Lemonade Cake

You know that feeling after you drink a big glass of lemonade on a hot day?  The kind of feeling that comes with the exhalation of breath?  Thats how this cake leaves you feeling.  

As a caregiver I've worked with a lot of people and so it's safe to say that I work with the most adorable 12 year old girl in the world! She's so sweet and funny that when my mom came to visit I couldn't help but want her to meet my adorable weekday charge. So we decided on dinner together, and not wanting to be freeloaders we decided to bring dessert.  One of my friends on facebook had pinned this recipe from pinterest and I'd looked at it briefly, debating perhaps on something else.  I'm glad that I chose this in the end because it was delicious.  

 So delicious that I decided to make it for my Grandma's birthday, and it was super delicious then too!(Ps. that's me and my grandma in the picture)

This cake is super easy to make and since some of the reviews I saw said that the lemon taste wasn't noticeable I added more lemonade concentrate.  The second time I made it I squeezed half the lemon juice into the cake batter and the other half into the frosting.  I've included the changes into the below recipe.

Cake Ingredients:

1 1/3 cup granulated sugar

6 tablespoons softened butter

1 tablespoon grated lemon rind

4 tablespoons thawed lemonade concentrate

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 whole large eggs

2 large egg whites

2 cups-all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/4 cups buttermilk
1 lemon (optional) (if you don't want to waste the lemon after you get its rind you can squeeze half of it into your cake batter before you add the dry ingredients)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. To prepare the cake place the sugar, butter, lemon rind, lemonade concentrate, and vanilla extract.  Beat these ingredients together on medium speed until it's well blended.
3.Add the eggs and egg whites one at a time, beating mixture well after each one.
4. In another bowl combine flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.  Blend together
5.  Alternate adding dry mixture and buttermilk.  Start and end with the flour mixture. Beat well after each addition to the mixture.
6.  Pour the batter into 2 round cake pans (9-inch) coated in cooking spray.  Make sure to tap the pans once on the counter to remove any air bubbles.
7.  Bake for 20 minutes, or until a wooden toothpick comes out of the center clean.
8.  Cool the cake.  (The original recipe says 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pans, and cool on wire rack)



The link to the frosting recipe is:
 http://experimentsinsweets.blogspot.com/2012/06/lemonade-frosting.html

Lemonade Frosting

This is the frosting that goes along with the Lemonade layer cake. 

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons softened butter
2 Teaspoons grated lemon rind
3 Teaspoons thawed lemonade concentrate
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
8 ounces cream cheese (1/3 less fat cream cheese is what I used)
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 lemon (optional)

Instructions

1. Place butter, lemon rind, concentrate, vanilla extract, and cream cheese in a large bowl and beat at high speed until the mixture is fluffy. **Use the remaining half of the lemon and squeeze the juice into the frosting mixture if you want to add more of the lemon taste to your frosting.
2. Add the powdered sugar and beat on a low speed until blended, be careful not to over beat the mixture.
3.  Chill 1 hour.  I waited until my cake was completely cool before I made the frosting.  Once it was done I just frosted my cakes and if it seemed like it needed a bit of time I put it in the fridge.

To frost the cake:
spread some of the frosting on top of one of the cake rounds.  Put the other cake round on top and finish frosting the top and sides of the cake.  Store cake loosely covered in the fridge.

Icing that hardens

This is the frosting that goes onto the sugar cookies recipe. =] It tastes good and once it hardens on the cookie it's amazing <3

Ingredients:

2 Cups confectioners sugar (the original recipe owner says it has to be sifted, but I didn't sift mine)

1 tablespoon milk (add more if its too thick to spread nicely on cookies)

1 tablespoon light corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon almond extract ( you can use 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla if you run out of almond)

Food coloring

Directions:

1. In a small bowl mix the powdered sugar with milk (start with 1-2 tablespoons) if it's too thick at the end of adding everything else add more milk.

2. Beat the corn syrup and almond extract into the icing until it becomes smooth and glossy, you can add a small amount of corn syrup if the icing is too thick.

3. Divide the frosting into as many different bowls as you want. My friend Sam and I used 4 bowls. Once you've divided it evenly into the bowls add the food coloring until you get the color you wanted.

4. Paint the icing over the cookies either using a brush or dipping the edges into the cookies. We bought a pack of cheap paint brushes and used one for each color.

5. Let your cookies set on wax paper until the frosting hardens completely and then om nom nom!

Sugar Cookies

I found this recipe on food.com a user on there posted it, but because I'm terrified of losing amazing recipes I'm going to put it here so it doesn't get lost.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon of almond extract

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1. In a large bowl combine butter with sugar, eggs, vanilla and almond extract. Beat using an electric mixer on high until fluffy.

2. In another bowl combine flour with baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Gradually stir the dry mixture into the butter mixture until it's well blended.

3. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours.

4. Set oven to 400 degrees

5. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper

6.On a floured surface roll out the dough into about 1/4-inch thickness. Cut out the shapes you want using cookie cutters and put them 2 inches apart on cookie sheets.

