Saturday was S's brother's birthday, and the kids spent the morning creating a rather creative birthday card that looked like a cake! Two large circles for the top and bottom of the cake, a long strip and sticks to give the cake depth and lots of pompoms for the decoration.
They then hopped off for a swim. I was straightening the house up and working on lunch with the TV at the background, not paying too much attention to what was on. When the kids troops back in, they start watching the Barefoot Contessa. Now that's good TV -- they landed up learning about rosemary, thyme, kitchen gardens and such. In addition, they got pretty caught up in the delicious images of her Carrot and Pineapple Cake, and decided that's another thing they wanted to make for their uncle (I suspect there a selfish agenda in there somewhere too!) I gave in after some cajoling, and went off to grab the ingredients. The end result of about an hour of messy collaboration between the three of us is in the picture above. It was delicious - kudos to D&K for their hard work and patience! I have to admit, I replaced the 1 1/3 cup of vegetable oil with a cup of butter and an extra egg (somehow, I can't ever bring myself to use oil in cakes.) NOT diet food, I must say, especially once you factor in the frosting. In the case of both the egg and the frosting, I cut down the sugar as well, and it didn't hurt the cake one bit (one cup of sugar instead of two for the cake and a half pound of confectioner's sugar instead of one for the frosting.) Also, I used canned pineapples which worked out well.
They then hopped off for a swim. I was straightening the house up and working on lunch with the TV at the background, not paying too much attention to what was on. When the kids troops back in, they start watching the Barefoot Contessa. Now that's good TV -- they landed up learning about rosemary, thyme, kitchen gardens and such. In addition, they got pretty caught up in the delicious images of her Carrot and Pineapple Cake, and decided that's another thing they wanted to make for their uncle (I suspect there a selfish agenda in there somewhere too!) I gave in after some cajoling, and went off to grab the ingredients. The end result of about an hour of messy collaboration between the three of us is in the picture above. It was delicious - kudos to D&K for their hard work and patience! I have to admit, I replaced the 1 1/3 cup of vegetable oil with a cup of butter and an extra egg (somehow, I can't ever bring myself to use oil in cakes.) NOT diet food, I must say, especially once you factor in the frosting. In the case of both the egg and the frosting, I cut down the sugar as well, and it didn't hurt the cake one bit (one cup of sugar instead of two for the cake and a half pound of confectioner's sugar instead of one for the frosting.) Also, I used canned pineapples which worked out well.- I had a hard time explaining how vanilla extract is made. I got pretty close, but some sites that do a good job of explaining are Vanilla Company and Recipezaar
- Use aprons! D&K have some great ones as goddies from their friend Julian's party at apple seeds
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