This is the perfect recipe for when you need something good and you don’t have time to mess around in the kitchen.

Toni’s Very Simple Cake

• 5 cans of drained fruit (apricots, peaches, cherries)
• 1 box of yellow cake mix
• 1-1/2 to 2 sticks butter, cold

Sweet and tangy tangerine cake.

Tangerine Cake by Paula Deen

• Vegetable oil cooking spray
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 (8-ounce) container sour cream
• 1 cup tangerine juice
• 1 tablespoon tangerine zest
• Tangerine Icing, recipe follows

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. (Note: mine got pretty well done around the edges, so I might recommend 325 next time.) Spray 2 9-inch circular cake pans with vegetable oil cooking spray.

• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, room temperature
• 6 cups confectioners’ sugar
• 3 tablespoons tangerine juice
• 1/2 tangerine, zested

Chocolatey Cakey goodness!

The recipe is actually very easy.  Simply bake a boxed cake.  I used a yellow cake, which I made last week.  I froze half of the cake for later use, and made balls with the other half.  Once the cake has cooled, crumble it into tiny pieces.  This is where I got lost before — my pieces were not small enough!  You want small little crumbs.  Then you add frosting (for half a cake, I put in about a large spoonful) and mix until blended.  I used cream cheese frosting.  The balls should hold their shape, but not be overly frosting-y.  Freeze for 15 minutes (or refrigerate for a few hours) and then dip into chocolate, finishing with a contrasting drizzle.  I melted both red candy melts and traditional chocolate and used each for dunking / drizzling.  I used a little icing squeeze bottle (check out the small bottles from this Cupcake Decorating Set) for the red and wish I had done it with the traditional chocolate.  How much better does that red drizzle look?  I will let you see both my good and bad attempts!  I hope to get better at making these, and then advance to cake pops!

A little messy, but very tasty!

For more tips and tricks, check out Bakerella or her visit with the Pioneer Woman.  Have you ever made these?  What combination of cake and frosting would you use?

This next recipe is what really got me into cooking with figs.  As my  mom commented a few weeks ago, we went to a restaurant that had locally grown (by the waitress) figs as a part of their dishes — we had fig chutney with our cheese platter.  When I told the waitress that we were getting lots of figs from our neighbors and had no idea what to do with them, she ran into the back and wrote down this recipe for me.  How awesome is that?  And the cake — delicious!

Fig Cake

from Colleen at Farm Artisan Foods

Ingredients:

• 2 cups Sugar
• 1/2 cup Oil
• 3 Eggs
• 1 teaspoon Ground Cloves
• 1 teaspoon Nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon Cinnamon
• 2 cup Pureed Figs
• 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1/8 teaspoon Salt
• 1/2 cup Half and Half
• 2 cup Sifted Flour
• 1 cup Chopped Pecans (I use White Chocolate Chips)

Glaze

• 1 stick Butter
• 1/2 cup Packed Brown Sugar
• 1/2 cup Half and Half

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Grease and flour two 9″ round pans.

Cream sugar and oil.  Add eggs one at a time.  Mix in spices, figs, baking soda, and salt.  Alternate adding flour, half and half, and pecans (white chocolate chips).  Pour into prepared pans and bake for 20 to 30 minutes in preheated oven.

For the glaze, bring all ingredients to a boil and then simmer for 5 minutes.  I have some issues with this step, as it always looks kinda funky.  But it still tastes delicious!

See -- the glaze looks a little odd...

What do you think?  Will you give this one a shot?

When I bake, foolishly I often try to do other things at the same time. This time, I’m gathering ingredients, measuring cups and quickly looking over the recipe. As I’m pouring the oil into the bowl, two questions popped in my head, only to be quickly ignored: I wonder why this oil has a twist cap? Why does this oil seem so gloppy?

It’s a good thing that I came to my senses about a minute later, and not while the hubs was eating his first bite. You see, I get my oil from Costco, meaning it’s in a huge container. It’s about the same size as laundry detergent. Yes folks, I put laundry detergent in the cake batter mix instead of oil. Yikes!

I’m just glad that I figured it out before I actually baked it. Reluctantly, I had to throw the ingredients away and start over.

