Citrus Pudding Cake

A whole paragraph on why I haven’t been blogging…

Various excuses on time management and lack of batteries for camera….

A halfhearted promise to blog more…

Now… on to the recipe..

Lemons… I’m on the lemon kick again… could be something to do with scurvy paranoia that I convinced myself of…

Not that consuming sugar and flour will help… but hey! The wind is blowing in from the east… let’s eat some!

I have several baking pans I go to all the time… large oversized pans this way I can use one pan instead of two… feeding teenagers and a husband requires a lot of food… and I tend to be on the sloth side of living and the less I have to wash the easier life is…

So when my 9x9 baking dish bit the dust several years back I never bothered to replace it… I usually double the recipe anyways so why waste the money??

Until it comes time to make something in a small dish… then I am on a mad hunt trying to find a “small dish”

Ehhh this is close enough…

Making sure every corner is covered.. slather that pan with butter..

Set aside and start zesting your lemons…

Measure out your sugar…  if you’re using a tart citrus… use more.. sweet, use less…

Butter…

Sugar and lemon zest

Cream together until fluffy…

Separate your eggs… making sure you break a yolk so you can’t take a pretty picture

Whites in a mixing bowl to be whipped up later

Add your yolks to the butter sugar mixture…

Mix well

Add cream, flour and lemon juice

Perfect….

Now beat those egg whites till stiff… add to batter.

Mix lightly… we don’t want to mix too much … just enough to incorporate the whites into the batter

Pour into well buttered dish

Place dish into a larger baking dish with at least 3” sides… fill with water at least ½ way up the sides…. Careful not to let any water into batter…

Bake…. 

Try and take a picture… but since you’ve been smelling this for the past hour, the thought of actually being poetic with your setup is unrealistic.. just sit down and savor each bite of this luscious cake….

Really… there isn’t a picture that could do this cake justice… it is smooth and creamy at the same time cakey and… well… just go make it..

Don’t complain to me that you ate the whole pan… 

Print Recipe

 

Citrus pudding cake

5 tablespoons butter, softened *note: 1 tablespoon shall be reserved for greasing the dish*

1-1.5 cup sugar (if your citrus is very sweet, use less sugar)

1-2 tablespoon lemon zest (however you can swap for any citrus - lime, grapefruit, orange, blood orange)

3 large eggs, separated

5 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 cup half and half

6 tablespoons lemon juice (swap for any citrus)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and grease 9"X9" oven safe dish. Set aside.

In a large bowl (or bowl of electric mixer), using hand mixer, beat butter, sugar and lemon zest until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg yolks one at a time until incorporated.

Add the flour and half and half alternatively until incorporated, then add the lemon juice until you have a smooth and silky batter.

In a separate bowl, using hand mixer beat egg whites until fluffy and glossy white, but stiff.

Fold the lemon batter and egg whites together until just combined and pour into baking dish.

Place your baking dish into a larger pan that is at least 1/2 the height of your dessert's dish and fill with hot (not boiling) water until it reaches 1/2 the way up your lemon dessert's dish bake for 50 minutes, or until top of dessert is golden brown and cracking. The dessert will still seem giggly, but this is ok as there is a sinful layer of curd at the bottom that will make you swoon. The longer you cook it, the “cakeier” it will become.

Bad Parents!!

*Note: I am perched on my soap box here… throwing my opinion around like it is worth something… so if you were looking for the latest pound packing recipe… look elsewhere*

I probably shouldn’t write this post in the mood I am in…

But here goes…

I am an avid reader of several Mommy blogs… most of the mommy blogs had to do with unthinkable problems that they had to deal with… incurable disease, that would only take their children away or their daily struggles with a special needs child… I tend to have a bratty outlook in life and love to wallow in self-pity…  reading how these women with such heartache can be a real eye opener and I get off my “me attitude” and be that much more thankful for the health of my children and their ability to smart mouth me back.

I won’t say names here… 

*Inside joke here… My Granny would say that very thing… “ I won’t say names but that person that is sitting in the next room blablabla you know WHO I am talking about” getting out of actually saying the name… but making sure even a two year old would understand who she was talking about*

Is in the news trying to get her 15 minutes of fame… 

*No… not PW… she is on a completely different list of soap box complaints…*

I used to follow her blog faithfully… she was a homebirther… something I feel very strong about… (That and adding butter to anything that sits still long enough) and to make her even crunchier in my eyes… she had triplets at home… one of her triplets caught a virus and became brain damaged as an infant... I read her struggles as a parent… I felt admiration in her will to go on… she wasn’t super woman she was a mom… who I felt like would walk on coals to care for her kids in any situation…

They didn’t have money either… her kids destroyed her house… her back hurt… she was human… and I enjoyed reading what she wrote..

Time went on for me and I lost track of her blog… every now and then I would think of her family and how she was coping with her children..

