Banana Cake

Ok, this is for you Ty. Or should I say Laura, since you will most likely be the one to actually prepare the cake...while Ty will most likely be the one to *eat* the cake.

We made this cake when Ty came to play work here last week. Although it was only two days, we had a blast with him here and it was yet another reminder of how far away they are. Boo hiss! :( Anyway, he LOVED the cake so I thought I'd share. It is one of those cakes that starts with a box mix so it is sooo easy and sooo good! Seriously the way everyone carried on about it, you would have thought I had slaved in the kitchen all day! Not the case at all. So here goes!



Banana Cake

1 package (18 1/4 ounces) plain yellow cake mix
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 ripe medium-size bananas, mashed (about 1 cup)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 13-by-9-inch baking pan (or 2 - 9 inch cake pans) with shortening, and dust with flour. Shake out excess flour. (I used Pam cooking spray)

Place cake mix, brown sugar and cinnamon in a large mixing bowl. Add mashed bananas, 1 cup water, oil, eggs and, if desired, liqueur. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed 1 minute. Stop mixer and scrape down side of bowl with rubber spatula. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed until well blended, scraping side again if needed. Pour into prepared pan(s), and place on center rack of oven.

Bake until top is lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, about 40 minutes (for the 2 cake pans, I'd start checking them at about 20 minutes and increase the time from there. I think I cooked for 30 minutes and they were a tad bit overdone for my taste). Remove from oven, and cool on a wire rack.


Banana Cream Cheese Frosting

8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
4 tablespoons ( 1/2 stick) butter, at room temperature
2ish cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 t. banana extract
1/2 t. vanilla extract (if you can't find banana, you can just use 1 full teaspoon of vanilla)

Place cream cheese and butter in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed until combined. Add confectioners' sugar a bit at a time, and blend on low speed until well incorporated, 1 minute. Add flavoring, and blend at medium speed until fluffy, 1 minute more.

Use at once to frost top of cake.

*I also topped the cake with chopped walnuts, but that was only for looks. I kept it in the fridge also, only because I am only on a cold cake kick right now. Cold cake with cold milk = heaven.

(the cake was gone before I got a picture of it; it only lasted 2 days! So I swiped one from google. It looks amazingly similar!)

Grilled Jerk Shrimp over Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Black Eyed Pea Salsa and Chipotle Sour Cream

Yesterday I took the kids to a friends house to swim. We got home around 2:30 and I put Eden down for a nap. Jacob stayed behind at the friends house, so the only person awake in the house besides me was Parker. I turned on a movie for him in my bed and he was down to rest for a few hours.

So what to do with myself.....but cook!?? I have not been to the grocery store since BEFORE we left for San Diego (which was on June 4th!!) besides once just to pick up some lunch meat, bread and milk. So basically I had NOTHING in the house. But I really wanted to cook!

I opened the pantry, the fridge, the freezer to search for anything I may have that I could make a decent meal out of. I had 2 bags of frozen shrimp. Ok, I can work with that. I had 3 large sweet potatoes in the fruit basket that I had bought before I left that we never used. They weren't sprouting yet, so they'll do too. I also had lots of frozen veggies. But what the heck do you make with shrimp and sweet potatoes and some random bags of frozen veggies?

My first thought was a chowder. I knew I had some frozen corn, chicken broth and some skim milk, so I could do something with that. But really, who wants chowder when it's 100 degrees out?

Then I thought I would put together a marinade for the shrimp, grill them and make sweet potato fries (which my family LOVES). But then that wouldn't solve my boredom and desire to cook.....so I started brainstorming...and here's what I came up with.

Grilled Jerk Shrimp over Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Black Eyed Pea Salsa and Chipotle Sour Cream

Jerk Seasoning

1 T. dried minced onion
1 T. onion powder
1 T. garlic powder
4 t. dried thyme leaves
2 t. salt
2 t. ground allspice
1/2 t. ground nutmeg
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
2 t. ground black pepper
1/2 t. ground chipotle chile powder
1/2 t. cayenne pepper

Combine all ingredients and blend well. Store in a covered container.

Grilled Jerk Shrimp

2 lbs. large shrimp (fresh or frozen), peeled and de-veined with tails on
4 T. jerk seasoning
4 T. vegetable oil
Wooden skewers, soaked on water for one hour prior to grilling.