Since this incident, I’ve wisely invested in prep bowls. Thankfully, my husband and family willingly eat what I have baked — now that my detergent’s home is on a shelf above our washer and dryer.

Have you had a kitchen disaster? Please share!

So I did what any good housewife would do — I got out the box of cake mix.  Devil’s Food Cake, I believe.  And I cooked it in a bundt pan, to make it look extra snazzy.

Then I realized we were out of frosting.  And the whole “making it quick and easy” thing did not leave me with a chance to make some from scratch.  So I melted some chocolate chips and drizzled them on!

The verdict: delicious!  You need to eat it quickly, or the “icing” gets too hard, like a candy coating.  You can always remelt the chocolate in the microwave.  And this is delicious with a scoop of ice cream on top.  The hubby said that balances out the texture and stuff, if it is a few days later and the chocolate is hard.

Have you ever made anything easy like this?

However, since I am so nice, I will still share the recipe with you.  I made this cake last July, for a friend’s engagement party.  It was a hit and a few people asked for the recipe.  Without further ado — Ree’s Shortcake Recipe.

Strawberry Shortcake Cake
by Ree a.k.a. Pioneer Woman

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup Flour
• 3 Tablespoons Corn Starch
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt
• 1 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 9 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter, Softened
• 1 1/2 cup Sugar
• 3 Large Eggs
• 1/2 cups Sour Cream (room temp)
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla

Icing Ingredients

• 1/2 lbs. Cream Cheese (room temp)
• 2 more Sticks Unsalted Butter
• 1 1/2 pound Powdered Sugar (sifted)
• 1 more teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 pound Strawberries

Be sure to use a cake pan that’s at least 2 inches deep! Before baking, the batter should not fill the pan more than halfway.  And give yourself a lot of time to make this recipe, as you have to do lots of waiting.

Sift together flour, salt, baking soda, and corn starch.  In another bowl (if using an electric mixer, these ingredients go into that), cream 9 tablespoons butter with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well each time. Add sour cream and vanilla and mix until combined. Add sifted dry ingredients and mix on low speed until just barely combined.  Pour into greased and floured 8-inch cake pan (remember, it’s gotta be a tall pan). Bake at 350 degrees for 45 to 50 minutes, or until no longer jiggly. Remove from cake pan as soon as you pull it out of the oven, and place on a cooling rack to cool completely.

Stem strawberries and slice them in half from bottom to top. Place into a bowl and sprinkle with 3 tablespoons sugar. Stir together and let sit for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, mash the strawberries in two batches. Sprinkle each half with 1 tablespoons sugar and allow to sit for another 30 minutes.

Make icing: combine cream cheese, 2 sticks butter, sifted powdered sugar, vanilla, and dash of salt in a mixing bowl. Mix until very light and fluffy.

Slice cake in half through the middle. Spread strawberries evenly over each half (cut side up), pouring on all the juices. Place cake halves into the freezer for five minutes, just to make icing easier.  If you do not do this, you will regret it.  Trust me.  I have made this a few times, and definitely did not skip this step the second time.  Remove from freezer. Use a little less than 1/3 of the icing to spread over the top of the strawberries on the bottom layer. Place the second layer on top. Add half of the remaining icing to the top spreading evenly, then spread the remaining 1/3 cup around the sides.  This cake looks best when you add strawberries to the top as garnish.

Cake is best when served slightly cool. The butter content in the icing will cause it to soften at room temperature. For best results, store in the fridge!

My Notes:  Make sure you get quality cream cheese (were talking Philadelphia & not Staters here) or the icing will just run all over the place!

My mouth is watering as I read this. Looks and sounds amazing! When I am concerned about how much frosting/icing is going to end up on the cake plate, I take a big square of waxed paper, cut it into 4 large triangles, and place them on the cake plate first so the points of the triangles meet in the middle – or cut off the points so they don’t go all the way to the middle. (It makes an “X”, with the longest side of the triangle an inch or so outside the cake.) Then frost, ice, let it run. when it’s set up or done running, slide the waxed paper out, and the plate underneath is clean. And you get to scrape all the extra icing off the waxed paper and enjoy it. Also, it’s nice to put some of your sprinkles on the cake plate too, as garnish.

