Happy Bundt Day! (A story told in memes)

The celebration of Bundt Day has become something of a regular event around here.  (Past blog posts on the subject can be found here and here.)

A few weeks ago I started browsing Pinterest for Bundt recipes.  I was gonna knock it out of the park this year.  It was gonna be a full-fledged Bundtpalooza.  I found a recipe for a Samoa Bundt cake (recipe here).  Samoa cookies are my favorite Girl Scout cookie.  Making a Bundt form of my favorite once-a-year cookie seemed like a fantastic idea.

Fast forward to yesterday (I made my cake yesterday so I could tell you about it today).

Here's me heading out the door to the grocery store: Oooh.  Don't forget the recipe for the Samoa Bundt Cake.  Yes, that's a great idea.  But I don't have time.  I'll just check the recipe from my phone at the store.

Here's me driving to the store: Local radio stations stink. Katy Perry's "Roar" is not such a great song that it needs to be on 24-7, people.  Local drivers don't know how to navigate a 4 way stop.  YOU CALL THAT A STOP!?!

Here's me at the store: Let's check that recipe.  Hmm...note from the recipe creator that says "This cake took nearly all day to make."

Hold the phone.  A cake that takes ALL DAY to make?  And it's already noon?  And I still have a week's worth of groceries to buy, cart home, and put away before I can get my bake on?  

So here's me in the baking aisle, basically trying to figure out a Bundt recipe idea on the fly: I want it to be chocolate.  And caramel.  And nuts.  Ooooh...a turtle Bundt!  Great idea.  I know I have a chocolate cake mix at home.  I can make caramel from scratch.  I need some pecans and we'll be all set.  I can make this happen, recipe or no.

So I make it home.  I get to baking.  I decided to make my caramel first.  I used Pioneer Woman's Caramel Sauce recipe.  Say what you will about the Pioneer Woman, but girlfriend can cook.  I've never had a recipe of hers that I haven't liked.  Her caramel sauce recipe is basic, but it's easy, fast, and versatile.  It's great on ice cream.  If you cook it for a little less time, it's great for dipping apple slices for a snack.  If you cook it longer, it gets thicker, and that's the state I was going for in this Bundt.  A nice, thick, ropy caramel sauce.

Caramel sauce ingredients are in the pan, melting and getting nice and gooey.  I decide to start on the cake mix.  I've been buying up cake mixes lately when they're on sale for a dollar (don't judge - it's cheap, it's easy, and my family cannot tell the difference between "from scratch" and "from box").  I know I've got at least one chocolate cake mix in the pantry.  Possibly a devil's food cake too.  I just know I want a nice chocolate cake to be the base of this Bundt.   Go over to the pantry.  Guess what? No. Chocolate. Cake. Mix.

Wait!  There in the back!  What is it?  German Chocolate Cake mix.  Hmm.  Better than nothin'.

So I get the cake mix going.  My caramel sauce is bubbling away nicely.  I've got approximately 20 minutes before Middle and Youngest Child come home from school.  I'll be able to get the cake into the oven by then, and we can rake some leaves while the cake bakes.

Phone rings.  It's Middle Child.  "Um...Hello?  Mom?  I missed the bus. Can you come to school and get me?"

So I'm rapidly greasing a Bundt pan, and rushing everything else so that I can get the cake in the oven and rush off to school.  I turn off the heat on the caramel sauce before it's quite ready.  It's not as thick as I'd like and I don't have time to cool it, but you've all figured out by now that I'm a real mom and not a professional blogger (my cheap photography was probably your first clue; second clue is probably the fact that I only blog once in a blue moon because I have no time).  I have to get the kid, the cake can be rushed and less than perfect.

So, pour one half of the cake batter into the very well greased Bundt pan.   Then pour 1/2 of the less-than-thick, not-so-much-cooled caramel sauce on top of the batter.  Sprinkle with pecans.  (In my dream world where kids don't miss buses, this was going to be an amazing caramel-pecan tunnel in the middle of the Bundt.)  Top with remaining cake batter.  Pop into oven.  As you're popping it into the oven, hear the front door open.  Hey, it's Middle Child, who found a ride home with the neighbor girl.  Count to ten and take a deep breath.

So we wait for Youngest child to get home, then we go rake leaves with a timer stuck into my pocket so I can take the cake out in time.  Rake, rake, rake.  Realize that raking with kids is just about as effective as raking with puppies.  Timer goes off.  Back inside, test the cake for doneness.  Let it cool on the counter for a bit before taking out of the pan.  Finish raking.  Drag Youngest Child out of the leaf pile in the street.  Take Youngest Child in the house.  Attempt to release cake from Bundt pan.