Combine jerk seasoning and oil. Rub onto shrimp and refrigerate for one hour. Thread shrimp onto skewers. Grill on medium heat just until shrimp turns pink; do not overcook!

Mashed Sweet Potatoes

3 large sweet potatoes
Yogurt butter (or regular if you prefer)
Skim Milk
Salt and Pepper

Peel and chunk sweet potatoes. Add to a pot of salted, boiling water and boil until you can pierce with a fork. Drain and return to pot. Add a few splashes of milk and a scoop of butter. Mash with potato masher (I don't like beaters for mashed potatoes...I like them a little bit chunky). Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Black Eyed Pea Salsa

1 small bag frozen black eyed peas (or you could used 2 cans, drained and rinsed)
1/4 C. frozen mirepiox (this is all I had in the house. You could just do a couple T. each of diced onion and diced green pepper)
3 T. diced pickled jalapenos and a few whole sliced ones tossed in.
1 T. pure maple syrup
1/2 t. dried thyme
2 T. white vinegar
1 T. vegetable oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Add black eyed peas to a pot of water. Bring to a boil for 3 minutes. Reduce heat to simmer for 40 minutes. Drain and cool. In a bowl, toss all ingredients. Refrigerate for several hours in advance to allow flavors to blend.

Then finally for the chipolte sour cream, I just added some chipolte Tabasco to some light sour cream. Put in in a squirt bottle and drizzled it over the top.



So how was the creation? Pretty good! The shrimp were pretty darn spicy so next time I would either cut down the cayenne pepper to 1/4 t. or just simply add cilantro to the top to cool it down. Or just maybe plain sour cream as opposed to the spicier chipolte. But all in all I was proud of my creation and had a fun afternoon preparing it!

Bon Appetit!

Birthday Cake!!

Parker's birthday party was yesterday (pics can be seen on The Journey to Eden).

I decided to make his superhero cake. The cake itself is not from scratch (I know, I know....but it was for kids and they don't care. Plus the decorating was time consuming so I didn't have time to make the cake and the frosting on top of it. Sorry!) He wanted chocolate, so I did the top and bottom layer chocolate and the middle layer white. Just to spruce it up, I tie-dyed it so it would look "rainbow". They thought rainbow cake was pretty cool! I just divided the batter into 5 bowls and used food coloring to color them. Then I poured them in and ran a fork around in circles to swirl it.



I used a 10 inch squares for the bottom layers (each tier has 2 layers each), 9 inch circles for the middle layer and 6 inch circles for the top layer. I baked the cakes, let them all cool and them wrapped them in Saran wrap to put in the fridge to be iced the next day. It is a lot easier to ice a cold, firm cake than a room-temperature soft cake! I also put a cake board under each of the tiers so the cake wouldn't sink. In addition, I bought lollipop sticks (you could use toothpicks) and stuck them in each layer to keep it upright and keep it from sliding.

The next day I put a crumb coat on the cakes. A crumb coat is a very thin layer of icing to catch all the crumbs. Doing a crumb cake makes a huge difference in how the cake looks. If you don't crumb coat it, inevitably you will have some crumbs here and there in your frosting that are visible. If you are just making a cake to enjoy at home this is no biggie, but if you are making one for something like this, you want it to look as smooth as possible! Here's what a crumb coat looks like....



If you are crumb coating the same day you are frosting (which I would usually do), put it in the fridge for about 30 minutes at least so the coat will harden just the littlest bit. Then when you put your frosting on, it will look smooth!




After the frosting went on, I braved the decorating. I am NOT a cake decorator by any stretch of the imagination, but I did the best I could. After all, 4 year olds don't judge, and bats and webs are pretty easy. ;)


I had put the cake on a cake board, but wrapped it in blue wrapping paper. I put a small piece of wax paper under each side of the cake to catch the mistakes.

It was far from perfect but I had a ton of fun doing it!! Happy Birthday Parker!

Buffalo Chicken and Tomato, Onion and Spinach Orzo

So, this is another one of those "clean out the pantry" recipes. I needed a side to make with the Buffalo Chicken we were having (recipe below) and I didn't really have ANYTHING....so I made something up and it was a huge hit. Mike and the kids LOVED it!


