Cherry Almond Breakfast Cake

I recently found a recipe for buttermilk blueberry breakfast cake on Pinterest.  Anything with blueberries always catches my eye, and this recipe looked delicious.  I made it for breakfast the other day and boy was it tasty!  Perfectly moist and loaded with sweet blueberries, it won the spot for the favorite meal of the week for everyone in this house.  Not an easy feat.

I needed a breakfast item for a family breakfast on the 4th of July, and thought I would make this cake, but I didn’t have any blueberries, and I knew there would be other dishes with blueberries as well.  Jared suggested cherries, and I thought, “What the heck.  Why not?!?”  As I was putting things together, I decided a little bit of almond extract and a few ground up almonds would add a nice touch.  The result?  DELICIOUS!  Jared thought it was way better than the blueberry version – and this man looooves his blueberries.  The cherries were tasty, but I think the almond flavor is what created the home run taste.

I’m not a food blogger, but I thought I’d throw this one up (mostly because I’m so proud of myself for coming up with my own variation).



Cherry Almond Breakfast Cake (adapted from Alexandra’s Kitchen)

3/4 cup margarine, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. almond extract
3 cups flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. salt
3 cups fresh cherries, pitted and halved
1/4 cup almonds, pulsed in blender until the consistency of nutty flour
3/4 cup buttermilk  

1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Cream butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.

2. Add the egg and almond extract and beat until combined. Meanwhile, toss the cherries with 1/2 cup of flour, then whisk together the remaining flour, baking powder and salt.

3. Add the flour mixture to the batter a little at a time, alternating with the buttermilk. Fold in the cherries and almonds.

4. Grease a 13x9-inch baking pan (or something similar) with butter or coat with non-stick spray. Spread batter into pan. Bake for 35 minutes. Check with a toothpick for doneness. If necessary, return pan to oven for a couple of more minutes. (Note: Baking for as long as 10 minutes more might be necessary.) Let cool at least 15 minutes before serving.

Sooo Sleepy

You know you're tired when you fall asleep with a bite of breadstick still in your mouth!

Just can't let it go - it's so tasty!

Oh no, it's falling out!

Oh well - too tired!!

Flowers and Jam

What do flowers and jam have in common, you may be asking?

Nothing at all, really!

Here is a picture of the beautiful flowers Jared brought me for my birthday last week. Aren't they pretty?!! He is a smart man! He remembered that lillies are some of my favorite flowers. And the coloring on the two roses is sort of like tulips, some of my other favorite flowers.

Maybe you remember the movie "Alice in Wonderland" - not the cartoon version. I remember watching it as a kid, thinking what an odd story it was! And maybe you remember a song about jam. I think it went something like, "Jam tomorrow, jam yesterday, but never ever jam today." Well folks, we've got jam today!!

{Thankfully we don't live in Wonderland, although sometimes it feels like we do!}

We bought 3 flats of raspberries yesterday, which gave us 43 pints of delicious raspberry freezer jam, with 4 pints of berries left for eating!

Here's a picture of the whole process - 4 batches going at a time!

As a sidenote, I love jam, especially freezer jam. But after realizing just how much sugar goes into it, I'm kind of grossed out!

Do you realize that for every tablespoon of jam you eat, about 2 teaspoons of it is sugar?!?!?!

We used 23-24 POUNDS of sugar for all that jam!

Now that's a lot of sugar!

Food Food Food

I feel like food is the only thing I think about.

What should we have for breakfast...what should we have for lunch...what should we have for dinner???

This is sort of ironic for me, seeing as how food causes me so much grief!

But I'm in a slump.

A {huge} slump!

I need some new recipes!

HELP!!! ANYONE!!!

Leave me a comment or a link with some suggestions

PLEASE!!!

ATTACK!!

This is what happens when Rachel figures out there's a pie in the fridge...

Pesky Leprechauns!!

We invited the Leprechauns to come to our house on St. Patricks Day, and just look what they did! Those crazy little characters left a mess of our house - but everywhere they went, they left some "gold" behind. Maybe that will convince us to have them back again next year...

They pulled our piano bench out, turned it a weird way, and left the lid open!

They put a chair up on the table, and they left us a box of Lucky Charms for breakfast!

They turned our chair backwards and left it in the middle of the room!

They tied the drapes in a knot!

They got in a drawer, scattered lids around, and then just left the drawer open! And just look what they did to our toilet....

EWWWW!!! That's nasty!!(Josh wouldn't go near it - he wouldn't even flush it down!)

I'm not very happy about all this mischief, but the kids have begged me to let them come back next year. Afterall, they did bring us lots of "gold" AND a box of Lucky Charms to make up for all the mischief. Well, I'll just have to think about it!

For our dinner, we had Italian meatball subs, Irish style (we're not real big on the corned beef or pastrami - urp!), with green jello, celery, and carrots (gotta have some variation in color!). I couldn't resist the green hoagie buns at the store! (They're dyed green!! It wasn't a sneaky sale by the store to get rid of some moldy-oldies!)

And for dessert, we had Lucky Lime Pie, a very tasty, but very rich treat. (Unfortunately, I don't have a picture for it. But if you click here you can see the picture AND get the recipe.)

Blueberry Babe

What do you get when you combine Rachel with blueberry pancakes?

A great big - but very cute - mess to clean up!!

He's back!

For the last couple of weeks, Josh has been like Ghandi! Getting him to eat was almost as painful as getting Emily to relax for shots and getting her blood drawn. It just wasn't happening!! Day after day he would subsist on maybe a couple hundred calories. Wish I could do that! I think the real Josh is back, though. This morning, after eating an entire bowl of oatmeal, he said he was STILL HUNGRY! Don't know how that could be possible, but hey, it's Josh! So I told him to have some yogurt, which he readily agreed to and gobbled up quickly. Now, just an hour or so after he finished his PBJ and some peaches, he's complaining that he's hungry again and he can't wait. I wonder what he'll be like in 10 years or so...don't think I'm ready for that yet!