Marbled Bundt Cake

Time for a Father’s Day treat. My dad is always asking for a marbled something when it comes to baked goods so we tried this one out and it was a huge success so give it a try for your dad this Father’s Day. I know I couldn’t stop eating it when we baked it!

You will need...

3 cups of flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

¾ cup of buttermilk

1 Tbsp. vanilla

1 Tbsp. lemon juice

2 ¼ sticks of butter

2 cups sugar

3 large eggs

1 large egg yolk

3 ounces of semisweet chocolate chips

2 Tbsp. of butter

2 Tbsp. of unsweetened cocoa powder

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Prepare your bundt cake pan by greasing it and then flouring it.

In a two separate medium sized bowls, mix/whisk your dry (flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda) and wet (buttermilk, vanilla, and lemon juice) ingredients separately.

Now beat the sugar and the butter with your mixer.

Add in the eggs one at a time followed by the one yolk.

On low, add in one third of the flour mix followed by half of the wet mix and then repeat with remaining dry and wet ingredients.

Separate the batter evenly into two bowls.

Now it’s time to make the chocolate part of the marble cake.

Melt the chocolate chips, butter, and cocoa powder in the microwave until smooth and fully melted.

Stir the chocolate mixture into one of the bowls of batter.

It’s time to marble!

I put a dollop of each batter side by side until the bundt pan is full. That is one layer. Then on top of each dollop, put the opposite flavour for the top layer. Swirl it all around with a butter knife until you get your desired marbledness. You can also layer one flavour on the bottom and one on the top and swirl. I tried that the first time I made this cake but it didn't get as marbled as I wanted it. 

Bake for 50 to 60 minutes. It usually takes the full 60 minutes.

Allow the cake to cool for at least 10 minutes in the pan and then slide it out of the pan and allow to cool about 2 hours before eating.

You can eat it plain or you can make a glaze or icing to put on it (the second time around we made a caramel glaze). You can put whipped cream or ice cream and even some berries on top if you like.

Now it’s time to enjoy!

*You might have noticed that the last few final steps have no pictures. We were so excited to eat this cake that we got distracted and forgot. Next time!

Key/Change Holder Dish

In keeping with the key ring theme, we are making key/change “dishes” as a gift that you can give dad for Father’s Day. They come in quite handy. You can also use these dishes to hold jewelry or little knick knacks.

You can make these dishes from lots of different things. We are going with ceramic dishes and we are using a very cool technique to decorate them. 

You don’t need very many things to create this cool little gift. All you need is some nail polish (your choice what colours you’d like to use; we went with blues), a big plastic tub filled with warm water so you can dunk your dish, and a ceramic dish of some sort (we found a couple at the dollar store).

First of all prepare your work area and put some newspapers down. You might want to have some paper towels and some nail polish remover with cotton pads on stand by. You may also want to wear some latex gloves to protect your hands.

Fill a tub, big enough to dunk the dishes that you have selected, with warmer water.

First we drizzled the nail polish on the surface of the water, swirling it around to make a cool pattern.

Then we dipped the ceramic plate (we also made a little bowl) in slowly and the nail polish will stick to the plate. Don't wait too long after drizzling the nail polish to dip. It may start drying.

Once you have the plate etc. looking as you want it, find a good place to let it dry for a couple of days.

You don’t have to do this last step, but we used a protectant spray to keep our polish sealed on the plate.

DIY Key Chains for Dad

It’s the end of May already! Thinking ahead to Father’s Day, we are going to do a couple of posts all for dad, and this week we are going to show you how to make some key chains. We made these with dad in mind but you can make them for anyone at any time!

The first type was painted. We found some wooden cubes.  The ones we chose had holes already in them which was perfect for the last step of our project. You can pick other shapes as well and then drill holes in them before you paint them.

We painted the cubes. Now we decided to do three for each chain but you can do more. The more you do, the bigger the chain so I’d probably stick to 3-5. We chose some nice colour combos for the three chains that we made. Then we painted.

You probably want to do a couple of coats and then let them completely dry overnight.

Next we wrote on the cubes. I always like to lightly sketch the letter/design with a pencil first before I commit to a final design.

We used a Sharpie, but you can use paint with a really fine tip paint brush, and we traced over our pencil.

Write on all the sides or on just one, two, or three. Do whatever you like. We did a mix.

Since it’s for Father’s Day, we did a couple that say dad and one that says “I ♥ U”.

Lastly we attached some twine to the actual key ring, then the cubes together with the twine.

We connected a couple by knotting the twine between the cubes and then the other one we just put them all on a strand and knotted the ends so they didn’t fall off.

For the second key ring that we did we used hot glue!

First of all you’ll need to pick the paper that you want for the two sides. We decided on a pattern piece along with a solid piece that matched the pattern. Pick whatever you like. You’ll also want to decide on a shape and cut that out with scissors, a punch, or a cutting machine. Make sure the shape is slightly larger than the key ring you are going to use. You’ll need two no matter what size and what type of paper you use.

Lay out some parchment paper to glue on so that the glued piece is easy to remove.

Hot glue over the entire shape being careful not to go off the edges, and do that for both of the matching shapes.

Let it dry completely. Ours warped a bit so we flattened them under heavy books.

We then took some floral wire that we had left over from another project and twisted it into a loop with a “tail.” You can use a different easily bendable wire that you have or you can buy pre-made eye hooks.

Once the two sides are flat and you have your wire/hook ready, then put hot glue on the straight part of the wire/”tail” and stick it down on the inside of one of the sides.

Take the second side and put a thin layer of hot glue and stick them together.

Attach the key ring to the hook.

The finished products...