It's tradition...

There are a few things we have for dinner at Easter I think would be a crime to leave off the menu. Dishes that have been an Easter staple in my family since probably before I was born.
Sour Potatoes
Country Ham stuffed with kale
Strawberry Pretzel Salad
My grams' Pudding Dessert
Honey Baked Ham
There's more to name I'm sure but these have always made their way to my plate. Besides the pudding dessert I haven't really picked a favorite dessert. I'm hoping to change that this year.
One dessert that finds it's way into many southern homes, and mine this year, is Hummingbird Cake. I had never heard of this cake until I read The Girl Who Chased The Moon by Sarah Addison Allen. It wasn't really descriptive but I decided to investigate. Everything I read made my mouth water. So I bookmarked some recipes. Something new to try in my expedition into extravagant confections.

One of my new favorite blogs is written by Rebecca Crump, Ezra Pound Cake. I used the recipe she posted. She adapted it from Mrs. L.H. Wiggins. It was printed in "Southern Living" in 1978. I made 2 minor changes.

Hummingbird Cake

3 cups all purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
8 oz. can crushed pineapple, undrained
3 ripe bananas, mashed
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour your cake pans.
In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, cinnamon, & nutmeg. Add eggs, oil, and vanilla and mix until dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in pineapple, bananas, and pecans.
Spoon batter into cake pans. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove from pans and cool immediately. Once the cakes are completely cooled frost with cream cheese icing (recipe below).

I made a two layer 6" cake and 1 dozen cupcakes with this recipe. Mouthwatering delicious. They call it Hummingbird cake because it's sweetness is likened to the nectar hummingbirds feed on. And it's spicy from the cinnamon and nutmeg. Super moist. I do believe it will make its way onto the family table again.

Aren't they the cutest!!!

Cream Cheese Frosting


1/2 cup room temperature butter
8 oz. package room temperature cream cheese
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 - 4 tbsp. milk
2 pounds confectioners sugar

Cream butter, cream cheese, and vanilla until smooth and creamy. Add the sugar 1/2 cup at a time, adding milk as needed to get a smooth spreadable consistency.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of Rum "Cake"?

Today decided it wanted to be sunny! So I decided to bake a cake. And yes, as you might have guessed, a rum cake. Now I know I'm not a cake person, despite being really cake obsessed lately, but rum cake is one of my all time favorite desserts. I just don't ever make it. I can eat the whole cake. Not only would I gain about 20 pounds probably, I'd also be pretty sloshed. It's called a rum cake for a reason.

Here's what you need:
1 box yellow cake mix
1 1 oz. box sugar free, fat free instant vanilla pudding mix
4 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup cold milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup dark rum

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Combine all the ingredients into a bowl and beat for 2 minutes. Pour into buttered and floured bundt pan and bake for 1 hour. Let cool in the pan then invert onto a cake plate. Take a toothpick and poke holes all over it.

For the glaze:

1 stick of butter

1/4 cup water

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup dark rum

Melt the butter in a sauce pan over medium heat. Add the water and the sugar. Bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and stir in the rum. Be careful as it may steam. 

Pour over the cake! 

It will soak into all the little holes you poke and just seep all up into that cake! I go ahead and par-slice mine so all the slices can drink it up. It is so moist. And the best thing about rum cake, they're even better the next day! So be sure to save a slice for every day of the week. 

Kickin Chickin w/ Mango Salsa

It is not going to be a sunny week. It's been raining all day and the skies are grey grey grey! I need sunshine to survive. I don't like this Edward Cullen approved climate. So I'm transporting myself out of my little kitchen nook and onto an island. A sunny island, with a warm breezy, palm trees, soft sand, and rolling waves. Well, it's still raining outside but hey dinner is good enough for me! And I don't think I've posted dinner in a while.
So tonight I tried Jerk chicken. I also going to the easy way out and used a store bought marinade. I didn't have time today to mix and measure. It was definitely what I needed to help get me through this rainy evening.

Just marinate according to the directions on the bottle.
I used a split chicken breast. I covered mine with the marinade for 30 minutes. Then I cooked it at 375 degrees for about 45 minutes. Pretty easy right?

Mango Salsa? Yes please! Easy? Of course!
All you have to do is slice and dice:
3 roma tomatoes
1/2 small red onion
1 mango (peeled)
1 jalapeno (ribs and seeds removed if you don't like spicy)
1 clove of garlic
juice of 1/2 of a lime
1 tbsp honey
pinch of salt and pepper

Dice up the top 5 yummies and mince up the garlic. Toss in a bowl with the lime juice and honey. Season to taste with S & P.

Cook the rice according to package directions. When it's finished, fluff it up and add the juice of 1 1/2 limes. Add a generous sprinkle of salt and cilantro and stir it up to mix.

I'm Coco For Coconut!

 Remember my sleepless night? About a week ago? Well I took care of that. I finally made my coconut cake!  I covered it in creamy vanilla buttercream and sweet, chewy coconut flakes. I went to Hobby Lobby just for this cake and got some new 6 inch cake pans, a turntable, and an icing spatula. The cake pans are just the cutest! So I came right home after I got them and got my bake on. I was so excited to finally make my cake! So much, I got a little carried away and forgot I was making white cake... 3 egg yolks later and I was off to the store for another set of ingredients. Oops! Trial and error I thought. How many times has this happened to me? I've lost count. 

