Chocolate sheet cake (Debbies birthday cake)

So I must confess that while I love pies I have a fear of cake baking.
I know it isn't rational but there is a lot that can go wrong in a cake and you would never know until it comes out of the oven.
For example this chocolate sheet cake which I baked twice because the first time I mixed up the measuring cups and thought I was using a one cup when I was really using a 1/3 cup. I realized when I poured it in the pan that something was probably wrong but it wasn't until it came out of the oven too small, too thin and too eggy that we figure out what happened.

So I showed up to spend the weekend at the Longman's for Aunte Debbies birthday and found that I had forgotten something ... a present for her b-day.(Oops)
So instead of worrying about it I baked the cake of her choice a chocolate sheet cake with chocolate icing.
Yum

The recipe goes like this
Take one cup water, two sticks of margarine and four table spoons of coco and put them in a sauce pan.
bring to a boil. In a seperate bowl add two cups of flour and two cups of sugar.
Once the stuff in the pan boils add a teaspoon of vanilla, a teaspoon of baking soda, two eggs(lightly beaten) and a half a cup of buttermilk.  Stir it all up and them pour it over the flour/sugar mix. Stir for two minutes.
Put the whole thing in a baking pan
Bake at 325 for 30ish minutes.
(credit to Sandy Wallace)

ICING
So the icing is a little tricky but fun
Take a sauce pan and put a stick of margarine in it.
Add 6-7 table spoons of milk and four tablespoons of coco powder.
bring to a boil (slowly!)
Once it is boiling stir in a pound of icing (powdered) sugar.
 turn off the heat.
It might be watery but don't worry it will stiffen up.
(credit to Sandy Wallace)

Cabbage Fritters

So some of you are not from New Orleans.
So you may think that Mardi Gras is the only time people throw things off of parades.
You would be wrong.

On St. Patricks day it is traditional to throw all the ingredients for Irish cabbage stew off of the floats.
Both Courtney and Jessy were visiting me and we all attended the parade, me teaching them the finer points of begging for worthless throws, Courtney representing the Irish with her red hair and Jessy providing sardonic comic relief.

It is also traditional for girls to kiss the guys marching in the parade in exchange for the beads or small silk flowers they carry.....

So we came home with about a thousands cabbages, two little bags of carrots, no potatoes and plenty of beads and silk flowers.

Once we had put a whole cabbage into the soup it became clear that we needed something to do with the rest of the cabbages.So I found a recipe for cabbage veda. I fussed with it by using regular flour instead of the kind called for, adding in a whole bunch of sweet corn and a bunch of egg to make the whole thing stay together and some zatar and Tony Chacheres for taste. The end result was basically a latke with cabbage instead of potato.
It sounds horrible but it was actually really yummy especially with the sweet corn.

Crawfish pie

I made this with a lovely wholewheat crust so that Gail and I could
eat it during Tuesday club while watching dancing with the stars.
Got to love an Emeril Lagasse recipe

Honeydew lime popsicle

This is so pretty I thought it didn't need a recipe.

No chicken pot pie

Okay so this is a fancy recipe from a book but here is the scuttle butt.

Chop up some veggies (fresh)  boil them in about two cups of water with a bullion cube for like ten minutes.
Now add in the frozen veggies.
Last stir in a 1/4 cup of flour with some chicken flavoring mixed into a cup of milk.
Cook for about 5 min.

Now pour it into a dish, cover with pie crust or frozen puff pastry dough.
Bake at 400 degrees for half an hour or until the crust looks done.
Eat.
I think this might be the last pie for a bit
I do love pies but I'm trying to broaden my pallet.

YUMMY PIE!!

Don't kill Gail Quiche

So the last two weeks I have been taking my leftover pies to "Tuesday club"
The trouble is that the most faithful member and host of the club is Gail
The trouble is Gail has blood sugar issues so she can't have sugar.
thus I found a recipe for quiche which she can eat.
I bought whole wheat pastry flour too.
Jess mixed up the crust and we worked together to make the thing turn out.

It is an aussie recipe which made it a bit more complicated
Oh and we used an onion and a half since I like sweet onion
here is the link.

Chocolate silk pie

So this recipe is from chocolatepie.net
I did some weird stuff with this recipe
Jess is visiting so we went to Whole Foods to get some groceries.
The recipe calls for "chocolate wafers' but the store only sells chocolate coated vegan wafers so that is what we went with.
Then it called for Walnuts which we subbed out for crystallized ginger.


So basically we are ignoring the recipe....
It was labor day weekend so I made the crust at home, packed it and all the ingredients up and headed out
to visit the Longman clan. When I got there they were arrayed outside, the men clustered around Christopher's ailing Volkswagen beetle, the women are arrayed in chairs ... watching the men.
I stole some of the watchers to help me make pie.
It was a good time with Olivia pouring chocolate and Jess whipping cream while I chop up the pears.
The pie is/was super yummy

oops forgot the link for the recipe Here