After my weekend of binge eating and drinking I came home to a bunch of very very ripe bananas. I wanted to put them to use, but didn't want to continue contributing to my own personal mass ;) I decided to try a healthy new muffin recipe, and it actually came out AWESOME. Even my boss had a muffin, and she barely eats ;)
Ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
3/4cup honey
3 mashed ripe bananas
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
first off, blend together the butter and sugar in your mixer.
next, add the eggs, bananas, and honey. mix well, scraping down the bowl occasionally.
Once all the wet stuff is well mixed, add in the dry ingredients, leaving out the oatmeal. I think a little kick of cinnamon would be good in this one too...
Finally, add in the cup of oatmeal and mix until just combined. My office mate Kim suggested adding some nuts next time as well. I'm not a big "nuts in my baked goods" fan, but whatever floats your boat!
Bake at 375 degrees for 18-20 minutes. let cool and enjoy!
Happy Baking!
Memorial Day weekend, 2010 was filled with friends, food, beer and a birthday for my little buddy Ashley, daughter of Scott and Jess. Mama Jess asked me to bake a cake for the occasion, so I was happy to oblige! After saying yes, I realized I had very limited cake baking experience. Nonetheless, I wanted to make something with a little bit of "wow" factor.
Cake Ingredients:
I left work a little early to get the process started, and realized when i got home that I'd left the recipe on my desk. awesome. Thanks to my buddy and co-worker Kim, for relaying the directions to me over the phone. This is what I was working with. Nice handwriting self.
Per usual, cream together the butter and the sugar. For cakes you should let the mixer go a little longer than usual. Allowing the mixture to get very light and fluffy. Next, add in the sour cream, lemon zest and vanilla.
Once everything is looking fluffy and delicious, add in the eggs, two at a time. Don't add the next two eggs until the first two have been completely mixed in.
Next, sift together the dry ingredients. Slowly add them to the mixer, with the speed on low. Mix until just combined. Do one last mix by hand 
Bake in a 350 degree over for the following times: 10 inch: 45 minutes. 8 inch: 35 minutes. 6 inch: 30 minutes. Check cakes with a toothpick, they're done when it comes out clean.
Allow the cakes to cool enough so that they're easy to handle. I went around the edge of each cake with a knife to make sure they didn't stick, then did a quick flip to get them out onto a cooling rack. At this point, i began the "leveling process" to make the top of each cake flat enough to stack.
I bought a special "cake leveling" tool but I found that a big serrated bread knife worked out better. I slowly and patiently levelled off the cake, and made sure to taste some of the yummy scraps :)
All three cakes levelled and ready to go, I chilled them for a couple of hours for ease of frosting :)
While the cakes chilled together in the fridge, i went about making the buttercream frosting:
I found a little hand mixing to be beneficial after the fact, to get and clump of hot pink coloring incorporated evenly. With my big VAT f frosting ready to go, I went ahead and frosted each layer one at a time. I reserved some extra frosting in case of any mistakes, or tragedies during cake transit....
With all three layers frosted, i chilled them a little longer in the fridge so the frosting would be less smudgey. This worked out really well and I found that they were pretty easy to handle. Carefully centering each cake, it was time to stack....
I used a couple of plastic "lollipop sticks" from the crafts store to brace the cake in the middle. I knew it was in for about a 90 minutes ride in Joe's truck so I wanted to give it the best shot I could ;) When all was stacked. I whipped up some white decorating frosting, and started piping little "beads" around the connection points on the cake.....
At this point I was pretty pumped that things were looking good and my cake wasn't a hot mess. Since my frosting-writing skills are limited, I decided to trace out my letters with a toothpick in the pink frosting as a guideline....
Then I very carefully started to write....Everything's spelled correctly right? 
After the "Happy Birthday Ashley" met my approval (this took several attempts, and lots of scraping off the top of the cake and re-frosting with pink) I started to stick my little silk flowers into the cake, which really had a great effect.
Over the Holiday weekend I spent some quality time with good friends, grilling, drinking, and dancing around the campfire. Naturally this was an occasion for a lot of baking. Our friends all brought their kiddos, and when all was said and done we had a weekend headcount of 20 or so people. 
