Dimply Strawberry Cake

This is kinda less of a cake, and more of a fat kid breakfast. It's not super sweet...and yet you find yourself craving milk. I loved it! Clearly, I belong in fat kid camp. Who wants to watch Heavyweights with me??

But seriously. This was originally going to be the cake to show off my uber cute baby plums... but they went bad before I could use them. And I cried. For DAYS. And then I ate cake and got over it.

You'll need:

-1 1/2 cups of flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp of salt
- 1/4 tsp of cinnamon
- 5 tablespoons of butter
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 tsp of vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- zest from one orange (which I didn't have, and I didn't think lime zest would be the best alternative....)
- 1/3 cup canola or vegetable oil
- cute baby plums.... orrrr whatever fruit you've got.

First thing's first... preheat your oven to 350 degrees!

Then, butter and flour your pan. Seriously, it's exactly how it sounds. You rub butter around the inside of the pan, then sprinkle flour over it. It helps the cake to come out of the pan clean!


Ok, in a medium sized bowl, whisk together your flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.


Perfect, you're doing so swell.

Alrighty then. Take your softened butter, and put it in another larger bowl. You'll want to mix the butter until it gets light and creamy. Once it's at that stage, add the brown sugar. After a couple minutes it'll look like so...


SUPER appetizing, right?

Ok, now you'll want to add your eggs, one at a time. Afterwards beat each egg on high for about 1 minute. This will thicken up your batter.

At this point, add in your vanilla, zest, and oil and beat until incorporated. I bet this would've been great with the zest. Sighhhh.

Ok, now slowly add in your flour, until it looks like this:


Beautiful! Now pour it in your pan, and level it out so it'll bake evenly.


The swirlage is not necessary in the least.

Now you'll want to add the fruit. As I said, all I had were strawberries... so I wanted to make the most of it. I made this.

Not bad right?

Ok, now you just throw it in the oven, and let it sit for about 40 minutes.

Or at least it should be that simple.

If you used less juicy plums.

If you used strawberries or another juicy fruit (remind me to tell you about my blackberry scone failure), let me show you a trick.

So, I peeked in the over at about the 20 minute mark.


Action shot blur, that's when you know this is getting intense.

Basically what was happening, was 1) my strawberry flower was doomed, and 2) the outsides were cooking way quicker than the middle where all the juicy strawberries were keeping things moist. Moist. What a gross word.

Here's what you do. Make it a foil jacket. It'll totally thank you later.


Just look at it! All dressed up for it's first day of school.

But seriously, the foil will help protect the outsides, while allowing the middle to cook all the way through. How I bombed chemistry, I'll never know.

Twenty minutes later, BAHAHAH!! Perfection.... other than my fail-tastic strawberry flower thingy.


Look how cute and dimply it is.


You'll want to let it cool for about 10 minutes, by the way.

To take it up a notch, I sprinkled a bit of powdered sugar on top.


Beeeeeautiful. Ain't she pretty?

Then cut it up into squares, and serve!



AND DEMOLISH.




Nom nom nom.

Enjoy!

<3 Courtzilla

The reason I am not Julia Child.

Julia making a French style omelette. (No, seriously watch it. It's magical, and it'll make you want to go see Julie and Julia which comes out...next weekend I believe?)



Courtzilla making a French omelette.


















EPIC. FAIL.

At least it still tasted ok?

<3 Courtzilla

Nom Nom Tomato Basil Soup

This is the easiest tomato soup you've ever made. I know you all make a lot of tomato soup, so I feel totally confident saying that.

I was really craving tomato soup and grilled cheese the other day... and damn that canned stuff just doesn't cut it any more. All I could taste was tin and water. Noooo thanks.

Seriously. 15 minutes. Takes just as long as mixing up the canned stuff and putting it in the micro. Watch me work.

Makes about 2 - 3 servings.


You'll need:
- 3 tablespoons of butter
- 1 1/2 tsp of garlic (minced)
- about 2 - 3 tbsp of flour
- about 2 cups of milk (or, Tina you can use vegetable broth!)
- 1 14 ish oz can of diced maters
- about 10 leaves of basil
- dried oregano
- 1 tbsp sugar
- salt
- pepper

optional: tomato paste

Yeah. 15 minutes. Trust me. I won't steer you wrong.

Ready to get started?

Take your butter and melt it in a pot. Put the heat on medium to medium low.


Toss in your garlic!


