Jaime's Darling Irish Cake

"Count the memories, not the calories"    

  For just about every holiday, I have a love of theme decorated baked goods. Especially cakes and cupcakes. They seem to be the most fun to make and decorate. Every Easter and St. Patrick’s Day I try to come up with a new design, usually something inspire by Pinterest. 



This past St. Patrick’s Day I attempted to make a yellow cake from scratch. It turned out pretty good. I still have some fine-tuning to do for aesthetic sake, but it was a very delicious cake!

My kids helped me decorate it and we had a blast. They always love helping me. This year they got to pick out the icing so we had vanilla/chocolate on the sides with white and green coloring. The sprinkles on the sides are gold and the shamrock in the middle was done with green sugar sprinkles.

 I printed the shamrock I found at: www.nuttinbutpreschool.com and cut it out, creating a stencil. While the icing was still wet, I laid the stencil on top and coated well with green sprinkles.

Jaime’s Darling Irish Cake

2 sticks (1/2 lb.) butter or margarine (room temperature)
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 cups Nestlé’s Irish Crème coffee creamer
3 cups all purpose flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)

    1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bottom and sides of cake pan and set aside.

    2.  Mix butter and sugar until creamy, then beat in eggs one at a time

    3. Add baking powder, creamer and flavoring. Blend until well mixed. Sift flour in, one cup at a time, for a fluffier cake.

    4. Pour cake batter into pans. The recipe I followed said to cook ‘until cake separated from sides of pan’. I used two round 8-inch cake pans and it took about 50 minutes for them to cook. But keep a close eye on it toward the end because it goes from uncooked to crispy really quickly!

    5.  Once you’ve tested the cake with a toothpick and it’s come out clean, allow the cake to cool, and then decorate as desired.

Faking Fancy; Breaded Chicken Italiano

                    10 minute Breaded Chicken Italiano

Fakin' Fancy

       While I love fixing fancy meals for my family, we often have so much going on that it’s hard to come up with something culinary every night. So, most of the time I do my best to fake it. 

          Last night, I faked Breaded Chicken Italiano, with Marsala wine and parmesan cheese. I also made a creamy Southern White gravy to go on top. Sided with hash browns and a salad fresh from our back yard garden and I was able to fake fancy in less than a half hour. And everyone loved it! 

Salad fresh from our garden

            As well as being super easy and quick to make, this dish is also really cheap. I love saving money and one of the main ways I do that is through grocery shopping. I like to buy from the bulk section of WinCo, a discount grocery store in the nearest city. The parmesan cheese and breading mix were both bought in bulk. I'll be discussing how I shop cheap and feed my family of 5 on a tight budget in later posts. 

                                          

                   Breaded Chicken Italiano

            1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breast

            ½ cup Italian breading mix

            ¼ cup Parmesan cheese

            ¼ cup marsala wine

            1 medium white onion

            1 bunch of green onion

1.     Cut up onion, in half, then slice the two halves into wedges. Cut green onions and simmer both in pan with 1 tbsp. butter or margarine until soft and starting to lightly brown

2.     Slice up chicken breast to ½ - ¼ inch thick, add to cooking onion mixture. Let cook a few minutes on one side on medium-high heat until it begins to turn white. Add marsala, salt and pepper and stir everything together until it’s cooked.

3.     When the chicken is completely cooked through (about 5 minutes) add Italian breading, and mix to coat well. Top with parmesan cheese and voila you have a tasty, easy and very fancy looking main dish!

   Jaime’s Simple White Gravy

          2 cups milk

          5 tbsp. bacon grease

          ¼ cup flour

         Salt and pepper (for seasoning)

1.     Melt bacon grease in pan on medium-low heat, stir in flour, salt and pepper and mix well until all the flour is soaked up.

2.     Slowly pour in milk as you continue to stir. Make sure you stir, stir, stir! The flour will burn to the bottom of the pan and become very goopey if you don’t keep an eye on it. 

3.     Continue stirring until it’s a consistency you want. Feel free to add more milk, if you want a thinner gravy. This gravy will continue to thicken up, even after it’s removed from the heat, so if it sits too long and gets too thick, just add a little milk or water and stir stir stir!

ENJOY!