Super Easy Fruit Flan

Ever in the mood for fruit flan? You will be after you see how easy it is to make!!
To start, you will need what I like to call, a 'fruit flan pan'. I'm not sure what the technical name is for it, but it looks like this: WHAT?! You don't have one of these???? Come on now, doesn't everyone have a fruit flan pan? Actually, if I had to guess, I'd say that maybe .00001% of the population does. But after you look at this recipe and still really want to make a fruit flan, then I will offer to let you borrow mine(because I know it's just you, Mom, who looks at my recipe blog:)

Back to the recipe...
Other than that pan, you will need:
For the cake:
1 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking pwd
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened (don't even think about substituting margarine in this recipe. Just trust me. I tried. It didn't turn out well.)
2 eggs, room temperature
1/4 cup milk
For the filling:
8 oz. cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. vanilla
For the fruit topping:
a variety of fresh and canned fruit
For the glaze:
2 tbsp. apricot jam
1 1/2 tsp. water

Preheat oven to 350.
For the cake: Measure all ingredients into mixing bowl. Beat for about 2 minutes until smooth. Pour into a greased and floured 91/2 inch flan pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes until inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let stand 2-3 minutes and then turn onto wired rack:


(notice how the outside edge is raised...creating a place for the filling)

To make the filling: Beat all 4 ingredients together until smooth. Spread in hollow of flan. Chill to firm:

Now for the fun part! Drain canned fruit (such as the mandarin oranges) very well. Blot with paper towel in necessary. Make a pattern of your choice as you lay the fruit over the filling:

This was the fruit that I had on hand, but you can certainly use whatever you'd like. I usually put kiwi and raspberries on it too.

For the glaze: Put the jam and water mixture through a sieve and brush it over the fruit. The picture below does not show the glaze on top because I didn't have the apricot jam available to make it, but I would definitely recommend the glaze so the fruit doesn't dry out!

And there you have it. It really is very simple.

Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Problem:
The most perfect solution:

Sometimes I intentionally buy too many bananas just so they will over-ripen and I can make this cake.

The Cake part of the recipe:

1/2 cup butter or margarine

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup mashed bananas

1/2 cup sour milk

2 cups AP flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350. Cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs. Add vanilla.

Mix bananas with sour milk (how I make sour milk: add 1 tbsp. white vinegar to the 1/2 cup measuring cup and then add milk to fill cup. Allow it to sit a couple minutes before adding to bananas). Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture in 3 parts alternating with banana mixture in 2 parts, beginning and ending with flour. Spread in 2 greased round 8 inch layer pans . Bake in oven for 30-35 minutes, until an inserted wooden pick comes out clean. Cool.

Now for the best part: The Frosting part of the recipe...

8 oz. cream cheese

1/4 cup butter

2 cups powdered sugar

Cream together the cream cheese and butter, slowly add powdered sugar and beat until fluffy.

Now take one of the cooled cakes and plop it upside down on a platter. Plop some of the frosting on it and spread it around


Place the second cake on top of the first and add the rest of the frosting to it. Spread the frosting all over the top and sides of the cake.

The finished product (Okay, it looks kind of boring, but oh-so-good...if you're a banana cake-loving type person)

Yum. And now I am going to go have myself a slice

Finger Jello

This finger jello recipe is my absolute 'go-to' recipe for any potluck/party/get-together. I can't tell you where this recipe originates from, but it was passed onto me from my mom. I've looked in many 'Jell-O' recipe books and have never come across this exact recipe. I can tell you that this finger jello is always a hit at the parties. And it is SO easy to make.

What you'll need:
3 small (3oz.) boxes of Jell-O (any flavor, I usually use strawberry or raspberry)
4 envelopes of Knox Unflavored Gelatin
3 cups boiling water (notice my kettle on the stove-top...that was the only way I could think of to visualize boiling water!)
1 cup whipping cream

First, pour all of the jello and gelatin into a bowl:

Next, mix it all together (isn't this complicated?)

(if you're fortunate like me, you will have a 4 year old assistant to take care of the above step)

Next, get rid of the 4 year old assistant and add the 3 cups of boiling water yourself. You need to mix this carefully until there are NO crystals left. This will take a couple of minutes. Don't rush this step, just keep on mixing.

Next, add the 1 cup of whipping cream. Just pour it right in:

Then pour the mixture into a 9x13 pan (I find that a glass pan works best):

And you just have to let it sit. And sit. I usually leave it on the counter for an hour and then transfer it to the fridge (so I don't heat up the fridge with all the hot steam!). As the jello sets, it will start to separate and form 2 layers.

Once it is set, you can just cut it up into squares (which I usually do), or if it is a special occasion, I use cookie cutters to make shapes. I brought this finger jello to our Easter dinner yesterday, so I made these shapes:

Just keep on cutting out shapes, trying to stay as close together as possible so not to waste too much jello. You will be left with some scrapes, but my kids and hubby never have a problem eating them up.

The result:

This is what the jello looks like from the side-notice the layers.

I found this picture of a "flag" that I made a couple of summers ago for the 4th of July.
This is the same kind of finger jello, just without the whipping cream so it doesn't form layers. I actually make this finger jello more often. All you have to do is add 4 cups of boiling water instead of just 3, and omit the whipping cream.

Caitlin (2 1/2 years old) with the 4th of July Jello:

Level of Difficulty: This may just be the easiest thing to make ever. 1 out of 5 for difficulty.

Taste Test: 5 out of 5. Tasty, refreshing, and there are never any leftovers!!

Blueberry Muffins

This past summer I received over 60 pounds of blueberries, which I froze and have been enjoying ever since. However, 60 pounds is a lot of blueberries so I am always on the look-out for recipes to use them. I came across this recipe for blueberry muffins in a recent issue of Family Circle.

What you'll need:
2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar (plus a few tsps. for sprinkling on top of muffins)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup veg. oil
1 tsp. grated orange zest
1 cup fresh blueberries (I used frozen and they worked just fine)

Heat oven to 375, coat muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray. In a large bowl, whisk flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Make a well in the center. In a separate bowl, whisk together milk, eggs, oil and orange zest. Pour milk mixture into well in flour mixture:
Stir until combined. Fold in blueberries. Spoon batter into muffin pan and fill each cup about 3/4 full. Sprinkle each muffin with sugar:

Bake at 375 for 22-25 minutes, until lightly brown. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack. Makes a dozen.

Level of Difficulty: Super easy and quick! 2 out of 5 for difficulty (you do have to zest an orange:)

Taste Test: These muffins are good. My kids loved them, as did I. These may be my new favorite blueberry muffin recipe. 4 out of 5 for taste.

Cupcake bites

This idea comes entirely from bakerella (she has the cutest ideas...you need to go check out her website if you haven't already!). I saw these cute little cupcake bites that she made and thought "I must try these." And so I did. I'm not going to go through all of the instructions on how to make them because bakerella has already done that on her site, but I will show you how mine turned out:

Not too bad, right? Well, they were a lot of work. It took a good part of an afternoon for me to make these. And then there were all the dishes to clean up. Ugh!

Level of difficulty: Like I said, these were a lot of work. Hours worth. It wasn't so much that they were hard to make, it's just that there were a lot of steps. So on a difficulty level of 1-5, I'll give it a 4.

Taste test: I thought they tasted okay. They were very moist and stayed that way for several days. Overall, I'd give them a 3 out of 5.