Coconut Cake with Lime Frosting

February 15, 2012 by Monica in Baking, Cake, Desserts, Events, Family, Family Cookbook, Sweets

I’ve written about having a signature cake before here. The one that your friends and family always ask for when you ask the inevitable question, “What cake would you like for your birthday?”

Around these parts it’s always the Tres Leche cake or Coconut Cake.

By now all of you know my love affair with everything that is coconut, and this cake is one of my favorites, more so than the before mentioned Tres Leche and I LOVE that cake. I don’t make them often and I think, unconsciously, I reserve them for very special occasions and that is why my family gobbles them up when the show up at special occasions.

This past weekend we were celebrating the little man’s birthday, and when I asked him what cake he wanted me to make, I was totally taken by surprise when he requested the coconut cake.

I was cautious, since I doubted that this cake was the right flavor that eleven-year olds will go ga-ga over. But, when I told him my concerns and tried to steer him away to a more kid friendly flavor combo, I was quickly told (and I quote) “It’s my birthday, and it’s my cake and if anyone else does not like it, then that means there will be more for me”.

Give it to a child to put it in perspective. We were a go.

GCC: Chile with Cornbread Top

February 06, 2012 by Monica in Beef, Cooking Club, Dinner, Entertaining, Gutsy Cooks Club, Main Courses, Pork

This past week Gutsy Cooks decided to join the masses and have open choice with our menu options and celebrate the upcoming Super Bowl madness.

The theme was to post our favorite game food.

Originally, we planned to have a couple of friends over for the game and that plan crashed and burned and it ended up being just us on a Sunday night.

Or actually just Tom, since I’m not a big football fan.

But, let me totally get off topic here and give a HUGE SHOUT to Madonna. You ROCKED the halftime show…you still got it, you still made get up and VOUGE!

*cough, cough* Back to our main topic… our dinner.

I knew that we were not going be eating finger food, so the only option for a dinner was the Chili and that was my starting point.

I gutsied up the whole thing, omitted some stuff, added others and totally went rogue and built my chili as a Sheppard’s pie. I wanted to bake some corn bread to go along with the chili and then had a light bulb moment and thought, why not add the corn bread ON TOP of the chili and bake it?

And that is what I did.

ABC: Glazed Cinnamon Rolls

February 02, 2012 by Monica in ABC, Baking, Baking Club, Cookbooks, Desserts, Sweets

I started writing this post last Sunday.

This final post is not what the original post was. The original post was much longer, full of explanations and key points and well, you know how I can ramble on and on.

Just so you know, I’m like that in real life too.

But, I was feeling it. I was in the writing “zone” - the one where it’s flowing and flowing and you are typing happily away.

Then about the third paragraph down, I stopped, because I got side tracked by a 180 pound dog tearing into the house full of soap and water.

Apparently Rufus, had gotten away from Tom during his bath time. And that dog made sure that we knew how much he hates bath time.