Anybody who has ever made a Bundt will understand The Moment.  It's the moment of truth in Bundt cake baking.  When you unmold your cake, it will either come out in one smooth whoosh, or it won't. The Moment is the success/fail moment of the last hour.  You get a pretty, nicely molded Bundt, or you get a semi-nicely molded Bundt on the bottom with the rest stuck into the pan.  Guess which one I got?

Yeah.  Sigh.

Here's what I think happened.  The caramel was too thin, and too hot.  It very quickly meandered to the bottom of the pan, and took the pecans with it.  Once at the bottom of the pan, the caramel continued to cook until it became toffee.  (A nice, delicious, nutty toffee that I later scraped out of the pan with a spoon and consoled myself with as I looked at my sad, disfigured Bundt.)  Some of the cake stuck to the toffee and the rest released nicely.  Hence, Ugly-Not-Really-a-Turtle-Bundt.

But frosting!  Frosting fixes everything!  And I still have some leftover caramel sauce to use as a garnish on top.  I'm gonna frost and garnish the snot out of this cake! It's still salvageable!  Yes!

I microwaved some canned frosting to make it liquid-y.  (If I were a professional blogger, it would be ganache, but again, I'm a mom who is running out of time before supper prep needs to begin.)  Poured about 3/4 of it over the cake, letting it pool at the bottom.  Then I started drizzling the caramel sauce over the top.  Again, it was too thin and pretty much just rolled off the cake.  At this point, I really didn't even care and just laughed.  Threw some more pecans on top, and called it done.

Do you want to see what it looked like in the end?

Here you go:

A little lumpy, a little bumpy, and I'm not sure I'd serve it to company or take it to a pot luck, but it's okay.

Taste verdict?  It was good.  Caramel really suits German Chocolate cakes, so those flavors blended nicely.  But the caramel tended to pool away from the cake and frosting.   Overall, however, it was a perfectly good cake and everyone at the table gave it a thumbs up.

The final take-away?  It's cake.  Cake is good.  However you celebrate Bundt Day, enjoy - and may your Bundt not stick to the pan.

St. Patrick's Day Wrap-Up

I had a really good introduction to this post thought out.  But then I unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher.  And ate a brownie.  And then I grabbed my camera so that I could post pictures in this post.  And by the time I sat down at the computer, the good introduction to this post was lost.  Boo.  The brownie was good, at least.  More on that later.

So yesterday was St. Patrick's Day.  It's a fairly big holiday here at our house.  In fact, last week Young One was asking my husband what he thought my favorite holidays were.  He said "Christmas is her favorite.  Probably Easter or St. Patrick's Day are her next favorites."  He's not too far off the mark.  Thanksgiving ranks up there too.  I like food holidays.  Big surprise.

Back to St. Patrick's Day.  Are we Irish?  Yes.  Some of us more than others.  I'm about a quarter Irish owing to my maternal grandmother's line.  My husband is about zero Irish.  So our kids get to claim 1/8 Irish ancestry.  Was it a big deal for my family growing up?  Not that I can remember.  Of course we ate corned beef and cabbage on March 17th, but beyond that, I can't recall much in the way of celebrations.  So why do I make a big deal out of St. Patrick's Day?  Part of it is because I make a big deal out of ancestry.  I think it's important for my kids to know where they came from and who their ancestors are.  (To that extent, I'm creating a family history gallery in my dining room.  It's just in the early stages, but I'm excited about it and will post more about it when it's further along.)  But the other part of celebrating St. Patrick's Day is just for fun.

So here's how we celebrated yesterday:

I was awoken at 7:00 on a dark Sunday morning.  "Mommy!  MOOOOOmmmy!  Mom!  Mom! MomMomMomMomMom!!!  Come on!  You gotta get out of bed.  The leprechauns came and they made a huge mess and you just gotta see what they did this year!"  And with that, I was pulled from my nice warm bed, my eyeglasses were handed to me by little hands, and we went out into the hall.

Leprechauns.  Ugh.  Little monsters made my trip down the stairs interesting, to say the least:

They wrapped some type of green mesh tape over the stairs.  So groggy, pre-caffeinated me had to descend the stairs in the always popular booty-bump fashion.  The leprechauns also strung up metallic streamers everywhere (you can kind of see the streamers in the top of the photo), filled the living room floor with green and white balloons, and generally left all sorts of mischief in their wake.  Wait til you see what they did to my kitchen:

Not only did those little men in green manage to haul out my donut maker, but they also somehow found all the ingredients in the pantry necessary to make green donuts.  They must have made close to 3 dozen mini donuts, but then they left the mess to be cleaned up by someone else.  Salt spilled on the counter top, ingredients left on the counter, and (worst of all in my book) they didn't rise out their batter bowl or even put it to soak.  (This is how my kids know that I'm not the leprechaun.  They know I'd never leave a messy bowl on the counter.)

