-Raisin Coffee Cake

Delicious cinnamon-raisin coffee cake - yum!

The idea for this cake came from Coffee Cakes - Pound Cakes and Dessert Cakes by June Kessler (not sure why the title at Amazon doesn't match the book cover) but my modifications make it very different, I’m sure.

First off, the directions in the book clearly say to mix flour into the topping but there is no flour listed in the topping ingredients, so I left it out. Afterward, I realized that it should have been there to make the topping crumbly but my adaptation got an average score of 8.75 from my two raters so I think I may have improved it.

My other changes include reducing the sugar and cinnamon, substituting baking soda and cream of tartar for baking powder (we’re out), and using sugared raisins I harvested from raisin bran cereal (hence the sugar reduction). Then I opted to spread all the batter into the pan and put the topping on top. (Hmm. Isn’t that where topping is supposed to go?) The original recipe has you layer the topping with the batter but that was just too convoluted for me!

Ingredients:

·         1½ cups all-purpose flour

·         1½ t baking soda

·         1½ t cream of tartar

·         ½ t salt

·         ½ c sugar

·         ¼ c shortening

·         1 large egg, lightly beaten (I actually used 2 T powdered egg and added 4 T more milk to compensate)

·         ½ c milk

·         1 t vanilla extract

·         ½ c packed brown sugar

·         1 T ground cinnamon

·         ½ c raisins

·         2 T butter, melted  

Directions:

1.       Combine flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt and sugar.

2.       Cut in shortening with a pastry blender until blended.

3.       Combine egg, milk and vanilla and add to flour mixture. Stir until just blended and set aside.

4.       Stir brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins into melted butter.

5.       Spread batter in greased 9-inch round pan. Dot top with raisin mixture and slightly swirl into batter with a knife.

6.       Bake 25 minutes at 375 degrees F.

As with the other early morning cake, I didn’t take part in rating. I did have a piece after it was completely cool, however, and all I can say is WOW! Making syrup instead of a crumble for the topping really worked well. The only way I think this one could be improved is if I doubled the topping portion! Maybe next time…

Date Walnut Breakfast Cake

It’s not really my week to make a cake but I’m the only one around so here goes! We’re still low on eggs and I’ve discovered we’re about out of baking powder, as well, so I was looking for ideas that used little or none of each. Also, I wanted to make more of a coffee cake instead of dessert cake beings the guys need something for breakfast.

As mentioned in my Watkins Economy Spice Cake post, we’ve got a ton (ok, that’s a wee bit of an exaggeration) of chopped dates in the freezer. So I was thrilled when I found the Date Walnut Bread recipe in Fresh Fruit Quick Breads by Joyce Middleton. I changed it up some, of course (including the name), but what else is new?

Ingredients:

·         1½ c chopped pitted dates

·         ½ c white sugar (recipe called for 1½ cups but I didn’t figure we needed the extra sweet in a breakfast bread full of chopped dates!)

·         1 teaspoon salt

·         2 tablespoons butter (I didn’t measure – just guesstimated)

·         1½ c boiling water

·         1 egg, lightly beaten

·         2¾ c all-purpose flour

·         1 t baking soda

·         1 t cream of tartar (have plenty of this – we use if for poison oak – true story – it works!)

·         1½ t vanilla extract

·         ½ c chopped walnuts (optional – recipe called for a full cup but I’m conserving walnuts, too)

 Directions:

1.       Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x5 inch loaf pan.

2.       Put the dates, sugar, salt and butter into a bowl. Pour in the boiling water and stir. Set aside until cool and then stir in the egg and vanilla.

3.       Stir the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Pour in the wet ingredients and stir together until thoroughly combined. Mix in the walnuts. (Note: The batter was pretty darn thick.)

4.       Pour batter into greased pan and bake for 60-70 minutes.

5.       Cool for 10 minutes and remove from the pan.

Our Cake-a-Week rating

Do you suppose all my cake-a-week recipes are going to rate about the same? This one came in at 7.5, which is darn close to the rating for the first two. Hmm. Well, only having two raters this time may have skewed the results - one gave it a 9 and the other only 6. Now that I think about it, that's basically been the spread between these two guys each time.

