Coffee Cake

Another week, another recipe to try! With things still be as they are and trying to stick close to home as much as possible, I have found baking to be one of the things to look forward each week. Today I have for you a basic coffee cake. This is great with afternoon tea and to include in a brunch (when you can finally have one again). It’s simple and plain but very moist. One recipe makes a lot so luckily it’s easy to freeze!

Ingredients

For the cake:

3 cups of flour

1 tbsp. of baking powder

1 tsp. of baking soda

1 tsp. of ground cinnamon

¼ tsp. of salt

1 ¾ cups of plain yogurt or sour cream

1 cup of brown sugar

1 cup of granulated sugar

3 eggs

7 tbsp. of melted and cooled butter

For the topping:

1/3 cup of brown sugar

1/3 cup of granulated sugar

1/3 cup of flour

4 tbsp. of softened butter

1 tbs. of ground cinnamon

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Butter two round 9 inch cake pans.

I like to mix my topping first and set aside. In a medium mixing bowl, add all of the topping ingredients and then squish with your hands until you’ve got a chunky sand consistency.

In another mixing bowl, add all of your dry ingredients and whisk.

In another bowl, add the sugars, eggs, yogurt/sour cream, and butter and whisk up until all combined.

Slowly add the dry mixture into the wet and stir until all incorporated. Distribute evenly into both the prepared pans and top with your “sandy” topping. Divide the topping between the two cakes. It may look like a little much but it’ll be fine. 

These cakes puff up when cooking so it might be a good idea to put them on a cookie sheet just in cake of overflow which I have had and then the smoke and burning begins! Allow to cool and then slice. I like to keep the cakes in the pans to store and slice if I'm not freezing them otherwise it can get messy. Enjoy. 

Banana Bread

A few posts back we had started our mini baby shower planning theme. With all that is happening in the world right now, we are delaying the baby shower that we were planning and blogging about until later on. When we figure out a new date and pick up with our planning, then we will continue with that mini theme.

Since many people are having to stay inside and isolate themselves, we thought that we should do some posts of things to do while you’re staying home.

Today we have Margie’s Banana Bread recipe that we are going to share with you. It’s super simple and quick to throw together. It’s also super yummy and perfect for a nice snack or to have with your morning tea or coffee.

You will need...

6 tbsp. of butter

1 cup of brown sugar

4 eggs

3 cups of flour

2 tsp. of baking soda

4 tsp. of baking powder

2 tsp. of vanilla

6 bananas

First of all, this is the original recipe doubled so that you get two loaves. I actually tripled the recipe and made three loaves and froze one for a rainy day.

Here we go.

Cream the butter and sugar and eggs.

In a medium bowl, mix the flour, soda, and powder.

Defrost, if you're using frozen bananas, the bananas. Then mash the bananas in another bowl.

Alternately, add the banana and flour mix o the wet mixture in the mixing bowl.

Once everything is mixed together, stir in the vanilla.

Now you can leave them all plain if you want to, but we like to add some chocolate chips to at least one of the loaves. Usually 1-2 cups of chocolate chips is good. It all depends on how chocolatey you want it.

Pour batter evenly into pans (butter them slightly so they don’t stick).

Bake at 350 degrees for 60-70 minutes.

Cool slightly before cutting.

 Enjoy! Oh, and Happy Spring too!

Popsicle Stick Crafts

It’s almost Oscar Dress card time. We have one more week left to go. This week we thought we’d find use for some of those popsicle sticks that we had left over from other crafts that we had made.

Nicole found some pretty neat crafts that we can make and they are super easy and don’t use that many supplies.

The first craft that we’re making is a shelf from popsicle sticks. We’re using slightly bigger ones and we’re leaving them unstained and unpainted but you can paint them if you like.

Basically you pick a shape, we’ve chosen a hexagon and then you build up from there. Lay out your shape first so you get all the right angles. If you choose a more complex shape then you might want to print out a template and then lay it all out.

You can make it as big as you want, it just depends on how many popsicle sticks that you have. It would probably work best with an even amount of sides though.

Make sure all your gluing is even so that you have a consistent gap between all layers.

You can hang it for decoration or as a shelf. Make it whatever you want!

The second craft that we’re making are coasters made from popsicle sticks.

For each coaster you’ll want to cut off the rounded tips of the sticks, 15 per coaster.

Then sand the ends so they aren’t jagged.

Now time to paint/stain them. You can pre-paint each stick or you can paint the entire thing after it’s put together. Up to you. For the painted one, we opted to paint the sticks first and then assemble the pieces together. You can really paint them whatever colour you want, we’re going for more of a rustic look so we are trying out brown paint on one and then a coffee stain on the other.

If you’re going to try and stain the sticks, make some stronger coffee. Set aside to cool and then soak the pre-glued coaster in the coffee stain for as long as you want. Check periodically to see if it’s the colour you’re wanting. We left ours in a lidded plastic container with a rock on top to hold it down otherwise it would float and you’d have to keep on flipping it. Ok...so we tried the gluing first and then soaking. FYI it melts the glue and it falls apart. If you are going to go with a stain, then stain all the sticks beforehand and allow them to dry and then glue your coaster together. 

Your coaster is going to be a bunch of evenly spaced horizontal slats connected by three support sticks if that makes sense. To assemble the coaster...lay out the top and bottom slat and then glue the vertical end supports on first. We found it better to put the glue on the ends of the slats. Then glue the center support on.

Once you have your frame/box glued, then start gluing on the slats. Flip over and repeat.

Now you have a palate looking coaster.

Lastly, you can stencil on sayings or words to the coasters if you want to. This might be easier if you glue the sticks closer together. You can also use a black Sharpie if you want to make it look like there are little nail holes or you can use a felt pen to write words on it. If you want to ensure that your coaster stays in good shape and is durable, you can spray it with a water protectant spray.