Tomato, Onion and Spinach Orzo

1 box Orzo pasta
1 small yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 large handfuls spinach, coarsely chopped
1 can Rotel, drained
Feta Cheese
Beef Broth
Pepper

Boil Orzo in heavily salted water. (Salting the crap out of the water is what makes it so delish!) Saute onion and garlic in a small amount of olive oil until soft and fragrant. Add cooked orzo, spinach, Rotel and Feta (just as much Feta as you want). Stir and bring pasta back to heat while lettting spinach wilt a bit. Add a splash of beef broth just to moisten. Add pepper and serve.


Buffalo Chicken

1 package chicken quarters
1 jar Lawry's Buffalo Marinade

Marinate Chicken quarters in a large Ziploc bag with entire jar of Buffalo marinade for several hours (or all day, or overnight...whatever you feel like). Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Place chicken quarters in 9X13 baking dish and pour remaining marinade over chicken. Cook for 30 minutes. Embarrassingly easy and DELISH!! (and cheap too!)

Heres what the jar looks like!

Chopped Salad

Ok so I LOVE the chopped salad at the Cheesecake Factory. It is on the side salad menu, but has chicken so it is just perfect for a main meal (espesh at lunch!) It has to be one of my favorite things to order at a restaurant. It isn't gargantuan like everything else at the CF seems, and it is really tasty. So, here's how I make it at home! (I really do think it is as good. Hope you agree.)


Chopped Salad

2-3 romaine hearts, chopped small
4 Roma tomatoes, diced
3 green onions, chopped
Frozen, fresh off the cobb, or canned (with no salt added) corn. About 1 C.
1-2 diced avocados (depending on the size, if they're the size of Nerf footballs you only need one)
1 granny smith apple, diced
5 pieces turkey bacon, crumbled
1/2 container crumbled blue cheese
1 handful chopped cilantro
2 C. cooked chicken, diced (I use about 1/2 rotisserie or 2 breasts)

Dressing:

1/2 C. olive oil
1/4 C balsamic vinegar
2 T. Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, minced

Combine all dressing ingredients in a jar and shake very well. Refrigerate for several hours before serving to allow the flavors to mix.


Place all salad ingredients in large bowl. Dress and serve.

This is a perfect side dish to bring to a party. Everyone LOVES it and it is healthy. If you are making it for your family, it makes a lot, so serve out some and then dress it, leaving the rest of the salad undressed for lunch later in the week. It is perfect! Enjoy! :)

This weeks cooking

So lets see what I have made this week worth blogging about....

Red Velvet Cake
Lemon Cake
Tomato, Onion and Spinach Orzo
Roasted Buffalo Chicken
Large Grilled Sub Sandwich (family loves this)
Chicken Chopped Salad

Now who wants what? Comment and I will do blogs on them. :)

Taco Salad!

I'm back! :) OK, well just temporarily perhaps.....

I am thinking of re-vamping K is for Kitchen. I am still going to have recipes on here, but I am also thinking of taking it a different direction. Details to come....

I am so sorry for the neglect all you chefs out there! I haven't been cooking much myself due to a very busy sports schedule.

So I'll leave you with a very quick, very easy recipe that actually doesn't involve much cooking at all! Just a little chopping and a few cans to open. These are the kinds of things we are eating for dinner these days. No time for gourmet! ;)

Our Favorite Taco Salad

1 bag iceberg lettuce
1 tomato, chopped
Red onion, chopped
Cilantro
1/2 can corn
1/2 can black beans
1 avocado, diced
shredded cheese
1 packet taco seasoning
1 package ground turkey
Newman's Own Southwest Dressing
Lime (optional)
Thin tortilla chips

Prepare ground turkey according to directions on the taco seasoning packet. Layer the other ingredients in order, starting with lettuce on bottom. Pour hot, cooked turkey on top. Squeeze 1/2 lime on top of meat and toss with lightly with salad dressing. Arrange chips on plate in an "O" shape and serve salad in center. Enjoy!



Here's what the dressing looks like. It is fairly low in calorie and DO NOT substitute! It makes the salad. :) Tastes creamy so you do not need extras like sour cream. Also this recipe makes a lot more than one meal! I usually end up up scooping half of it into a bowl to toss with the dressing so I can store the rest in the fridge for quickie lunches for myself. Perfect!



This recipe (and the weather) also goes perfect with this.

Loaded Corona

1 Corona or Corona Light
Bacardi Limon

Open corona and fill the neck with Bacardi Limon. WOW. Thank me later for this. ;)