Greek yogurt.
My new obsession.
Too many things to love.
One thing I'm not too keen on...the price.
But I live in Iowa...land of health and do it yourself, so I knew it wasn't above me.
A little research, a little milk, a big Crockpot and voila...
it was ridiculously easy.
And, if you don't mind a slight smell of spit up in your house, you can use a coffee filter to drain the whey, leaving you homemade Greek yogurt.
Next challenge...pie crust. I had a little help from St. Kim. Easy as pie...please note the peach pie filling I canned last summer as well as the sign that hangs in my kitchen. I'm so Iowan!
Not to be outdone by his little wife, Steve's craving for white bread resulted in this...
Mmm...bravo Honey!
Just thought I should mention why we haven't blogged in a while.
It was to be my crowing achievement but getting ahead was my downfall. We were having friends over and I was making a cake from scratch (and getting it right the first time...maybe that was the beginning of the end for me). I made the cake two days ahead. The frosting the day before. The day of I went to frost the cake...uh oh. Butter does harden in the fridge Melissa. Duh!
It was much easier to let Shannon help me out and not cringe since it was already the world's ugliest cake. We didn't have anywhere to go but up. Plus, when you smother anything in whipped cream, you cover all blemishes.
Shannon had to "sample" to ensure quality control. In the end it tasted great but was still considered an overall disaster.
Again, tasted great, but still considered a complete failure.
As Enrichment Leader I'm trying to beef up our clubs. So what better club for me than a cooking club? Last month's theme was soup, but this months was CAKE! It have me a good excuse to try out some recipes I've been dying to make but haven't been able to justify an entire cake for my little family. Coconut Cream Cake was prefect for the Easter season. It had just enough coconut flavor and texture but didn't take away from that cake feel.
Second offering...Double Chocolate Malt Cake with Cherry Vanilla frosting. I adapted it from a cupcake recipe from the Ultimate Recipe Showdown. Another adaptation...I downgraded it from Double chocolate to just Chocolate when I forgot to add the mini chips. Oops, gotta goof up at least one time per recipe. The cake was good, but I don't know if I'll make it again.
Finally, the 5 Minute Cake demonstration. It's a microwave individual cake and reminds me of the ones you can buy in the store. However, I would decrease the time to more of a 3 to 3 1/2 minute cake as I like mine more gooey and less spongy.
It was a fun treat to have cake for lunch, but after sampling 8 cakes, dinner was very light that night. (Araksya is so focused on the deliciousness, who can blame her?)
2nd - The "tres leches" were too much for the cake to soak up.
Oh well...we poured the excess on top of the piece we removed from the cake...mmm.
3rd - Getting the cake out of the pan. With all that sticky liquid, the cake was suctioned to the bottom of the pan. I gained a few bruises on my knuckles as Araksya pounded the pan.
But if FINALLY came out!
Thank goodness there were two of us! We traded off when our arms got tired from the thick as mud frosting. Not to mention it flew all over Araksya's kitchen.
Shannon was more than willing to sample our endeavours.
However, after one bite, she reminded me of something out of Twilight (if you look closely her eyes are red) and couldn't quench her thirst for more cake.
