A masterpiece ???!@#@#!!

Wow! I cannot believe that my last post was on February 1! Quite a bit has "passed under the bridge" over that past 23 days. I will spare you the details but I have been so busy and it has kept me away from my computer.

As I have shared with you before, I teach a young adult Sunday School class. Most weeks I try to prepare a morning snack type food to go along with our every-Sunday-morning -cup-of-coffee. Well, last Sunday morning I prepared a "Sock It To Me" cake. It is a sour cream cake with brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans in the center. I planned it to come out of the oven just before I left for class so that it would be nice and warm.

Everything seemed to be going well. . . however, I should have got a clue when the top of the cake began to brown extra quickly. This cake bakes for 1 hour -- so after 15 - 20 minutes had passed, I went to check on it and a bit of smoke was coming from the oven door -- just a little -- and it had the smell of almost burnt . . I opened the oven door and was shocked to see a dark, dark brown color on top of the cake! I placed aluminum foil over it to prevent it from browning any further - which didn't work this time :)

Finally, the 1 hour baking time was complete and the timer went off. I checked the cake for doneness and it seemed fine -- maybe a little moist, but it looked fully cooked. Since this was in a bundt pan, the blackened top would become the bottom, so I decided to cut off the burnt part before turning the cake out of the pan.

Here is the beautiful browned/blackened part I cut off.

YUCK!

And now the beautiful masterpiece I had to offer my class!

This was supposed to be a beautifully formed bundt shaped cake! I normally consider myself a fairly good cook -- so how in the world did this not test out as RAW BATTER?@#@!! The dark stuff is the pecans, cinnamon and brown sugar mixed with cake batter.

I quickly grabbed my phone to take pictures so the class would know that I tried to bring them something good to eat. Also -- I just happened . . to run into a few church board members on the way to class . . . with proof of the need for a new oven. :)

Guess what! We will be getting a NEW OVEN! The oven at the parsonage (church owned) has been there since the 1980's when the house was built! We have repaired it twice so we are not going to mess with it any more.

I would love to hear your recommedations as to brand, type, etc and your experience with ovens. I am going to measure and see if we can put in double ovens -- badly needed in a parsonage! I look forward to hearing your comments -- that is -- if you are still out there reading this blog :)

Love, Sherry

Feeding the "flock"

I have an awesome Sunday School class. Every week we have a treat of some sort and coffee. This week I made them an apple tart. They really liked it -- in fact, it's all gone! I took a picture of it to share with you.



This one is apple pecan but my favorite is strawberry/cherry. The class likes that one, too. That group of awesome people are so worth any effort I put forth to feed them -- spiritually or physically! I am truely blessed to share in their lives.

Love,
Sherry

Need some boredom? Read this.

You are about to embark upon the most boring post out in bloggyland! Ready? Here goes.

Among other happenings this past week, we have been in Vacation Bible School at church. I really have an easy job; I'm the computer operator/projectionist. The theme this year is "Studio Go". It is all centered around a game show. If you go to the link you can hear some of the music. In fact, we just love their music every year!

This afternoon I will be going to Michael's or Hobby Lobby to see if I can find a cake pan that will be the right size for B's baseball glove cake. My DIL bought a baseball cake pan but it 's not big enough to several the number of guests for the party. So, I will be making a baseball glove to sit the ball on. (Ooops, I ended the sentence with a preposition -- sorry.) In proportion, I'm hoping for it to look something like this. (They used a molded pan for this cake, but mine will be larger and there is not a pan that size I will have to cut the cake in the shape of the glove. Wish me luck!)



See, I told you it would be boring but thanks for reading anyway! :) Now you may get back to your exciting life!

Love,

Two for Two!

Yesterday I decided to make some chili since it was cold and icy outside (still is today, too). I reached for the chili powder and poured about 2 Tbls. in (as mother would say "measured by the elbow"). After I put it in . . . . . t-h-e-n . . . . for some reason (thank you Jesus) . . . I decided to glance at the label. Oh-my-word! I had just poured 2 TABLESPOONS of ground Red Pepper in instead of chili powder :0

Now what ???

I quickly spooned it out and rinsed the meat in a small colander. I then poured the rest of the meat in larger colander and rinsed it as well. It worked! I had to replace some other seasonings, but, no biggy. Fortunately no wet ingredients had gone in. The chili turned out great and was not hot!

That's what I get for taking a break from wearing my contacts!

I must confess one more cooking mishap of the day.

I also decided to make some No-Bake Cookies. I put in the butter to melt and measured out the milk. Only problem here was that -- for some reason -- I doubled the amount of milk. Of course, I didn't realize what I had done until it was in the pan with the melting butter. Too late to take it out!

So . . . I now have a double batch of fudgy, perfectly set cookies. I didn't "need" any in the first place and now I have twice as many as I planned. I guess my fellow workers at the office will be getting cookies tomorrow :)

I don't know what my problem was, but . . . for sure . . . I'm wearing my contacts today!





Love,