Here's what I had to have:

1 box white cake mix
3 egg whites
1/2 cup of vegetable oil
1 1/4 cup of light coconut milk
1 bag sweetened flaked coconut
1 1/4 sticks of butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 pound powered sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup milk

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. In a large mixing bowl mix the first 4 ingredients according to package directions. The coconut milk is replacing the water. Take the 1/4 stick of butter and coat each cake pan then dust with flour. You could use cooking spray as well. Fill each cake pan half way and bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of each cake comes out clean.
Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. Turn out onto a cooling rack to cool completely. Once cooled level off the top and prepare to get your frost on!

To make the frosting:
In a mixing bowl cream the stick of butter with the vanilla. Gradually add the powdered sugar, adding the milk gradually. You might not need all the milk. You want the icing to be thick but creamy and smooth so it's easy to spread. If you have left over coconut milk feel free to use that instead of dairy. It's a nice alternative.


Set your first layer of cake on your turntable or whatever you're going to put it on. Slather on a big helping of buttercream. Spread it all around and cover it coconut. Then put your second layer on top of that. Add another giant dollop of buttercream and cover that cake, working from the top, going down the sides. You don't have to worry about making it really pretty. Once the cake is blanketed in rich decadence start piling on the coconut! Just start lightly pressing handfuls into the sides and top of the cake. Finally, cut that cake and eat it! It's like being transported to a tropical island. Yummy!!!

Like the flowers? They're pineapple!!!!!! Super easy to make too! Simply peel a pineapple and thinly slice it. Get your fave flower cookie cutter and cut out some flowers. Make sure you get the core in there, it's an essential part to the flower. And, it's really cool looking. 

Preheat your over to 225 degrees. Place pineapple flowers on a cookie sheet (I lined mine with a silicon pad) and bake for 1 - 1.5 hours. Turn the pineapple over and bake for about another hour. When they're done they will look like flowers! Pretty, sweet and tangy little flowers. Mine looked like this:

They naturally develop the shape and texture so you don't have to worry about shaping them. And the core beads up to look like the center of a flower! So neat. 

Happy birthday!

The other day I was having dinner with my boyfriend and 2 of our friends. One of which had a birthday yesterday. We got on the subject of cake and he said he had an idea for a birthday cake he'd like to have. He shared and I got to brainstorming on how to make this cake come to life. I came up with what I thought was a pretty good idea. Little did I know it was going to take me 2 days and a lot of icing. It came out better than I could have imagined. He loved it too! And to pat myself on the back, everyone else was equally impressed!
I think now that I have gotten through it next time won't be so time consuming. Maybe...
I got a good lesson on patience as I mixed my batter and put each cake in the oven to magically puff up in to moist, chocolaty, deliciousness. Four cakes, yes 4, and six cupcakes later I was curled up under my covers sleeping like a log. My cakes were sleeping on the kitchen counter, cooling and preparing themselves for a nice slathering of icing.

This is similar to my chocolate reese cup cupcakes but on a whole other level and, if I may say, ten times better!

Here is what you'll need:

2 - 8 inch cake pans - buttered and floured
2 - 6 inch cake pans - buttered and floured
Muffin pan with cupcake liners. The left over batter makes about 5 - 6 cupcakes.
2 boxes of devil's food cake mix
1 1/2 bag miniature reese cups
1 bag reese pieces candies
1/2 batch chocolate butter cream icing
2 batches peanut butter cream

Make the cakes in separate batches. One box will make the 8 inch cakes. The other box will make the 6 inch cakes and the 6 cupcakes. Once you have the cake batter in the cake pans add some reese cups (whole). Each 8 inch cake will have about 9 reese cups, the 6 inch cakes will have 7. Add 1 reese cup to each cupcake. Bake according to the box directions. Let cool in the pans for about 10 minutes but turn out onto a cooling rack. Let cool completely before icing.

To assemble:
Take each cake one at a time and make them level by slicing off the top, rounded part of the cake. A serrated knife works best in my opinion. Just slice across the top of the cake, almost like if you were slicing a bagel in two.

After you level each cake you can start filling and stacking them. Don't ice the top layer just yet though.

After you get all the layers filled with the peanut butter cream cover the cake with the chocolate butter cream. This is the crumb coat. It's a thin layer of frosting that captures all the crumbs. When you put on the peanut butter cream later you won't have any crumbs in your frosting. And it adds a little extra something for the depth of flavor. 

Once you've applied the crumb coat, stick the whole thing in the fridge. You want the crumb coat to harden a bit so the peanut butter cream is a cinch to put on. 

Moving on! Now that the crumb coat is nicely chilled let's get our icing on! Lots of peanut butter icing is needed. I made extra so I could go the decorating distance. And well they do say presentation is everything...

Cover the whole cake in peanut butter cream. I love my cake turn table for this job. It really comes in handy. Then just decorate it however you want! I used extra frosting and crushed up reese cups and reese pieces. It looked like this:

YUMMY!!!!!! I normally don't eat cake, I don't prefer it as a dessert. But this cake was so moist. 

He was pretty excited! I mean who wouldn't want a giant reese cup cake for their birthday? Crazy people!

So we had to cut right into it. You won't regret these calories!