A few days ago I read about her in the news…

And here is where my opinion is going to probably get me in trouble…

I was disgusted…

Here is why..

“6 year old, born a male triplet, has behaved like a girl since she was 18 months old. When her brother *** was consumed with dinosaurs, she was playing with Barbie dolls. By 4, she was telling her mother that something was wrong with her body”

I could puke… 

As a mother of four, I know that in order for a child to get a parents attention, when they are not the only ones demanding such… they say, do things to have attention…  I also know that children don’t really become aware of their gender fully until about five… so tell me please?? How can an 18 year old know he was supposed to be a girl when he isn’t even potty trained??

I can tell you the problem… 

The parents…

As a parent you can convince your child anything…

When my oldest son was 18 months old, we had been saying to him… ‘let’s wash your face’ and wash his chin/ mouth area… so for about a month he argued with us, saying that his chin really wasn’t his chin… it was called his face… we finally convinced him otherwise… but it stuck with me… you could convince your kids of anything…  and of course being the wonderful mother I was… I had convinced them that my coffee creamer that they loved to sneak and drink all up… was yak milk… I remember my 5 year old son explaining to my 2 year old daughter… “Don’t drink that!! It’s yak milk!!” 

As a parent we are left with the responsibility to teach right and wrong… not everyone’s right and wrongs are the same… that is the freedom we have living in this country… we are to teach them their colors.. The names of animals… how to talk, walk, feed themselves… 

We also mold their minds to look at the world a certain way… our religion outlook is taught … our political outlooks shape theirs… our views on marriage, finances, charity, it all adds to the way they view the world.. We raise them to become independent, to make their own choices in all of that… 

While we prod them towards our own beliefs and pray that they accept them as their own when they are grown, when they are toddlers and before they can make such life decisions… they do what we tell them too…

 That might ruffle some feathers, but honestly, are you going to tell me that you let your child run wild and make his or her own choices at the age of 4? You teach them your values, your morals… your outlook on life..  Whether you think you do or not… they watch how you react to other people… they watch how you talk, walk, and eat… you are teaching them how to approach life. 

I have two sons… my oldest was experiencing me being pregnant twice before his 3^rd birthday… he seen me carry his little sisters around. 

At a yard sale… he spotted a baby doll that he had to have… an ugly freaky looking thing for a quarter… he carried it around playing mommy for about two weeks…

 

Did I mess up and not run out right then and buy him some dresses and start calling him a girl? 

My youngest son would have rather had his skin peeled off then pick up a doll… 

Does this make my oldest less manly? Or does this mean absolutely nothing and he was just acting out what he seen everyday.

Because I didn’t react… and make a big deal about it… he didn’t milk it for all it is worth… 

If you ever had your child fall… you know how you reacted was how they reacted… they fall and barely bump their heads and you flip out… guaranteed they will milk it for all it is worth… you stay calm and nonchalant… they pick themselves up and carry on.

Now I could go on with my uneducated analogies but I will stop… I’ve made my point…

These are horrible parents. Setting up their son for years of hell…

All for their 15 minutes of fame.

Here is a link to the story if you interested in being disgusted in parenting now days...
Click here to be amazed!!  

How to make Brown Sugar

Brown sugar…

A staple in making chewy cookies, gooey cinnamon buns, luscious honey bun cake….

So what do you do when you have everything in your house to satisfy that craving for something fattening, but the brown sugar???

You make some….

I grew up making brown sugar… in fact it was my job to make it… and boy did I hate making it…

Since we had no electricity, it was a pastry cutter and a large bowl… instead of taking only five minutes to make… I was at the horrid job for at least 20 minutes…  

That was 20 minutes I could have been reading or drawing…

I swore I was never going to grow up and make brown sugar… I was  gonna be like normal people and just  buy it…

Normal is so overrated..

So in order to cut even more costs around the kitchen, I started making my own again..

I had another moment of feeling like a lousy parent, ( one of many lately) when telling my oldest daughter that we were going to make brown sugar.. she looked at me with wide eyes in complete amazement and said…

“ You can MAKE brown sugar?”

So I had to go into a rant how, yes you can and actually white sugar is just brown sugar with all the molasses spun out of it… (Whether that is true or not, I just repeated what my own Mama told me when I asked that very question… I guess I could go look it up, but again… laziness has won again)

So here we have molasses…. I have several different brands DH kept picking up bottles, thinking we had none… I am pretty sure I could make about 10 lbs of dark brown sugar with all that I have…

Here is the deadliest sin in a health nuts kitchen… white sugar ( last two words said in a deep scary voice)

Dump some molasses over some white sugar.. I don’t measure.. just eye ball it..

If it ends up to too dark add some more sugar… too light add more molasses

With your mixers whisk.. beat on low for a good 5 to 10 minutes… till all the molasses is completely mixed in…

 We can see here it isn’t done

Now it is… continue with midnight sweet craving or store in air tight container…