After the leprechauns made donuts, they decided they needed to take a coffee break.  They got my miniature  Irish tea set down out of the china cabinet and poured some coffee and had a few donuts.  I guess mischief making is hard work.

This is how my kids know that leprechauns are truly naughty.  Because nobody is allowed to play with my miniature Irish teapot set, let alone take something out of the china cabinet.

But at least the leprechauns were nice and left us lots of green donuts to eat for breakfast, which the kids would have done immediately if the leprechauns had not also left them golden chocolates (along with all sorts of other goodies):

Slap bracelets, green beads, pencils, twisty straws - all in a green pot the kids can plant something in later on this spring.  (Did you notice the water bottle in the background? One of the kids left that on the table the night before.  The leprechauns turned the water green.)  Typically our leprechauns leave little treats for the kids each year, ostensibly to make up for the mess they leave in the house.  Why they never leave ME any presents when I'm the one who gets to clean up 75% of the mess is beyond me.  Maybe leprechauns have mommy issues.

So my morning went well - excited children amped up on green donuts and chocolate.  Major sugar crash right before we left for church.  Awesome.  But it's a holiday.  We play by different rules on holidays.

The rest of our St. Patrick's Day celebration takes place mostly around the evening meal, which I do enjoy preparing and, well, eating.  The St. Patrick's Day meal is comfort food.  Warm.  Filling.  And no matter where you go, most corned beef and cabbage dinners don't vary much in taste.  You know you're going to get pretty much the same flavors no matter where you eat your corned beef.  In fact, I remember my first St. Patrick's meal after I became a mom.  I'd given birth just a week before and I was so sleep deprived that I could not remember my first name, let alone cook a big meal.  My husband went to the local grocery and bought me some corned been and cabbage from the deli counter.  It was awesome.  Because it tasted just like mine and -best part- I could just sit on the couch in my pajamas, sleeping baby in my arms, and eat.

So here's what we had last night for our St. Patrick's Day meal:

The main part of the meal is simple to prepare: throw your corned beef into the crock pot.  Peel and halve potatoes and put them on top of the beef.  Peel carrots, leave them whole, and put on top of the potatoes.  Pour some water (enough to have about 2-3" of water at the bottom of your crock pot) over it all.  Cover and cook on low for about 8 hours.  Two hours before your meal is done, cut a cabbage into 6 wedges.  Put them in the crock pot and re-cover, and let the cabbage cook for the last 2 hours of the cooking time.  If you put your cabbage in at the beginning, it'll be mush by the end of the cook time.  Two hours of slow cooking is just enough.

At the top of the photo, you can also see the Irish soda bread I made last night.  In the past, I've made a far more complicated recipe (both in terms of ingredients called for and steps involved).  But I stumbled across a recipe on Pinterest that was only 4 ingredients and sounded simple.  I like simple.  Especially when I'm dealing with kids who refueled themselves after lunch with more leprechaun chocolate.  The recipe is on Let's Dish and can be found here.  It was a super simple bread to toss together (for the record, I don't keep buttermilk on hand so I just used skim milk soured with a bit of vinegar), knead a few times, and toss in a pan to bake right before our meal so that we'd have warm bread with our Irish feast.  It's a less complex bread than my usual recipe, but that doesn't mean it wasn't tasty.  My son ate 3 or 4 slices and declared it the best part of the meal.  I will cop to eating 2 slices with dinner.  And another one as a late night snack.  And another piece this morning after I shoveled snow.

For dessert, I made mint chocolate brownies.  

Why?  Because I could tint the frosting green to match the day's festivities.  And because mint and chocolate go so well together.  And goodness knows we can't ever get enough chocolate around here.  Again, this wasn't a super complicated recipe.  I used a boxed brownie mix, but I subbed fat-free Greek yogurt for the oil.  (See note below.)  The brownies turned out just as moist and tasty as they would have with oil, but now they have less fat and more protein.  I mixed regular white frosting from a can (softened in a glass bowl in the microwave) with some peppermint extract and green food coloring and frosted the brownies, then topped with chopped Andes mints.  And yes, I know topping the brownies with frosting and chopped chocolate kind of negates the healthy step of using Greek yogurt to cut down on fat.  Just let me live in my dream world, okay?  We have frosted brownies here.  They're magically delicious.  Wait, that's frosted Lucky Charms, isn't it?  Huh.  Well the frosted brownies are magically...good. 