I declined to rate this one because I'm not a morning cake person and didn't want to further skew the results. I did try a bite and tend to lean more toward the 6 rating. Don't get me wrong - it's good. But it's not dessert, especially beings I cut the sugar to one-third. It IS a great alternative to pastry-type breakfast fare, however, and very easy to make.

If you'd like a variety of quick bread recipes, I recommend Joyce Middleton's Fresh Fruit Quick Breads. I know there are several more recipes I'm going to try!

Watkins Economy Spice Cake

After my Eggless Chocolate Cake post, I got the following recipe by email (thanks, Marjie!) that doesn’t call for eggs, butter or milk! I did a little research and found out it’s also called a Depression cake because (are you ready for this?) it dates back to the Depression. But it’s actually even older than that! One site said it dates back to the Civil War.

So what’s in the eggless, butterless, milkless cake? Well, nothing unusual and you probably have everything you need to make it right now. If  not, go ahead and make substitutions – I did!

Ingredients (all the spices are supposed to be Watkins products, of course):

·         1 c brown sugar

·         1 c water

·         1 c raisins (or more)

·         ⅓ c lard

·         ¼ t nutmeg

·         1 t cinnamon

·         ⅛ t cloves

·         ¼ t ginger

·         ¼ t allspice

·         ½ t salt

·         1½ t baking powder

·         1½ c flour

·         1½ t vanilla

Directions:

1.     Boil sugar, water, raisins and lard together about 3 minutes, until sugar is dissolved. Put aside until cold.

2.    Sift dry ingredients and add to above mixture (I just stirred them up good with a fork).

3.    Add vanilla.

4.    Bake in moderate oven (350 degrees worked for me) in a small square tin (I used a greased 7x9 inch).

A couple of substitutions

Beings we have a bunch of chopped dates and no raisins at the moment, I used them instead, and I also used Crisco instead of lard. Otherwise, I pretty much followed the recipe. Well, I didn’t actually measure the shortening but I’m sure I was close! I also didn’t actually set aside the liquid until it was cold (or even cool, for that matter), but it wasn’t still hot…

But is it any good?

I think this cake is delicious and gave it an 8.5! But thanks to getting just 6 from two raters (what’s wrong with them, anyway?), it only comes in at a 7. It’s incredibly moist and tastes like gingerbread cookies. To top it off, it’s EASY to make and requires just simple ingredients. So go make yourself one, ok?

And be sure to check out the other recipe links on the Cake-a-Week page.

Eggless Chocolate Cake

Well, it’s my turn to make the cake this week and we’re low on eggs. Yes, we have eggs. In fact, we have a few dozen because the guys snow-shoed some in a couple of days ago. (They didn’t realize they’d be on foot when they bought the eggs but that’s another story.) Before that, we were down to just five. Beings I don’t know how much longer we’re going to have all this beautiful snow making it hard for us to get supplies in, I decided to make an eggless cake. So here goes…

Not pretty but oh so delicious! Our rating - 7.5 out of 10.

Ingredients:

·         1½ c flour

·         3 T cocoa

·         1 c sugar

·         1 t baking soda

·         ½ t salt

·         1 c water

·         ¼ c oil

·         1 t vanilla

·         1 T apple cider vinegar (plain will work, as well)

Directions:

1.       Mix the dry ingredients together until completely combined.

2.       Mix the wet ingredients together and then stir into the dry ingredients until smooth.

3.       Pour batter into a greased and floured 8” square baking pan.

4.       Bake 35 minutes at 350 degrees.

Ok, can we have cake without frosting? I don’t think so – at least not today. Not wanting to make buttercream icing and noticing the multiple jars of marshmallow creme in the pantry, I decided to experiment a little bit. Here’s what I came up with:

Chocolate Marshmallow Creme Frosting

Ingredients:

·         1 jar marshmallow creme (7 oz)

·         2 T butter, softened

·         2 t cocoa

·         ¼ c powdered sugar

Directions:

1.       Mix the ingredients until smooth (try not to burn up your mixer!).

2.       Pour over center of cake and spread toward the edges so it can flow over the sides.

Warning! This frosting is extremely sticky – yummy but sticky. I wouldn’t recommend using it on cupcakes or if you have small children and don’t want it all over the place.

Enjoy!

Oh! And check out the Cake-a-Week page for links to the rest of this year's recipes.