Coffee Cake for a Crowd and a Puzzle Beyond Belief

Yesterday was the third time I made this cake and the third time that it was a charm! Everyone seems to like this easy coffee cake. My cousin's husband had three pieces and took three pieces home with him. Need I say more?

The recipe is made from boxed ingredients and super easy. It serves 32 people, although yesterday I cut the pieces a bit bigger, so there were only 20 servings.  The recipe is here if you'd like to try it.

While I have been baking, my hubby has been outside working a jigsaw puzzle of sorts.

hummm.....which piece goes next?

This looks pretty good!

Just about there!

How he figures out which piece to go where to fit so nicely and even around corners to create a path from the front of the house to the back of the house is beyond me. It is just about complete, when it's done I will take better pictures to share with you.

Baking Secret

Yesterday we celebrated the 60th birthday of a very dear friend, so Saturday I baked her a cake. She really enjoys chocolate cake with peanut butter icing, but I hadn't made peanut butter icing in years. You know where I went looking for a good recipe; Pinterest of course! While I found an icing that is now a favorite ( you will have to email me for the recipe, I think I'm keeping it a secret for awhile). My  mom complimented it twice; once she said she thought she liked the icing more than the cake.

Well, the icing is not the secret I am sharing (today anyway). While I was perusing Pinterest, I stumbled across a baker's secret, which I had not heard of before that bakes your cakes without that domed center you usually get when baking cakes. For those of you who like to decorate cakes know that you usually have to trim your cakes to make them flat and even. Well, go figure there's an "app" for that!

These are bake even strips that you wet and wrap around your cake pan before baking!  You can buy them in packages of two or four strips.  The package of two strips joined together was perfect for wrapping around a 13x9 pan. Knowing I was baking two cakes to make a double layer, I wanted flat cakes.

Behold, I got flat cakes!

I tried to take a picture while the cakes were baking so you could see how they baked from the outside into the center. If you look closely you will be able to see the outline of how the cakes baked.

Can you see what I mean?  Who thinks up this stuff!? 

The cake and icing were delicious! I was a happy baker not having to trim anything off the cakes and there were NO crumbs in the icing; didn't even need to 'dirty' ice it first.

* I bought my baking strips at Michael's but you could order them from Amazon.

From Nonna to Nonna

 These bearded irises or 'flags' grow from very old rhizomes.

My Nonna Rose lived with us, or maybe we lived with her; but anyway she grew flags in her yard when I was a very little girl.  When she died and my parents moved from her house, my mom dug up the rhizomes and transplanted the flags at their new home.

When my husband and I bought the house we live in now, my mom gave me a few rhizomes to plant in my yard. The flowers bloomed and did well, getting so full that I separated them and shared the plants with a cousin, and she planted them in her yard too.

Last year my batch did not bloom; they had hardly survived the winter. My cousin said she'd give me some of hers if what did survive (but didn't bloom) last year did not yield flowers this year. However, I am so happy to share that the few flags I have left from my Nonna Rose bloomed this year and are just beautiful! 

Gifts Received and Gifts Given

It seems I have lost my knitting mojo!  

I do have two projects though to share with you today. The first is a gift I received from a very dear friend. 

She whipped up this little rosary purse without a pattern and specifically for me....I adore it!

This is a little gift I knit for my mom to give to a friend of hers who just had her first grandchild.  It was such an easy knit, I am sure I will knit this pattern again. It is a free top-down raglan pattern from Ravelry.