Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

I found a reference to this cake in a comment left on a cooking site, someone covered this Lovely with lemon cream cheese frosting, WHY? Why would they do that??? I am not a fan of frosting anyway but to cover up this beautiful cake with it had to be a crime.
Anyway that is how my google search for Raspberry Buttermilk Cake recipes began.
I settled on this one from Gourmet, the directions were easy to follow, but the biggest reason- it had printable directions :)


Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

Ingred;
1c. flour
1/2t. baking soda
1/2t. baking powder
1/4t. salt
1/2 c. butter, softened
2/3c. sugar, plus extra to sprinkle on top
1/2t. vanilla
1 egg
1/2c. buttermilk
1c. fresh raspberries

Preheat oven to 400. I sprayed an 8" spring form pan with Pam.
Whisk together flour, powder, soda and salt.
In mixing bowl, beat together butter and sugar.
Beat in vanilla, than the egg.
Mix in half of the flour mixture, then mix in the buttermilk.
Scrape sides mix well, add in the remaining flour mixture.
Spread into cake pan and scatter the raspberries on top,
I then sprinkled the top with some turbinado sugar.
Bake fro 25-30 min. Let cool 10 min. before removing the side of the pan.
Cool completely.

Fairy Princess Bath Dust

I have been playing around making some fun things lately, and this was something I came up with when I needed a gift for my 7 year old niece. And of course I had to make 2 so that my girls could have one :)

Fairy Princess Bath Dust

The instructions for this are on my other Blog Krafting with Kids if any of you are interested in making some. The girls are so excited they are all arguing about who gets to take a bath first :) :) :)

Sausage Meatball stuffed 'Shrooms

At a wedding we went to last month one of the things that were served at the reception were some yummy mushroom caps topped with meatballs. I really wanted to try making some. I think the ones we had were more of a ground beef, sausage mixture but I only used sausage. Also once I had made these they didn't look quite like the picture in my head. So I am going to have to try again, I think I need to bake off the meatballs and then put them in the mushroom caps and heat them through. Even though they weren't quite what I had remembered these were really, really good.

Sausage meatball stuffed Mushrooms
Ingred;
1 pkg reg. mushrooms, the bigger the better
1/4 c. cream cheese, softened
1/2c. parmesan cheese
1T. parsley
1/2 lb ground sausage
1/2t. salt
1/2t. onion powder
1/4t. pepper

Remove the stems from the mushrooms and place top down in a 8x13 pan. In a small bowl mix together the sausage, parsley, parmesan cheese, & pepper. Make into small meatballs and set aside. In another small bowl mix together the cream cheese, salt and onion powder, put about 1/2t. full of this mixture into each of the mushroom caps and top that off with a meatball.
I baked these at 375, I didn't time them very well, it took 30-45 min. maybe. I just watched them and when the meatballs started to brown on top I took them out.

These were sooooooo good, this version will definitely be made again (in fact I am trying to come up with an excuse to make them this weekend). But I do want to try again to make something closer to what we had.
If any of you have had anything similar to this I would love to hear about it, and borrow your recipe! :) :) :)

And the Timeline continues.....

I finally had time to sit down and write out a Timeline post.
Willoughby challenged her followers to post their own Timelines,
what a fun idea that was. So a few others Blog friends posted theirs as well,
Muddy Runner, 5th Sister, Gracey, if I missed anyone hollar k?

2009, Sept.
We are in a new house, in a new town, in a new State. Mr. L is starting his first year of Grad school to be a Bio-Chemist. I have a 5th grader, 4th grader, 2nd grader and one enthusiastic preschooler. This year I celebrated my 11th Wedding Anniversary, and my Hubby's 30th Birthday. In a month I will be celebrating my own 30th Birthday. I am missing my Family, but we have all made some great friends here. I am trying to figure out what I am going to do next year with all my kiddos gone all day in school, so many options! It will be the first time in 11 years that I will have 8 hours a day all to myself. To be honest I am a little scared.

2004, Sept.
I'm about 9 months pregnant with my 4th and last child. We already know it's a girl, Mr. L and K. wanted to know as soon as they could tell whether it's a girl or boy. They are hoping for a boy, and are still holding out with hope that the many ultra sounds we have had were wrong. This has been a hard pregnancy, I have been put on bed rest for the next month. With three small children under the age of 6 that is really fun :) My oldest child Mr. K just started Kindergarten, he is such a sweet, shy little man. Mr. L is starting his first year in college, so we are new to the whole college family thing :)

1999, Sept.
We are a new little Family of 3, I have a sweet little 5 month old baby boy. Mr. L is working at a vinyl window frame manufacturing company. The pay isn't too great, so he is looking for something else. In a month I will find out that we are expecting child #2, apparently birth control isn't 100% effective. And our first 2 children will only be 14 months apart.

