Thanks to the happy twist of fate that I finally have some breathing room on my work calendar I was able to spend most of yesterday preparing for Harry’s birthday dinner. It’s yet another step toward my slow lifestyle.
And, as my friend Martha would say, “It’s a good thing.”
For his birthday cake, I made one of our family favorites, Italian Cream Cake. I first found this recipe years ago in Bon Appetite magazine. Since then, the recipe has morphed somewhat, but it essentially remains the magazine’s version. I tried valiantly to find the original in the Bon Appetite repository that is now at one of my favorite website, Epicurious, but I suppose this recipe was published before the invention of the Internet. (Don’t laugh. It’s entirely possible that I have recipes from the Stone Age.)
As an added bonus to being a superhero wife and all-around star party-maker for my hubbie, my house smells fabulous—better than those wanky candles you buy at the mall. And if you need to know what “wanky” is, visit Urban Dictionary where you can learn all sorts useful expressions such as “jackass o’clock” (time to be a jackass) or “e 40” (a Bay Area rapper).
This weekend, why not slow down and make a fabulous dessert—or how about make THIS fabulous dessert?
Italian Cream Cake
Ingredients:
¾ cup butter, softened
1 ¾ cups sugar
4 egg yolks
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ¾ cups cake flower
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup half and half
4 ounces flaked coconut
4 egg whites
1 recipe for cream cheese frosting (see below)
Additional coconut, as desired
Directions:
In a large mixer bowl beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg yolks and vanilla and beat well. In another bowl, combine flour, baking powder and baking soda. Gradually add this mixture to the egg/butter mixture, alternating with the half and half. Stir in coconut.
In a small mixer bowl, beat egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Stir in about a third of the whites into the cake batter. Then gently fold in the remaining whites.
Pour the batter evenly into three buttered and floured 8” cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick or knife inserted near the center comes out clean. Do not overcook!
Cool for 10 minutes and then turn onto wire racks to finish cooling. When cooled, place the first layer on a cake plate and frost with the cream cheese frosting. Sprinkle on coconut and add the second layer and repeat, finishing the frosting all around. Pat coconut onto the crème cheese frosting for a decorative finish.
Store any leftover cake covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 or 4 days (if it lasts that long).
Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:
12 ounces cream cheese
6 Tablespoons butter
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
6 cups sifted powdered sugar (maybe a bit less)
Directions:
In a mixer bowl beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla until smooth. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating until smooth.
Enjoy!
Robin
Who doesn’t love butterflies? Everyone loves butterflies. But I do take issue with caterpillars eating my dill, particularly when it’s October and I won’t have fresh dill much longer.
This beast and some of his friends have been having a feast in the garden.
A bit of Googling tells me this is a Black Swallowtail Butterfly caterpillar, which apparently LOVES dill, fennel and–happily–Queen Anne’s Lace.
I am planning a caterpillar relocation campaign to start right after this second cup of coffee. I can’t just squish them because 1) I would feel very guilty and 2) RuthieJ would never speak to me again. But I am sure I can find some Queen Anne’s Lace where they can move for their second course.
Later Today…Slow Birthday Cake
You’ll LOVE this!
Robin
I want to start by assuring you that I was talking about gardening and, more specifically, about the importance of mowing the lawn correctly.
See, it was Sunday night dinner following the Packers-Redskins game. Captain, my brother-in-law, who is currently pulling duty at the Pentagon in some PowerPoint intensive job, traveled out here to the country to help Harry and Ben shout at the television. While they watched football, I did the following:
1) Made homemade pretzels for their halftime snack
2) Chopped herbs and mixed it into my homemade Neufchatel cheese, packaged it and put it into the frig so they could have cheese and crackers later
3) Washed, folded and put away approximately 50 loads of laundry
4) Mowed the lawn
5) Hand watered the drought-starved plants, including toting buckets of water to the far reaches of the lawn
6) Started dinner, which, to be fair, Harry finished. He can now make spanakopita. (Smart man!)
Well, Captain, being Captain, started giving a hard time to Harry and Ben about the fact that I was the one who was doing all the heavy lifting associated with the lawn.
Their response?
“Pheethhhhhhttt. She wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Although I appreciate, nay ENCOURAGE, anyone to be on my side in nudging anyone (anyone, please!) to pitch in around this labor-intensive household, I had to admit that they were right on this one.
I do not like for my husband and son to mow the lawn. In fact, I had been trying to figure out how to give my lawn that nice checkerboard pattern, but from my research it involves some sort of press device, which is too far to go even for me.
“Precision is important in lawn mowing,” I explained. “I like all the lines the mower makes to be straight and even. When Harry or Ben mow the lawn, there are always crooked lines and bits and pieces that are missed. It ends up looking like a $2 Navy haircut.”
Well, that was Captain needed.
“OHHHHHHH. That’s the worst!!!!” exclaimed Captain with great feeling.
Turns out he was talking about cheap haircuts, not sloppy lawn mowing.
“I can’t believe how hard it is to get a good haircut. And don’t even GET me started about coloring!” he went on.
Well, I knew that Captain was a devotee of all things related to hair since he started showing up at Christmas holidays with blond highlights. OBVIOUS blond highlights. This provided no end of amusement among me and the other sisters-in-law (of which there are many) because at nearly 6’7 and 265 pounds, there is nothing at all girly about Captain.
“I like to be a little different and go for the blond surfer look—that Coco Beach look. But it’s really hard to get it right at these salons with their foils and their caps. I have been brunette, blond with highlights, even RED. RED!!!! I had to call in sick when that happened until I could get it fixed.”
He went on…
“In the military, all these guys like to go for that high and tight look,” he said mocking the military bearing and stiff posture you see of Army generals in the newspaper. “But that’s what gets you promoted.
“That’s why when I was up for promotion for this Pentagon job I got a ‘high and tight’ cut and had my portrait re-touched to give me some grey hair at the temples.”
Well, of course, I was roaring with laughter. And Captain, always loving an audience, played up the hand gestures and stories.
Harry piped in with the importance of regular pedicures, which, of course, Captain also had opinions about.
Later, as he was getting ready to leave Ben asked about the bag that Captain had carried in with him. I thought perhaps he had planned to stay the night or had something inside he wanted to show us.
Well, no. Turns out it’s his “man bag.”
“But I’m no metero-sexual,” he said, meaning, of course, metrosexual.
He can’t bring himself to carry a leather satchel, so he carries this “man bag.”
Good grief. Man hair. Pedicures. Man bags.
Here I am worrying about straight lines on a lawn when there are such many more weighty subjects to worry about!
Tomorrow on Bumblebee…
More on the slowing down lifestyle.
Amused and Dismayed,
Robin
