Category: recipes

 

I have a thing for pound cake.  It’s genetic.  My mother and grandmother always made them.  Here’s the recipe for the family’s tried and true sour cream pound cake modified to include lemon and poppy seed.  One of the best things about pound cake is that you can bake it in a pretty bundt pan.

Lemon Poppy Seed Cake

• 3 c. flour
• 1/4 t baking soda
• 1/8 t salt
• 1 c. butter (softened)
• 3 c. sugar
• 2 t.vanilla
• 6 eggs
• 1 c. sour cream
• 3 T lemon zest
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1/8 c. poppy seeds

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Sift together flour, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.
3. In another bowl cream sugar, butter and vanilla.
4. Add eggs to butter mixture one at a time, beating well after each.  Mix dry ingredients with wet ingredients.
5. Add sour cream, lemon zest, lemon juice and poppy seeds and mix well.
6. Pour into a greased and floured bundt pan, then tap the pan to break any air bubbles.  Bake for one hour and 15 minutes minutes, possibly longer (until the crust is deep golden brown and the cake pulls away from the pan).

Well, these aren’t quite healthy, but better than most. Here is a recipe for some banana muffins with cream cheese frosting. This was a basic banana bread recipe that I modified to include yogurt and oats.  Makes 12 muffins.  The frosting recipe should be doubled if you want to generously cover them all.  The muffins are pretty good on their own.

• 2 bananas, mashed
• 1 cup oats (slow-cooking)
• 1/2 cup vanilla yogurt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix first six ingredients in a bowl. Set aside. Mix flour, baking powder and soda together in a separate bowl. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix in the oil. Scoop into greased muffin pan or paper muffin cups, filling 2/3 full. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean and tops are golden brown.

While muffins are baking, make frosting:

• 8oz. package of cream cheese
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 2 tablespoons of blueberry juice (for color)
• blueberries for topping

Cut cream cheese into pieces and mix all ingredients together with electric mixer. Allow to chill in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes before icing and make sure to allow muffins to cool completely.

These aren’t really cupcakes, they’re two-bite brownies with icing. Lemon cream cheese and coffee chocolate icing. And really, these are too sweet.  The brownies are so rich they don’t need anything else, but I was reading Bakerella‘s great blog and saw that it is cupcake week on the Martha Stewart show so I was inspired to add some icing. Well, if you look at Martha Stewart’s favorite cupcakes here, you can see what all the cupcake hubbub is about. Pretty and self-contained, cupcakes are delectable little works of art. I think I need to do more research.