I decided to give her technique a try a few weeks ago.  I was doing a photoshoot with a friend and needed a cake for the pictures.  Once I get the disc, I will share the pictures with you all!  Anyways, the frosting here is canned, but the technique still worked the same.  And yes, I kinda missed the memo on large triangles things (sometimes I don’t get concepts like that, but next time maybe I will do it right).  The squares worked just as well — and gave me more room to mess up anyways!

Next time I will leave the square cut out in the middle so I can stick a dab of frosting on the plate.  That should keep the cake from sliding like mine did.  Here you can see what it looks like from below

Right here, there should probably be a picture of me putting on the second cake layer and lots of frosting… imagine that picture in your head!  Now there is another picture of me flinging sprinkles onto the cake.  You see, I just wanted us to practice using our imagination today! haha

Can you see who came home and wanted to help?  This is the fun part of baking! haha

One fine cake!  And yes, it did taste delicious too!  I think if I had put a dollop of frosting on the bottom, like mentioned before, it would not be so far off to one side!

And in case you wanted to know where I found it… Dell’s Blog.  That’s right, Dell, from Private Practice.  Way back in season 1 he kept making these cakes for Naomi, and then the put the recipes in his “blog” on the ABC website.  Random, but amazing cakes.  And read his instructions, they are pretty funny, if you follow the show.

Holy Mother of Chocolate Cake

Cake:

• 3 ounces semisweet Chocolate
• 1 1/2 cups hot brewed Coffee
• 3 cups Sugar
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose Flour
• 1 1/2 cups unsweetened Cocoa Powder
• 2 teaspoons Baking Soda
• 3/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoons Salt
• 3 large Eggs
• 3/4 cup Vegetable Oil
• 1 1/2 cups Buttermilk
• 3/4 teaspoon Vanilla

Frosting:

• 1 pound semisweet Chocolate
• 1 cup heavy Cream
• 2 tablespoons Sugar
• 2 tablespoons light Corn Syrup
• 1/4 cup unsalted Butter

Supplies:

• Two 10″ by 2″ round cake pans (9″ x 2″ worked)
• Wax paper
• Mixer

For the layers:

Preheat oven to 300°F.  Grease those pans, line with wax paper, grease again, and put in a bit of cocoa powder (so it doesn’t stick).  Finely chop the chocolate.  Then mix the chocolate with the hot coffee. Stir until smooth.

In a large bowl, sift together the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt (if you do not sift, you may end up with clumps of baking soda, and that’s nasty). In another large bowl (I used my stand mixer for this part, and then added everything else to the mixer bowl as necessary), beat the eggs for about 3 minutes.  Then, slowly add the oil, buttermilk, vanilla, and melted chocolate mixture to the eggs, beating until it’s all combined really well. Add the sugar mixture and beat (on medium speed). Finally, divide the batter between your pans and bake them in the middle of your oven for about 65 minutes.

Cool the layers completely in their pans.  Run a thin knife around the edges of pans and invert the layers (mine were so moist that they just came right out, no knife necessary).  Carefully remove the wax paper and cool the layers completely.  I placed them on foil covered (to make flat) drying racks in the freezer.  This sped up the process, and made the frosting really easy!

For the frosting:

Finely chop the chocolate.   In a saucepan, bring the cream, sugar, and corn syrup to a boil over moderately low heat, whisking until the sugar is dissolved. Remove the pan from the heat and add the chocolate, whisking it until it’s all melted.  Now would be the time to whisk in that butter until smooth.  Put the frosting in a bowl and allow to cool, stirring occasionally.  Spread the frosting between your cake layers, over the top and around the sides.  Add little sprinkles if you so desire.  We used “chocolate paradise crunch,” as chosen & sprinkled on by my Matt!

Final Notes:  The icing is incredibly runny.  I just realized that I only used half of the requested amount of chocolate (8 oz) for the frosting…. that may be why it was so runny.  One pound of chocolate is 2 boxes of baking chocolate — at like $5 each, that gets expensive! Oh well, my runny frosting was still chocolately and delicious!