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white chocolate malted milk cake

By on April 3, 2016 in Recipes, Uncategorized

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This cake is like a Whopper candy or one of my favorite Easter candies, malted milk eggs.  There aren’t many candies that I like but give me a bag of Robin eggs or a Cadbury Easter egg and my Easter is happy.  This cake is easy to accomplish and very simple.  Simple enough to decorate with just a frosting knife when your trusty piping bag of 15 years splits down the middle just as you add in this frosting.

This may become our new Easter cake (we usually make pies but it came out really good and we love cake)

Malted Milk Cake

2 sticks room softened butter

1  cup sugar

4 large eggs

1/2 milk

1/2 tbsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups unbleached flour

1 cup malted milk powder

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup malted milk eggs, chopped coursely in a food processor

Preheat oven to 350.  Grease and flour two 8 inch round cake pans and set aside.

In the mixer, whip softened butter for a few minutes and add sugar.  Let it whip for 5 minutes on almost high until it looks smooth and kind of like mayonnaise. Add in eggs, one at a time and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, sift together flour, malt powder, baking powder and salt.

Add flour to butter mixture by adding a third of the flour and then a third of the milk until all the flour is added. Mix only until the mixture is free of lumps and do not over mix.  Add in the chopped up malted milk eggs and mix in just until they are incorporated.

Divide batter between cake pans and bake for about 30 minutes or until tops are golden brown and a knife comes out clean from the batter.  Let it cool for at least 20 minutes and transfer to refrigerator to cool.  Do not frost the cake until it is completely room temperature or cooler.

 

White Chocolate Malted Milk Buttercream Frosting

2 sticks butter, softened

2 cups powdered sugar, sifted

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

1 cup white chocolate chips

1/8 tsp salt

Melt the white chocolate chips and set aside to cool, giving it a stir every few minutes so it doesn’t set.  It needs to get to room temp before you can add it to the rest of the ingredients.

Beat the butter until it looks fluffy on medium high, switch to low and add powdered sugar a cup at a time.  Beat for a minute and scrape down the bowl.  Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix until it is all smooth.  If it is too stiff, add a little bit of heavy cream.  If it is too soft, add more sugar.  Frost your cake once it is cool.

I bought two bags of malted milk eggs in order to have enough of one color to add to the edge.  If you want to put eggs on the cake, put the frosted cake in the refrigerator first to let the icing get firm enough to hold the eggs.  If you don’t need all the eggs to be one color, then one bag is plenty.

Enjoy!

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awakenings under my nose

By on March 16, 2016 in Farm and Garden, Uncategorized

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You would think that being outside for a few days, feeding a fire, cutting wood, transfering almost finished sap to be boiled down to syrup that I would have caught all that I have been waiting for since winter.  Somehow I didn’t notice all the green things that have been pushing their way up through our soil.  It took Livie to come in to the kitchen with talk of little purple flowers.  Indeed there are little purple flowers and daffodils coming up.   It is coming.  All the awakenings are starting and I couldn’t be more excited for it.  Yesterday all of a sudden, every turn I took coming down the road to our homestead, it was as if those daffodils were jumping up from their hillsides to say “hey, look at us”.

How have I missed all of these little plants coming up?  I guess I’ve been running around here and there so fast that taking time to look around did not happen.  It is time to slow down a little and take it all in.  Cherry and plum trees are starting to bud out.  The chickens and ducky are loving our little running creeks and soon we will start prepping the garden.  Its getting so close.  I really need to put my plan on paper.  Planning the garden makes me so excited and at the same time it makes me feel like the rabbit in Alice and Wonderland, I’m late, I’m late!

I can’t wait for the redbuds to come out, violets and dandelions,  the feeling of crisp cool air on sunny spring mornings.  Walking around the garden in bare feet with a watering can.   The spring flush of growth, this is what makes me happy.  The days are coming where I will get to spend my days outside with my babies.  It is such a blessing to me and one that I cherish and never want to take for granted because having a daughter with children and two guys here who are on the cusp of being adults, I know that they won’t always be here with me in our garden.

My to do list is so long that I have to look at it and take it little by little and know that everything will get done when it needs to be.  My heart says to play with seeds and seed starting trays, my brain says that soccer practice, cleaning out the hen house and laundry must happen first but somehow I hope to fit everything in at some point.

It is so hard to keep inside and the kids have been doing their school work in the breezeway since the ground is still cold, soggy and quite muddy in many places.  Snow is expected on Sunday.  Hard to believe with all this warm sunshine everywhere but I remind myself that this is life in the Ohio Valley.  We will play this winter, spring dance all the way until the end of April.

 

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