Chocolate-Cinnamon Bundt Cake

It was R Sr.'s birthday two days ago and the boys asked for a different chocolate cake. I had bought a new bundt cake pan and wanted to test it. So, this recipe was the perfect one to try on. Very easy to make with very little preparation ahead of time and with ingredients that are at hand.

The cake turned out nice and moist, without either of the key ingredients dominating (chocolate/cocoa, espresso or cinnamon). The recipe also asked for Mocha icing (sugar, butter and espresso). I thought adding espresso again would kill the flavor of the cake and so, decided to go with buttercream frosting.

Ingredients:

1 cup boiling water

1/2 cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tsp instant espresso powder

2 cups unbleached all purpose flour

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp salt

2 cups golden brown sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1 1/4 cups mini semi-sweet chocolate chips (recipe asks for 1 cup, but I think the extra 1/4 cup added to the flavor)

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Brush a 12 cup nonstick Bundt pan with butter, and sprinkle APF all over the buttered pan. Tap out the excess flour.

Whisk the boiling water, cocoa powder, and espresso powder and keep aside. Whisk flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat brown sugar, oil and vanilla in a large bowl to blend. Add eggs, beat to blend. Beat mixture until smooth, about 30 seconds longer. Beat in half of the flour mixture, then cocoa mixture. Add remaining flour mixture, beat to blend. Fold in the chocolate chips. Pour the batter into pan.

Bake pan for about 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes and invert cake on to rack to cool completely.

Classic Vanilla Buttercream Frosting:

1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks or 1/2 pound), softened (but not melted!) Ideal texture should be like ice cream

3-4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar, SIFTED

1/4 teaspoon table salt

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

up to 4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream

Beat butter for a few minutes with a mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed. Add 3 cups of powdered sugar and turn your mixer on the lowest speed (so the sugar doesn’t blow everywhere) until the sugar has been incorporated with the butter. Increase mixer speed to medium and add vanilla extract, salt, and 2 tablespoons of milk/cream and beat for 3 minutes. If your frosting needs a more stiff consistency, add remaining sugar. If your frosting needs to be thinned out, add remaining milk 1 tablespoons at a time.

Source:

Cake: Bon Appetit

Frosting: Savory Sweet Life

Indian corn

I was browsing for craft ideas last night, while R Jr. saw a picture of Indian corn and said "Let's do this, Mama....with lots and lots of buttons". I didn't have too many buttons so I gave him jewels to glue on it. It came out really pretty and it is so easy. I have seen similar crafts done with thumbprints too.

Halloween 2011

I always loved Halloween. It is one of my favorite days...ooh, the possibilities of crafts and food!

However, this year was a pretty quiet one, with R Jr. being sick on and off and me going through some tough times. But inspite of all of that, I challenged myself and carved three pumpkins.

R Jr. was Buzz Lightyear this year. He got to wear his costume the second he got out of bed and had it on till he fell asleep at nite on Halloween.

We made bookmarks for his friends and teachers at preschool

And had fun halloween shaped pancakes for breakfast...

Gumdrops!!!

R Jr. loves gumdrops so much. So, when I saw this recipe on Bakerella, I knew we would have as much fun making it. R Jr. was in charge of adding the colors and the essence. They turned out wonderful, though I would make a few notes to myself. May be, keep the pieces bigger next time, so you actually get to taste the flavor and not just the sugar coating them. I plan on doing these again for Christmas...So easy...

Spring is here!!!

I have been a huge fan of Ed Emberley and so R Jr. and I decided to do this this piece from his Picture Pie book. It reflects the weather outside which is hopefully here to stay for awhile. We used mainly two different sized circles here. A medium circle for the center of the flower, the bird's head and the leaves. We cut the circle in to eight pieces to get the petals. One eighth of the circle also went for the bird's tail and wing.

Happy St Patrick's Day!!!

R Jr and I did a few activities this week. But I am so running out of time, I thought I would atleast just post pictures before it is too late. I will not be blogging regularly in the future but will try to do my best to update once in a while. So without further ado, here's what we did:

Rainbow made with the side of his hand. His favorite one for St. Patrick's Day

Handprint and Thumbprint four-leaf clover

Rainbow Jello. Always heard about how time-consuming process this is. Will maybe never do it again. R Jr. just lost patience with this one.

I hope all of you have a safe and wonderful St Patrick's Day!!! Until next time, bye...

Handprint Leprechaun

There is some St. Patrick's Day crafts going on here....The other day we made handprint leprechaun. Here is the final result...

We painted R Jr.'s fingers and wrist orange and his palm light pink to get this effect. Notice how we skipped his thumb imprint here. I cut out the hat using green, black and yellow foam. We finally glued eyed and drew a smile with a sharpie.

Another one for Valentine's Day

I didn't know what to name this piece of art we did today...Tree of love or tree of hearts...whatever it is..I came up with this just because I was running out of ideas and realized that we had hardly used the stickers we got from the dollar aisle in Target. Pretty lame , I admit...but hey, everything is fair in love;)

Birds on a wire

We made these birds just before we went to bed last night. So simple and we used just one shape- circle. I cut out several circles from colored cardstock. I used the whole circle for the body, and cut out one-sixth of the circle for the beak and the tail. After he finished gluing the birds on the paper, I used a sharpie to create their eyes, feet and the wire.

R Jr. now loves to put up his artwork on the refridgerator. So sure enough, these birds found a spot on the refridgerator right away. I like the way he proudly displays his artwork.

Recycled crayons

I have seen this idea on several blogs and thought that I should give it a try myself. Target had these heart shaped silicone ice cube trays in their dollar aisle (a pack of two trays for $2.50). I melted a few crayons in a pan and poured them into the trays. It doesn't take too long to cool down...give it may be 10-15 minutes.

It isn't that easy to peel off the labels from the crayons, but a nice way to have a toddler engaged for a good 15 minutes:)

I realized that melting one crayon at a time and pouring into the mould produced better results though. Then you can mix the two colors in the mould by stirring with a toothpick.

Thumbprints in love

Now finally, that we are all settled in our new house and R Jr. is slowly getting used to his new preschool, we decided that we will not be the only ones left out in the Valentine's day spirit. So we decided to do this simple thumbprint art...simple yet so pretty and colorful(and we had so much fun doing it)

CSN Store product review

So it's been a while, but my last post was actually about CSN Stores. CSN was so kind to give me a $35 store credit towards a purchase from any one of their online stores. For those of you who don't already know, we just bought our very first home and have been in the process of moving and still settling in. So I instantly knew what I was going to use that credit for.......a much needed shoe rack.

The site has a very good collection, and based on the dimensions of our walk-in closet, the OIA Concord Four Tier Shoe Shelf fitted the bill very well. Using the store credit, it came up to $16 out of pocket and qualified for free shipping. I have owned many shoe racks over the years and none of them lived upto my expectations. So, I had my fingers crossed on this one. When the package arrived at my door, I was a bit apprehensive. It was really compact and flat. But the assembly was not hard at all. The screws for one of the tiers were not properly aligned into the grooves, so needed a bit of struggling. But it wasn't too bad. This is what it looks like after assembly:

This shoe rack is actually very sturdy and I like the look of it. It currently holds 12 pairs of shoes, which is half of our shoe population, so I have some pairs stacked to accommodate more. It is the perfect size and fits perfectly in our closet. See for yourself.