Naturally, celebrating an ethnic-ish meal leads to conversation around the table, and my kids asked really good questions about who in our family was Irish, and how much Irish they were, and they asked questions about Irish history and traditions, and that makes all some of the craziness of preparing a holiday worthwhile.  Then they got into a discussion about our German heritage (there is a lot more of that type of water in their gene pool) and my son said "I don't want to be German because Hitler was German and he was evil." And I tried steering the conversation to good Germans and their contributions to society, but I got stuck and just offered them more brownies.  

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you all.  May the luck of the Irish be with you.

Oh, and the side note on Greek yogurt and baking:  I'm going to be doing more of this substitution in the days ahead and try to blog about it.  If you want to try doing it yourself, here's a handy conversion chart that Chobani has on their website.  I need to make a magnet with the conversion so that I can keep it handy on my fridge.  Which, I hope you have a magnet like this one on your fridge to help you figure out the math/measurement part of those conversions:

It saves my math-challenged brain on a daily basis in the kitchen.  And it's incredibly helpful when you have to calculate how to figure out what 3/4 of a 3/4 cup is.  Because I'm not mathy like that.

Happy National Chocolate Cake Day!

It just occurred to me that this is my first post in over a month.  Yikes.  I stink at blogging.  But I'm really good at baking when there's a national holiday involved, evidently.  

Today is National Chocolate Cake Day.  I was unaware of this fact until sometime late this morning.  We also happen to be dealing with a big ice storm today, so I found myself in a bit of a situation: (1) sudden desire for chocolate cake, and (2) a rather pathetic pantry where chocolate cake baking is concerned, and (3) icy roads that made a quick trip to the grocery store a bit of a fool's errand.

After a bit of digging around on the internet, I found a recipe for cake that would work with what I had on hand, and a different recipe for frosting that would work.

First: The Cake

I found a recipe for chocolate cake using Greek yogurt on this blog, Chocolate and Carrots.  I made a couple of tiny adaptations based upon what I had on hand.

Easy Chocolate Greek Yogurt Cake

You need:

1 Cup sugar

2 Cups flour

4 Tablespoons cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 Cup plain non-fat Greek yogurt

1 Cup skim milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9" pan (square or round) with cooking spray.

Mix your dry ingredients in one bowl.  Whisk the yogurt, skim milk, and vanilla together in a different bowl. Pour the wet ingredients in with the dry ingredients and stir well.  Pour cake batter into prepared pan, bake for 35-45 minutes; use a toothpick to test for done-ness. (The original recipe called for 35 minutes; mine wasn't done at that point and took an additional 7 minutes.) Allow to cool in pan for about 15 minutes, then turn out onto serving plate.

Best part about making this cake? No eggs.  You get to lick the beaters without worrying about getting food poisoning.  Also?  It's easy and you don't have to haul out a mixer to make it.

Now on to the frosting:

I found this recipe along with a cake recipe on Never Homemaker, but didn't have the right stuff to make the cake.  The frosting looked easy and do-able though.

Peanut Butter Greek Yogurt Frosting

You will need:

3/4 Cup plain, non-fat Greek yogurt

1 Tablespoon vanilla

1/2 Cup creamy peanut butter (Nutella would also be awesome here)

3/4 Cup powdered sugar

Mix the yogurt, vanilla and peanut butter together and stir until well combined.  Add the powdered sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition.  (I used my Kitchen Aid with the whisk attachment for this frosting and it turned out very smooth, but I also think you could easily do this by hand or with a hand mixer.)  Spread frosting on cooled cake.  Store frosted cake in refrigerator.

(You'll notice from the picture up above that we also scattered some chocolate chips on top.  My youngest was absolutely indignant that I didn't put any sprinkles on the cake. I mollified her with chocolate chips.) 

So, how was it?

Pretty good, actually.  The cake is more dense than your typical boxed-cake-mix cake and it has a nice chocolate flavor.  It would take additions really well, so if you want to add some chocolate chips or nuts, go ahead.  And while the cake got thumbs-up from everyone at the table, the reaction to the frosting was a bit more mixed.  Personally, I loved the frosting.  But I'll admit, the slightly sour taste of the Greek yogurt does come through pretty strongly.  I think that is balanced out by the sugar, and I think that it goes well the the peanut butter.  My husband and kids weren't all that crazy about it though.  I think a more traditional peanut butter frosting would be good on this cake, but I also think it'd taste fantastic with traditional chocolate frosting.  I also kind of want to try it with some cherries and whipped cream - it would make an awesome Black Forest-type cake, I think.

