What did you guys manage to accomplish this weekend? Me, not much…I had my nephews and they are SUCH a handful. Our local Safeway had a lot of exotic fruits available this past week, so I cut a bunch up and allowed them to try some new things!!
Top left is mini guava, top right is a sad passion fruit. The bottom is a partially eaten plate of delicious fruits we had (going clockwise from the bottom) kumquats, Asian pear, kiwi, star fruit, and pepino melon. Also there was dragonfruit, which didn’t manage to get pictured….because I ate it all. I really like dragon fruit, haha. The star fruit and kiwi went the fastest (um, after the dragon fruit) the boys overwhelming loved the star fruit best, while my step-daughter stuck with her ever love of kiwi. They all decided the pear was good (but not exactly exotic, we just happened to have it at the house), kumquats were too sour, the pepino melon tasted like cucumbers, the guava was cute, but not that tasty, the passion fruit was not very good and they didn’t like how crunchy the seeds were, and as for the dragon fruit, I gave them all a slice, and mostly they thought it was too weird looking. All-in-all, it was fun to get to eat a couple new things!
Last night I also made a Fireball BBQ sauce, because I love all things Fireball, and it popped up on my Pinterest recently:
The recipe was actually for a whole bunch of ingredients for some baby back ribs (which are probably amazing, I know this BBQ was), you can link up to that recipe HERE.
I also made a pretty delicious marble bundt cake. I love marble cakes, pound cakes, bundt, heck, I love marble/swirl ice cream.Just that easy blend of chocolate and vanilla, such iconic, simple flavors making each other that much more delicious…Yeah. I love it.
In reality I meant to cover this in some nice chocolate frosting…But instead I decided to eat a slice. I’m sure I’ll be doing it tonight, but it was quite delicious without!
Above is a bit of the ingredients while awaiting their mixing together, left is just the flour mixture, then the creamed sugar and butter with eggs added, third is the gross looking milk and sour cream mixture, last is the flour mixture being mixed into the butter mixture!
The “chocolate paste” you’ll read about, the amazingly fluffy vanilla batter, and last is the vanilla batter mixed into the “chocolate paste” and ready for the pan!
And then in the pan, sweet, delicious, semi-marbled bundt cake. In my defense, I was more worried about the cake being finished before I passed out than if it made a beautiful marble. Ha! Next time I will use half the vanilla, all the chocolate, the other half of vanilla, then knife marble.
Marble Bundt Cake:
Yields 1 bundt cake. Prep time: 30 minutes Bake time: 40-50 minutes. Total time: 70-80 minutes.
Vanilla Cake Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) warm butter
1 ½ cups of sugar
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon of vanilla
2 ¼ cup of cake flour
2 ½ teaspoons of baking powder
½ teaspoon of baking soda
½ teaspoon of salt
¾ cup of sour cream, warm
¼ cup of milk, warm
Chocolate Cake Ingredients:
2 tablespoons of milk
1 tablespoon of butter
1 tablespoon of sugar
¼ cup and 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder
1/8 teaspoon of baking soda
Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and generously spray your bundt pan
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or with your hand mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in eggs, one at a time and mix until fully incorporated. Beat in vanilla.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour baking soda, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.
- In a separate bowl mix together the room temperature milk and sour cream.
- Add 1/3 of flour mixture, ½ of the dairy mixture, 1/3 of flour mixture, and so on, being sure to fully mix between each addition, but don’t overmix!
- In a small, microwavable bowl melt the butter, milk, and sugar together. Whisk after heating to ensure the sugar has fully dissolved, then add in the cocoa powder and stir until it’s a thick chocolate paste.
- Add in the baking soda and give one last stir.
- Take a few tablespoons of your vanilla batter and stir into your chocolate paste. Once mixed well add in about one to 1 ½ cup (total) of vanilla batter into your chocolate batter and stir well.
- Here is where you decide what kind of marbling you will do, like I said, I just plopped in all of my vanilla, then my chocolate on top and swirled, but next time I will do half vanilla, all chocolate, half vanilla and marble. You decide!
- Bake in oven for 40-50 minutes.
- Cool completely before frosting with some delicious chocolate frosting to even it all out!
BakingSiren 