Any Old Fruit Cake Recipe

Here' a treat for you! This cake recipe is from my great-grandmother and is called Any Old Fruit Cake. It's a little different; it tastes is similar to a spice cake but sweeter, and its very moist and dense.

1 qt plumbs, apricots, or whatever fruit you have canned (canned in mason-jar qts)*
1/2 C vegetable oil
2 eggs
2 C sugar
3 C Flour (abt)
4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cloves
1 C chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

Combine fruit, oil, and eggs. Combine dry ingredients and add to liguid ingredients. Beat for two minutes with electric mixer. Add nuts if used. Turn into oiled baking pan. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

*drain 2 quarts of fruit, making sure you have one full quart of the pulp for this recipe (use juice for a drink or jelly)

Frost cake with cream cheese frosting and enjoy!

p.s. I have no idea how this cake works with decorating. It's super yummy and nice for a change, though!

A Humbling Disaster

There are always moments in life that remind us just how far we are from where we want to be.

I had one of these moments last week when I was out of town. My sister graduated from college and I told her I'd make a cake for her. I didn't have enough room to bring all of my supplies with, so I just bought a few tips, a decorator bag, and some gel colors, thinking I could work with just buttercream.

Whoops!

I'll be brief:

warm cake + cold, stiff frosting + too much water (to compensate for stiff frosting) = complete disaster.

Being in a rush and having no plan doesn't not help either.

Strawberry Cake Filling Fecipe

While my previous cake may have been a visual failure, the taste sure made up for it!

This is the filling recipe I used, and its super quick and easy to make. I think it is best paired with plain white cake (since the it's already so sweet and you don't want to distract from the flavor). I used plain vanilla icing, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to mix in some pureed strawberries to the icing.

I found the recipe here , but it's short so I'll just post it:
2 1/2 cups coarsely chopped fresh strawberries
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch

1. Bring all ingredients to a boil in a heavy small sauce pan, stirring constantly and crushing berries slightly with back of spoon.
2. Boil 2 minutes to thicken, stirring constantly (mixture will be slightly chunky).
3. Pour into bowl and cool completely.

So easy and so delicious!

Foodwriters-A Failed Attempt

I bought some Wilton FoodWriters the other day thinking they'd by fun to try. They're basically markers filled with food coloring. You can buy a pack of 5 for like $4. I planned on using them instead of painting on the cake surface like I had tried (somewhat successfully) before. I even practiced working with the food writers before attempting to use them on the actual cake, and everything was looking alright. However, I didn't take into consideration when I was practicing (on a flat surface) that the surface of the cake would be perpendicular, thus forcing me to use the markers vertically which makes it hard for the "ink" to flow.
SOoOooo...when I drew on the cake with the markers held like that the lines came out either too faint and blotchy (using the tip) or too thick (from having using the sides of the marker since basically no ink came out of the point). Pooh. I wanted to draw more (as you can tell there is too much of nothing on the cake), but I stopped because what I had already drawn was turning out so icky.
I think the top turned out okay. I didn't put too much effort into making the strawberries, so they're not amazing. Meh.

Nevertheless, this cake turned out absolutely delicious, thanks to the delicious, sweet, fresh strawberries I used. I'll post more on that in a bit!

Foodwriter markers. They don't work too well on the sides of a cake. Perhaps they'd work well writing a message on the top of the cake.