7. Bake 4-6 minutes. If they aren't quite done try them for another minute or so.

8. Remove cookies and cool completely before icing, or eat them straight.

I really enjoyed these cookies <3 my friend Sam and I doubled the batch and then painted the frosting onto the cookies, where we let them sit for about an hour until the frosting had hardened.

Tie-dye Cupcakes

I saw a picture of a tie-dye cupcake once. It was beautiful!!! So I forced our mutual friend Sam into making them with me. This was also something I made the night before the fall semester started.

You can use a boxed white cake mix or funfetti mix those work fine and you can skip down to the part about tie-dying the batter. Here's my thing about cake mixes though. I think that the cake is too soft and fluffy, also the cake mix absorbs more than just the color of the food coloring. So you bite into the cake only to get the taste of food coloring. Here's a simple white cake recipe that I found online (again I never seem to know where I find them because I write it out on loose leaf paper and put it in a binder)

Ingredients:

1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup milk

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line your muffin pans with paper liners or if you want to make it into an actual cake grease your pan and add a little flour. (The flour keeps the cake from sticking and also helps the cake from absorbing the oil you use to grease the pan)
2) In a medium bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs one at a time and then stir in the vanilla.
3)Combine flour and baking powder, add it all to the creamed sugar and butter mixture and mix it well.
4) Add the milk a little bit at a time until the batter is smooth.

Here's the fun part =]
tie dye:
First ask how many colors you want? In the picture there are 3 colors: blue, purple, and green.
1. Get 3 bowls out.
2. split the batter into the 3 bowls.
3. Add food coloring until the batter is whatever color you want it to be.
4. Spoon little bits of the batter into your paper liners or into the pan your baking. Layer them however you want and then you can either leave them the way you layered them or you can stir a spoon around once or twice to mix the colors.

Cupcakes: Bake for 20 to 25 minutes
Pan: Bake for 30 to 40 minutes
The cake is down when it springs back after you poke it.

For the frosting I used the cream cheese frosting recipe and I put a little bit of it into the middle of the cupcakes for filling. The frosting is kind of soft and it has the tendency to want to run off the cupcakes, so I put the cupcakes into the fridge which made the frosting harden and added to the denseness of the cake. They were yummy <3 Also I didn't have cupcake liners when I made this so the outsides of my cake became brown.

Caramel Popcorn

It's getting closer to the holidays, which means giant tins of popcorn are going to start coming out of hiding and being sold. Don't get me wrong I LOVE popcorn tins but why not make your own caramel popcorn? This recipe is from my other mother <3 she's my co-bloggers mom and ever since I was little I've been tagging along to see musicals, Disneyland, and the last release of the Harry Potter books with them.


Ingredients:

2 Cups light brown sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1 cup butter
1 tsp baking soda
6 quarts popcorn (just regular popcorn of course =])

(P.s. 6 quarts =24 US cups)


Directions:

1) Mix brown sugar, corn syrup, and butter into a saucepan. Boil rapidly on medium heat until it reaches a temperature of 260 degrees.
2.) Pop the popcorn in either a popcorn popper, or in a pan on the stove. If you're making it using the stove put a little bit of oil at the bottom of a large pan and let it heat up, add your popcorn kernels and listen to the sound of exploding corn, when the popping slows down remove from heat and let sit for a couple of minutes.
NOTE: for this recipe you'll need to remove as many un-popped bits as you can
3.) Remove the caramel mixture from the heat, add the baking soda, and pour over the prepared popcorn. It's easiest to pour it over if the popcorn is on a buttered pan.
4.) Bake 1 hour at 200 degrees.
5.) Stir 3 or 4 times while its cooking. I'd say every 15-20 minutes go in and pull the pan out and stir the popcorn around, make sure that the caramel covers the corn completely. You can add nuts if you want to the popcorn mix.


Keep the leftovers (if there are any) in a tightly sealed container.

Cinnamon Rolls

First day of the fall semester rolls around and to give myself a little incentive to get out of bed I made cinnamon rolls. This is the recipe I found online, but can't seem to find again.

Ingredients

3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup margarine, softened
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 (.25 ounce) package instant yeast
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup water
1 egg
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 cup margarine, softened
1/2 cup raisins (optional)


Directions:

1) Heat the milk in a small saucepan until it bubbles, then remove from heat. Mix in margarine; stir until melted. Let cool until lukewarm.
2 )In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 1/4 cup flour, yeast, sugar and salt; mix well. Add water, egg and the milk mixture; beat well. Add the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition. When the dough has just pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth, about 5 minutes.
3) Cover the dough with a damp cloth and let rest for 10 minutes. While you wait, in a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, cinnamon, softened margarine.
4) Roll out dough into a 12x9 inch rectangle. Spread dough with margarine/sugar mixture. Sprinkle with raisins if desired. Roll up dough and pinch seam to seal. Cut into 12 equal size rolls.
5) Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Bake in the oven 20 minutes, or until browned.Let them cool. Serve warm

You can put the cinnamon rolls into muffin cups so they stay small, however I put them on the pan as they were and they became huge delicious cinnamon rolls.

For the icing I used the cream cheese frosting recipe, which was amazing. After they were done I put the rest of them in the refrigerator. These were super delicious <3