All in all, it was a nice way to celebrate National Chocolate Cake Day, even when your cake-making ingredients are limited.

Cake Balls and Care Packages

I sent out some care packages to a couple of Army soldiers and a Marine last week.  One of the soldiers is someone who served with my husband overseas and asked specifically for the cake balls I sent them for Christmas one year.  Posting about that on Facebook led to a request for the recipe.  They're so easy, y'all.

This recipe is for German Chocolate cake balls, but it's adaptable, and I'll show you how once we walk through the basic recipe.

German Chocolate Cake Balls

1 box of German Chocolate cake mix + ingredients needed to make cake
1 can of creamy coconut pecan frosting
1 and 1/2 pkg. of chocolate almond bark

Prepare and bake your cake according to package directions (I usually bake mine into a 9x13 size).  Allow cake to cool, then use two forks to tear it into crumbs.  Yes, you want to take a perfectly good cake and reduce it to crumbs.  They don't have to be fine crumbs, but the smaller your cake chunks are, the better.

In a large bowl, mix your cake crumbs with the can of frosting.  Mix well, making sure to thoroughly incorporate the frosting with the cake.  Using a spoon or melon baller to scoop out a bit of the cake mixture and shape into small balls using your hands.  I make mine fairly small, so that a cake ball can be consumed in 1 or 2 bites.  Some people like them bigger.  Whatever floats your particular boat is fine.  Allow balls to chill well in the refrigerator or freezer - this will help later on when it comes time to dip them.

Once the balls have had time to chill, you need to start melting your almond bark.  This stuff:

I usually melt about half a package at a time.  It's really important to make sure you don't over-melt your bark - the sugar will end up carmelizing - so if you use a microwave (instead of the double-boiler method), stir and check on it often.  Like every 30 seconds or so.  Also important to note: keep water away from your bark; it will cause melted bark to curdle (get lumpy) and it will be no good.

So once you have melted bark and a pan full of chilled cake balls, you're ready to dip.  Dipping methods vary.  I know a lot of people prefer the toothpick method (put your cake ball or item to be dipped on a toothpick or bamboo skewer and dip), but it never works for me.  Behold:

I did a couple with the toothpick method to show that it never works out for me.  The one in the bottom right corner was done using my fork method; the rest were done with the toothpick method.  Technically, they're fine.  They're still cake balls.  But they just aren't as pretty and uniformly coated.  So here's how I do it:

I drop an un-dipped ball into the melted bark and use a fork to roll it around until it's covered.  Then I slide a fork underneath the ball and lift it out of the bark.  I use a second fork to kind of wipe the dripping bark off the bottom of the first fork and then gently allow the now-coated ball onto a sheet of wax paper.

That's it.  Dip the rest of the balls, let them rest on wax paper, and allow the bark to harden.  Depending on the kind of bark you use and how big your cake balls are, the amount of bark you need will vary.  Making these balls took up about 1 and 1/2 packages of bark.  Just be prepared to melt more bark as needed.

The fun part about this recipe is that you can be as creative as you want and create custom flavor mixes.  Just change up the cake flavor, the frosting flavor, and the bark.   Some examples/ideas:

• Spice Cake + Cream Cheese Frosting + White Almond Bark
• Devils Food Cake + Chocolate Frosting + Chocolate Almond Bark
• Red Velvet Cake + Cream Cheese Frosting + White Almond Bark
• Lemon Cake + White Frosting + White Almond Bark
• Chocolate Cake + Peanut Butter Frosting + Chocolate Almond Bark
• Caramel Cake + Creamy Coconut Pecan Frosting + Chocolate Almond Bark
• Orange Supreme Cake + White Frosting + White Almond Bark

You can also get creative when it comes to decorating the cake balls - from super easy sprinkles or colored sugars to more complicated designs, a la Bakerella.  Just remember, sprinkles and such will stick better when your frosting is still "wet," so work accordingly.

So back to the care packages.  Believe it or not, these cake balls travel really well.  I first sent them overseas a few years ago to my husband and to a friend of mine, both of whom were stationed in the sandbox.  Their cake balls arrived in great shape and everyone who had one really liked them.  Many people asked for the recipe.  When I package them, I arrange them on a paper plate, slide the paper plate into a gallon sized ziploc bag, and then seal the bag, trying to remove as much air as possible.  If mailing with other items, I'll try to cushion the cake balls a bit so they don't get crushed.  

In addition to the cake balls, I sent my servicemen a few other treats that travel well: 

Peppermint Bark Popcorn - recipe here.