Ok, at this point we're going to make what's called a roux. It's basically the base for a lot of sauces and gravies. You just take fat, either butter or meat grease (bacon gravy? hello.), and mix it with some flour. It acts as a thickening agent, and makes things super delish.

So, throw your flour in, and mix it around.

Here's a fun story. The recipe I was kind of using as a guide said to use a cup... A CUP of flour. EFF THAT. Smart sense says just to use a bit.. but noooo... so I ended up with this.


I added in some milk to thin it out and got it down so there weren't any lumps left. No big deal. Use a whisk if that happens to you, it's the easiest way.

OK! After you've dealt with disaster and lived to tell about it, add in your milk and tomatoes. I smooshed them down a bit so they weren't in huge chunks. If you're feeling really motivated you can pulse it smooth in the food processor, or in the blender... but this is me here. I'm lazy. And now I can say it's "rustic". Plus, chunks don't bother me.


Smoosh smoosh.

At this point, add in your salt and pepper, to taste. I like a lot of ground pepper in this. I also threw in some basil, and some dried oregano for a little flavor boost. I add about a tbsp of sugar, just to combat the acidity of the maters, but taste it first, see if you need it.


Now at this point I tasted it and noticed two things. One, too milky. I wanted some ROBUST flavor, baby. So, I added about a half a can of this:



This packs some tomato PUNCH man. It's scrumptious. Optional, but scrumptious. Also, I noticed that the freaking huge amount of flour was doing it's trick, and it was a little too thick for me. One of my biggest pet peeves is when tomato soup tastes like pasta sauce. GROSS. So, I added about a cup of low sodium chicken broth. You can use veggie broth, or just water if you've got nothing on hand. It won't hurt the flavor none.


Now THAT'S what I'm looking for.

Put it in your favorite bowl with a couple of leaves of basil! (I LOVE my new basil plant!)


Looks positively gourmet.



Wait.

Wassat in the background.... hiding there...



AH HA!! Sneaky grilled cheese sandwich. See that wasn't fancy at all, so I couldn't show you I was making it. Kraft singles baby, ain't nothin' wrong with that.

Enjoy!

<3 Courtzilla

Rainbow Bday Cupcakes

Tomorrow is my good friend Brenda's birthday party. To celebrate, I wanted to bake her something... when I asked what she wanted, she said "anything with cream cheese frosting". Oh good, that narrows it down. I love color. I love dinosaurs. I'm going to make rainbow dinosaur cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

Oh, I went there.

These didn't turn out as nice as I had hoped. They're a pretty good flavor, but the layers were a big fail, and I definitely used 23432 times too much batter in the first batch. They puffed up way higher than normal, which probably had something to do with the excess batter. Try them yourself and let me know how they go... they were still cute and delicious!

Oh, and I got the original recipe here.

You will need (for 10 cupcakes):
1 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup buttermilk - remember that sweet trick I taught you?
1 tsp vanilla extract
red, yellow, green and blue food colorings

Okay, first you'll want to combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium sized bowl. Like so.


Next, combine the sugar, eggs, vanilla, oil, and buttermilk in a large bowl.


Add the flour mixture slowly to the egg mixture, stirring as you go. In a bit, you'll end up with something like this!


Now for the fun part. Divide the batter into 5 smaller bowls. Add food coloring to each bowl. For the rainbow, I used blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Where's violet and indigo you say? I say bite me.


See how much batter I used? Don't do what I did. Only do one spoon full for each layer. Trust me.

To make the layers, put the blue in first, then green, then yellow, then orange, and top it off with red. It should look something like this.... but hopefully you're more patient than I am because I clearly started to get lazy.


Then, let these suckers bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

Holy rise batman!

I didn't take pictures of me making the frosting, so sue me. It's basically 1/2 stick of butter and an 8oz package of cream cheese blended together. Then, you add 1 tsp of vanilla extract and anywhere from 2 1/2 to 4 cups of powdered sugar and mix it all together. Simple, tasty, I wish it was fluffier. Today was not my cupcake day. Anyway.... So I swirled some cream cheese glaze over the cakes... and added some decor.


Hahah! Look at these beauts! With the small bit of leftover batter, I made little cookie sized bites for my roommate to nibble on.


Ok and maybe one or two for me too.



I think he's my favorite.

Enjoy!

Oh... another tip... make sure to wash your hands after using the food dye, especially if it's the concentrated kind like mine. Looks like my hands got sunburned. Sexy.



Have a great weekend!

<3 Courtzilla