Cake # 86 Mango & Coconut Brulee Cake

Ted Childs knows his way around a grocery store. This is just a basic fact of life. As a small child, I watched countless hours of Supermarket Sweep, the mid 90’s game show that pitted three teams of contestants in a race around a fake supermarket to rack up the largest possible grocery bill, all while answering trivia questions related to supermarket products, and all I could think was … “damn, when I get older I am going to run this show.” I could be the Ken Jennings of buying expensive frozen turkey and fresh chorizo.

Sadly though, in the quest to make this week’s cake, I was defeated by the local Safeway. Walking casually through the aisles this week, I quickly worked my way down the grocery list until there was one solitary item left; an item so basic and inconspicuous that it seems still so surreal that it stumped me. That item was: Mango (insert crazy montage of SNL’s Mango the Dancer skit from a decade ago here).  You may be saying to yourself, “But Ted, mango is such a normal ingredient. How could you not find it? What is your problem? Are you stupid?” If you are saying this, you are not a nice person. I know what mango is, I know the flavor, I know the color… I just have never seen a full on, skin and all mango.  As it turns out, a Mango looks like smaller, seasick football that is slightly shriveled at the end. Who knew? Not me!

Anyway, this week’s cake, the Mango & Coconut Brulee Cake, called for the following ingredients:  Flour, Sugar, Baking Powder, Eggs, Butter, Lime Juice, Lime Rind, Shredded Coconut, and Mango. Once the cake was finished baking, more sugar and coconut was added  to the top, and the cake was put into the broiler to brown the top (Laura did this for me!). In terms of the visual, I think this was one of my closest cakes to the book in appearance:

My Cake:

The Book’s Cake:

Make sure to check back next week, as school starts on Wednesday and I am sure to have had five nervous breakdowns by then. Just don’t ask me to go to the store for a full mango!

Cake # 85 Orange and Almond cake

Only 15 more cakes to go until I have completed my challenge of 100 cakes- one a week! This week, as the last two weeks has been as hectic as ever with trying to make It'sTulleTime my small at home business run successfully. Right now things are looking up! I am going to have 9 items of my products in a local botqiue the first week of September, and I am going to my first vendor show in Cockeysville. I just ordered my first set of business cards, and I bought my first items wholesale. (Which means I can eventually lower prices for all!)  I have also completed my 10th order and soon (hopefully sooner rather than later) I will be making an actual profit!

Currently, on the family front - Liam is getting more chunky everyday and Evie more fussy. Terrible twos are well terrible. In fact, as I am typing this she is screaming her head off that she wants bubbles - after we have told her "no" four times. Her new thing is poking people (in a rude way) when she is mad and stomping her feet. Please let this pass soon! As far as Ted and I go, we are on a diet - ( I am trying to loose my last 10 lbs gained from baby Liam, and Ted is trying to loose the weight he gained when I was preggers too!. So making a cake a week is really hard! We tried to make this week's cake with less fat (so you will certainly notice the difference in the color) we added less flour, less butter, and more orange juice.  Besides all of those ingredients the cake called for almonds, sugar, vanilla, baking powder, and oranges.

Quick pictures and then off to silence my still screaming daughter!

My fat free version:

The book's cake:

Evie is ... uh calling to put it politely!

Cake #84 Apple and Blackberry Sponge Cake

A special congratulation must go out to my sister-in-law Katie’s boyfriend Ron on successfully moving down to Baltimore from Philadelphia and starting his new job today. In the almost eleven years that I have known Katie, I do not know if I can remember a time when she was as happy as she is now, and that happiness is directly attributed to Ron. He is such a wonderful guy, especially with Evie, who idolizes him, and I am so glad that he now has moved closer to be an even greater part of her life. This week’s cake is for him.

This week I made an Apple and Blackberry sponge cake, a novel cake simply for that fact that I had never eaten blackberries before. Something about their general shape (think grape that spent one day too many in a leper colony or sunburned raspberry) that makes me uneasy.  Just the same though, I made the cake, tried the berries, and was happy on both accounts. This cake called for Flour, Baking Powder, Butter, Eggs, Sugar, Apple Juice, and Apple Chunk, and the topping (which coincidentally went on the bottom of the pan as this was an upside down type cake) was made of diced apples, blackberries, and Raw Brown Sugar.  A cake filled with warmth and happiness … two traits I will always associate with Ron.

My cake:

The Book's Cake (with a nice rip on the page courtesy of Evie):

Check back next week to see what delectable desert I have in store … only a few more recipes to go before I reach the goal of 100 cakes in 100weeks. Until then, happy baking!