Cinnamon Pretzels - recipe here.

Cinnamon Bun Popcorn
I swear I don't know why there's a
 huge chunk missing in the middle of the pan. Recipe here.

I packaged these in quart sized ziploc bags and used them to cushion the cake balls.  Then I threw in some other assorted treats, sealed the boxes, filled out customs forms in triplicate, and sent the boxes on their way.

Happy National Bundt Day! (Featuring Pumpkin-Oatmeal Bundt)

Today is National Bundt Day.  If you didn't read my post from earlier this week, go back and read it to discover my history with this day. (You don't have to read it really, there's no history - Bundt cake is just a really good idea, and I wanted cake on Bundt Day 2010.  But I've celebrated each Bundt Day since then.  Because I like cake, y'all.)

Last week, my friend Ruhama (who started me on this Bundt Day broo-ha-ha) put a reminder on Facebook that Bundt Day was coming up.  A good idea on her part, really, because Bundt Day doesn't get all the fanfare and promotions of bigger holidays like Halloween or Christmas.  It kind of gets lost in the cracks, and that's just tragic because it's a holiday about cake.  So I started thinking about what kind of Bundt I'd make this year.  Seriously - I didn't procrastinate this year and glob a bunch of things together.  I actually planned ahead and looked through my recipe books.

I settled on a recipe from a cookbook my mom gave me many years ago, Have Breakfast with Us II, a collection of recipes from bed & breakfast owners across Wisconsin.  The recipes are all breakfast recipes, of course, but of the ones that I've tried, they've all been good.  And you've gotta think, these are the recipes for food they serve their guests - it must be good.  So although I've never made this particular recipe before, I figured it'd be pretty good.

The original recipe is called Morning Pumpkin Coffeecake and it is meant to be a Bundt cake.  I'm sure it's a lovely cake to serve with brunch at a Victorian B&B, but I can't get my stuff together early enough in the morning to make a breakfast Bundt.  So this will be dessert tonight.  Cake is cake, after all.  (I think this is Clue #1 why I wouldn't be a good B&B proprietor - "What?  You want me to cook you breakfast?  Before I've had my coffee.  Pfft.  Whatever.  Even my kids know they are on their own for breakfast.  It's every mortal for themselves around here, at least until I've got 2 cups of coffee on board."  I would maybe make a good Supper & Bed proprietor, though.  I'm usually together by then.)

So besides changing the name of the cake, I also modified the ingredients a bit to cut sugar and fat.  The original called for 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter or margarine.  I cut the butter in half and subbed Greek yogurt for part of it.  The original also called for 1.5 cups of brown sugar.  I cut the brown sugar in half and subbed in Splenda.  The original called for 6 egg whites and I just used 3 whole eggs (I don't have a problem with whole eggs, nutritionally speaking.  I do have a problem, however, with wasting 6 perfectly good yolks.)  I also didn't have the amount of raisins called for by the original recipe, so I used some dried cranberries, and I also added some chopped walnuts and increased spices.

Okay, let's get ready to rock Bundt Day 2012.

First step, assemble your ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1.25 cups old-fashioned oats
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/4 teaspoon allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 6 tablespoons butter (or 3/4 of a stick)
• 1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon plain Greek yogurt
• 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 3/4 cup Splenda
• 1 can 100% 
• pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1/4 cup cranberries
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat your oven to 350 and spray your Bundt pan with cooking spray.  Mix dry ingredients (flour, oats, baking powder, salt and spices) in a bowl.  In bowl of stand mixer, combine softened butter, Greek yogurt, brown sugar, and Splenda.  

Beat until creamy and light.  Mix in pumpkin and eggs, combine thoroughly.  Gradually add flour mixture by spoonfuls until all of the flour mixture is evenly combined with wet ingredients.  Add in raisins, cranberries, and walnuts, combine. 

Pour cake batter into prepared Bundt.  Bake 60-70 minutes, until toothpick inserted into cake comes out clean.  Cool for 10 minutes, then unmold from Bundt pan.  Cake can then be frosted, glazed or dusted with powdered sugar. (I glazed mine with a small amount of a cinnamon-powdered sugar glaze.)

Nutrition: Depending on how big you cut your slices, this cake is fairly decent (calorie-wise) in its unfrosted state: 218 calories for 1/12 of the cake, or 262 for 1/10.  Nutritionally speaking, it's okay.  For 1/12 of the cake, you'll get 10 grams of fat.  Which isn't great, but it's less fat than what you'd get in a traditional boxed cake.  Sugars are only 6.3 grams, so that's not too bad, and total carbs are 29g.  

