Get yourself to your kitchen, pronto. I mean it. This cake is so good. What is it?
Fresh Pear & Apple Cake with Maple Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting.
First, you take lots of pretty photos of your picturesque pears. Then, you peel and chop those babies up. Add apples if you don’t have enough pears. I used three pears and two apples. Mix a bunch of sugar with the chopped up fruit and let is sit and marry for an hour. Go and do something for an hour. I vacuumed.
Next, your gonna measure and mix your dry ingredients. Then crack four eggs and separate the whites from the yolks. Or the yolks from the whites, which ever you prefer. You can decide what you want to do with those yolks…just don’t throw them away. That would be wasteful.
Mix up your wet with your dry. Bake. Cool. Whip up some frosting. I taste-tested my recipe until it was perfect. Not too cream cheesy, just right. Now frost your cake and top with chopped nuts. I used walnuts. They’re good for you.
Look! It’s a piece of cake on my freshly painted chair. Remember, it was blue just a few short days ago?
That’s it. If you like, you can carry your piece of cake around and take pictures of it, or you can go ahead and eat it straight away.
Fresh Pear & Apple Cake with Maple Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:
4 cups peeled and chopped pears and apples
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 egg whites
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts
Directions:
1. Mix pears, apples, and sugars and let sit for one hour.
2. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray 13×9 pan with cooking spray and line with parchment paper.
3. Mix egg whites, oil, and vanilla. Add to fruit mixture.
4. Whisk flour, salt, baking soda, nutmeg, ginger, cloves, and cinnamon. Stir in the fruit mixture. Pour batter into prepared pan.
5. Bake at 325 degrees for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and cool completely before frosting.
6. Frost and top with chopped nuts.
Maple Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting
Ingredients:
1 8 oz. package cream cheese
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup pure maple syrup
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Directions:
1. Soften butter and cream cheese.
2. Whip all ingredients until soft and creamy.
Yes. That’s a flower petal waterfall, if you will, flowing down my shoulder. Cheri, from It’s So Very Cheri, twisted my arm and convinced me to make one. You may have seen something like this before. Say, J Crew maybe? Or on other blogs. This my my version.
I bought an organic cotton scoop neck tee from Wally World for $5. Then I found an old tee in my closet that would make perfectly aqua cascading prettiness on the plain black tee.
Next, I cut a bunch of roundish flower blob-like shapes out of the aqua tee. Cut through both layers to minimize cutting time.
Mix and match petals (I sewed two, stacked, at a time). Sew onto shirt. I placed them in a cascade starting on the left shoulder of the shirt. You can either hand sew or machine stich the petals onto the shirt. I did it by hand.
Then I asked Dameian how it looked.
Dameian: “I don’t know, is that what it’s supposed to look like?”
Me: loud dramatic sigh, “Yes.”
Dameian: “Yeah, it looks good.”
Hopefully the petals will stay on through a wash cycle. Once I run it through the drier, the petals should curl slightly and be a bit more fluffy.
This is my everyday look. Glasses, bangs clipped to the side, black tee, jeans, no makeup.
Here’s a quick and easy way to reuse an old jar.
Yes, I have a gazillion empty glass jars in my pantry. I’m basically like the “Cat Lady” of glass jars. I keep taking them in. Dameian finally put his foot down and said, “Enough already!” So now I’m trying to find other uses for them. Meet my new pen holder. Ain’t she cute.
All I did was take off the label of the formerly known as Tostitos Salsa jar, measure around, cut scrapbook paper to size, glued on. Simple!
There’s another photo of the jar in my last post about my new burlap-covered corkboard.
My craft project collection groweth to ginormous proportions and has taken over my dining table. Apparently, this has been causing Dameian much anxiety. Lucky for me, Dameian decided he wanted to eat dinner at the table again, so he bought me a folding table from Costco to place in my office. Now I just have to get organized. To start, I’m streamlining my desk space with some new accessories.
First is a new cork board. It used to be kind of sorry looking, but for only $1.99, I knew I could fancy it up.
Here it is after a coat of Heirloom White and covered with burlap. Everyone’s doing it you know. The burlap thing.
I printed out the word “treasure” (since I plan on tacking little bits of inspiration to the board) and placed it under the burlap. The burlap is loosely woven, so you can pretty much see through it. Then I traced the word and painted it with white acrylic paint.
*Note: Please do not use a pen to trace your word. The ink will seep right through the paint and you’ll have to apply way too many layers past the point of sanity.
Wrap the burlap around the cork board and staple it on the back. Throw, or gently place, it in your frame and admire.
You can even glue pretty shell beads onto thumb tacks just like I did. It’s easy.
Come back tomorrow for a recycled jar project.
I went to The Goodwill this weekend on the hunt for some pretty dresses. My goal was to find dresses with decent fabric that I can recycle for a few sewing projects. The Goodwill never lets me down – I found four dresses, a silk skirt, and two organza shirts – beautiful fabric and cheaper than the fabric store.
Here’s a mini fashion spread for your enjoyment. I won’t be wearing any of these dresses, but I thought it would be fun to pair them with different pieces from my wordorbe.
This next one was my fave!
I already ripped this dress up a bit and made this cute little fabric carnation pin.
Today’s thrift Treasures at Southern Hospitality Blog
Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch
Thrifty Thursday at Tales from Blogeritaville