1994, Sept.
I am 14 years old, I am the middle child of 7. The 5 of us that are at home are being Homeschooled. I am totally, completely horse crazy. I have 2 of my own, a POA that I have had since I was 8 and a new Arabian gelding that I am in complete LOVE with.

1989,
I am 9 years old, I ride 1 hour both ways on the bus to go to a small town school. In my class there is 1 other girl beside me and 12 boys. Boys are so dumb. I love to read, anything I can get my hands on. The Tarzan series by Edgar Rice Burroughs are my current favorite reads. I received the BEST gift a girl could get for my birthday last year, a horse of my own! A beautiful POA, Pony of America- which is a larger breed of pony, think small horse, a mare. I am one lucky girl :)

That is the end of my Timeline, I vaguely remember my 4 and 5 year old years but not really enough to tell you too much, I do remember climbing onto the chicken house roof, with my Big brother, to pick and eat green apples :)

Now go check out the other Timelines, there are even futuristic ones!

Homemade Sugar and Salt Scrubs

Since I had the coconut oil I bought I decided to make some scrubs with it. If you have never used/seen coconut oil is has kind of the same look/consistency as shortening.

I wanted to make a sweeter scrub for a body scrub and also one to keep by the kitchen sink for my hands. So here we have our ingredients-

For the Salt Scrub I used-
Sea Salt
Coconut oil
an oil mixture of grapefruit, eucalyptus, peppermint & lavender.

For the Sugar Scrub-
turbinado or raw sugar
coconut oil
vanilla extract

To make this you need to fill you container about 3/4 of the way full with your sugar or salt. Melt the oil in a glass cup in the microwave, about 30 sec. a little less maybe. Add in your oils(5-10 drops) or extract(1t.) Stir it in. Slowly pour the oil over the salt/sugar and stir it in until you get the consistency that you like. Cover and enjoy! :)

The vanilla sugar one, oh boy this stuff smells good enough to eat :)

I put some of each of these in cute little glass containers that I bought at goodwill. And labeled them to give as a gift.

Since we moved here there is a lady from church that made an extremely kind and thoughtful gesture to my family. Long story short she arranged a big get together, spur of the moment, to introduce Mr. K to some other boys his age so he would feel more comfortable here- which he now does.
So I packaged these up with the body butter I made,

and a couple loaves of Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread.

To give to her as a Thank You. When someone does something like that to help your child it really touches your heart.

Homemade Beauty- Yummy Body Butter

I stumbled upon a really fun blog, she has great projects and a wonderful sense of humor- it's called- I want to Make That! One of the posts she does are called Make me Monday, where she makes a fun project and shows you how.
A week or 2 ago she tried out a recipe for Body Butter that didn't set up because she substituted an ingredient, you can read all about it here. It sounded so good that I really wanted to try it, so I picked up the ingredients for it. Here we are all lined up-

I went with a mixed oil of clove, birch, rosemary, cypress & marjoram, from my oil box.

I really liked the idea of a clove smelling butter. I placed the coconut oil and cocoa butter in a glass Pyrex measuring cup, and placed in the microwave for about 30 seconds then stirred together well.

Then I stirred in about 10 drops of the oil mixture, -You could use any oils you like I would just make sure that if they are NOT ones that are mellow (and that is not quite the word I wanted but the brain isn't thinkin real well) enough to put straight on your skin don't use more than 10 drops. If you use a milder (ahah! That's the one I wanted earlier!) oil like orange, lemon, tea tree, you can use more. Just add a few drops, stir and sniff, if it's not strong enough add a couple more- thats how I measure things around here :)
This did have a bit of a chocolate smell that seemed odd with the clove smell, but I didn't smell it after it had set.
Now pour it into your container- I got mine at Ross for 2$, it had some mints in it. I just washed it, dried it & decorated it a little- Wallah!

Since I am a bit impatient, after this had cooled I put it in the fridge with the lid on to see if it would set faster, and it did :) in about 1 hour. The oils seperated a little on top, but I just stirred them in a bit, with my finger, then rubbed some on my hands. YUMMY, smells good round here!

Next batch I am making with a little bit of Almond extract, sigh.
Good Stuff, Thank You for sharing this recipe Lee!

Absentee Blogger

I have been a little absent lately. Not only did Hubby & the Kiddos start school, I was fast approaching a deadline I needed to meet. And that was keeping me pretty busy see-

I was given a job of scrapbooking a first year album and I wanted to have it done by this weekend. I finished it yesterday- 106 pages in 1 week, the creative part of my mind is numb now :)
One of my favorite pages-

But I am done, and now I can think about other things :)
Like homemade body butters and scrubs! And Pumpkin Bread! And finally having cooler weather, Yay!