Verdict: I'll post an update in this spot later tonight, after we've had this cake for dessert.  :)  Check back later.

Updated (10-16-12): Sorry about not posting an update regarding the cake last night.  I've got kids, you know?  Anyhow...it's a good cake recipe.  The flavor is very good, and it's decently moist.  I thought it would have benefited more from cream cheese frosting (as opposed to the glaze), but my husband said it was fine the way it is.  It would definitely be a good choice for a breakfast or brunch spread - I think it was very "muffin-like" and could probably be adapted into outstanding muffins quite easily.  The kids gave it mixed reviews - one kid opted to skip it completely as he's not a huge fan of pumpkin to begin with (and evidently, he's also not a big fan of frosting-less cake).  Middle One ate all of hers and said it was good.  Little One ate parts of hers, which is saying something because when we have cake, she usually eats the frosting and leaves the cake behind.

A Prelude to National Bundt Day

Wednesday is National Bundt Day.  This will be the 3rd year I've celebrated.  To prepare, I dug up this item I wrote the first time I celebrated National Bundt Day.  Enjoy:

Happy National Bundt Day (Or, Adventures in Cake Baking with Toddlers in Tow)
Originally written and posted on Facebook, November 15, 2010


Earlier today, I posted a link to The Food Librarian's National Bundt Day celebration.  Inspired, I decided to make a Banana Nutella Bundt Cake.  Ruhama and Amie, food bloggers extraordinaire, asked me to share my results.  Here goes:

Note: for the complete recipe, visit Food Librarian's page.

Step 1: Find the Bundt pan.  Hope that, because you are trying to sell your house and erase any trace of actual human beings living in your home, that you didn't box it up and put it in the storage unit.

Where, or where, could it be?

Step 2: Realize that when last used (probably sometime during the second Bush administration), the Bundt pan was not cleaned thoroughly by "someone" (me) and there's still some German Chocolate cake crusted on one edge.

Step 3: Do dishes.  Wash Bundt pan, and, for kicks and giggles, all the other assorted dirty dishes lying about.  Drain sink, dry Bundt pan.

Step 4: Refill sink with bubbles because your 2 year old is having a fit that you didn't let her play in bubbles and you know you can't bake when there's a 2 year old in full tantrum mode in the middle of the kitchen. 

Bubbles!

Step 5: Prep ingredients.  Realize the paddle attachment for your Kitchen Aid is - you guessed it - dirty from making cookies the other day and sitting in the dishwasher.  Remove from dishwasher and wash by hand, stealing bubbles from 2 year old's sink full of bubbles as neccesary.

Step 6: Mix dry ingredients.  Scoop Nutella into a bowl as directed.  Realize, with a sigh, that you are using up the last of the Nutella and your son won't have any for his toast the next morning.  Wonder now if the cake is worth it, or if you should just scrap it so he can have his toast with Nutella in the morning.  Decide that hormones trump a kid's ingrained breakfast patterns and you're PMS-ing and you NEED cake more than he needs toast.  (Debate about running to Target later in the day for the big tub o' Nutella.  Because while hormonal, you're also a mom who wants her kids to be happy.)

Mmmm...Nutella...

Step 7: Set aside empty Nutella jar to lick clean with a spoon later on.  It is that time of the month, after all.

Step 8: Hear 2 year old say "Mommy look at me!" and realize she's putting on a beard of bubbles.  And getting water all over the kitchen cabinets you paid $$$$ to have redone a few months ago.  Rethink your decision at Step 4.  Consider it was still a good idea, but drain the sink of water and hope that she doesn't eat too many more bubbles.

Step 9: Cream butter and sugar.

Step 10: Add eggs to batter.  Because you're slightly OCD about eggs and salmonella, wash hands thoroughly.

Step 11: Add bananas and yogurt (Or in my case, sour milk because we just don't have plain yogurt laying about. Strawberry-mango drinkable yogurt for the kids, yes; blackberry-pomegranate Activia for the grown-ups, yes; but no plain yogurt).

Step 12: Add flour mixture, mix until everything is combined.

Step 13: Scoop out 1 cup of the banana cake mixture and fold into Nutella.  Get Nutella mix on your fingers.  Find yourself ready to lick Nutella-y goodness off your fingers until your OCD kicks in again and whispers "salmonella..."  Wash hands again.

Smells and looks chocolatey, but it's not edible yet.  Unless you like salmonella pudding.

Step 14: Scoop plain batter into pan; realize as you do that one chunk of butter didn't cream with the sugar properly.  Consider (briefly! briefly!) chucking it all because it probably won't turn out, but no:  we want cake.  We need cake.  We sacrificed our son's breakfast Nutella for this cake.  We're gonna have cake, gol-darnit!

Step 15: Scoop Nutella batter on top of plain batter.  Swirl with a knife.  Be a tiny bit sad that it's not swirling just as you'd like it to.  And you can draw swirls no problem...they're one of your favorite doodles to draw when on hold.  That and 3-D boxes.  And stick people.

Swirled (not so much) batter ready to go in the oven.

Step 16: Ready to go in the oven.  Bake at 350 for 50 minutes.  Survey disaster left behind.  Clean it up, along with counters because there could be raw egg on them, and you're a little OCD about raw egg.

Step 17: When the timer goes off, use a toothpick to check for doneness while your 2 year old dances around the kitchen singing "I want cakey!  I want cakey!"  If the toothpick comes out clean, let the cakey cool for 15 minutes.

Step 18: Unmold to a plate.  Immediately notice what became of the un-creamed butter chunk (Note: I claim Uncreamed Butter Chunks as the name of my next band.) and that there is an obvious chunk of overly buttery cake that stuck to the pan.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar, trying (in vain, it turns out) to conceal your band-name-inspiring butter goof.

Finished product.  Wanna play "Spot the Butter Goof?"

Verdict: A great cake recipe.  Kind of crisp on the outside, very moist and flavorful on the inside.  Can't really taste the Nutella, per se, but there's definitely a nummy chocolate taste mingling with the banana.

Pumpkin-Carrot Cookies

If you've spent any time on Pinterest, chances are you've seen this pin before:

The premise: mix a can of pumpkin and a box of cake mix and voila - easy pumpkin cake or muffins that are Weight Watcher friendly because they don't use extra oil or eggs so it keeps the calorie and fat count down.  I've made this recipe a number of times because it's just so easy and the results are satisfying, but friendly to those of us who are eating healthy.  My personal favorite is to mix the pumpkin with spice cake mix, but I've also done it with yellow cake mix.  I've made it into a cake with an apple cider glaze, I've made it into muffins, and I've made it into cookies.  

Yesterday at the grocery store, both pumpkin and carrot cake mix were on sale for cheap, so I knew I'd be making something along the pumpkin+cake mix lines.  I was also slightly hungry for something called "health food cake."  It's not really health food, but rather a concoction very similar to carrot cake but it has applesauce, raisins and nuts in it.  And then it's slathered in cream cheese frosting.  But I'm guessing that the fine ladies who started crafting these cakes for pot-lucks were like "Applesauce?  Healthy.  Raisins?  Healthy?  Nuts?  Healthy."  And it's super tasty, but all the non-healthy in the recipe sort of cancels out the healthy, you know?  

So a sale at the grocery store and a hankering for a non-healthy health food cake were the inspiration behind today's recipe:

You will need: 

* One box of carrot cake mix

* One can of canned pumpkin

* 1/2 cup raisins

* 1/2 cup walnuts (though judging from my picture, it looks like I'm adding a 1/2 cup of English.  I started quoting the movie "Witness" in my head when I noticed that. You be careful out among them English.)

(Also, you'll notice I'm not above buying generic ingredients, much to my tween's chagrin. Ugh.  Why can't you ever buy the name brand granola bars, pop-tarts, and canned pumpkin?  Wait.  Maybe he doesn't complain about the generic pumpkin.  *thinking*  Nope, he just complains because it's pumpkin.)

Mix carrot cake mix and pumpkin in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment.  Beat on medium speed for about 3 minutes until everything is well combined, scraping down sides and bottom of the bowl halfway through.  

Whee!

Fold in the nuts and raisins by hand.  Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheet lined with parchment (or sprayed with cooking spray - that's fine too).  Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes or until cookies are set and just browning around the edges.  Allow to cool on cookie sheet for a few minutes, then remove to wire rack.

You'll end up with moist, cake-like cookies that are about 175 calories for 2 cookies.  I made 32 large-ish cookies though (very generous teaspoonfuls).  You could easily make these cookies smaller to increase your yield and drop the per-cookie calorie count.  You could also use this same mix to make muffins (divide into papered muffin tins) or a snack cake (spread into 9x13 pan coated with cooking spray).  Adjust cooking times accordingly.

The verdict: They're not terrible by any means.  They're satisfying.  They satisfy the cake craving I've had going on for the last few days.  But they'd really benefit from a dollop of cream cheese frosting on top, darnit.

Edited to add: I'd forgotten that these are the type of cookies/baked good that taste even better the second day.  Today I'm not even missing the fact that they don't have cream cheese frosting.