Monkey Cake!

So this cake was made quite a while ago with my friend Debby for Alex's 1st birthday. The best thing about baking for infants is that you get to eat the cake and they get stuck with Milk and possibly pureed peas :)

We had ridiculous amounts of fun making our monkey (especially giving it a butter cream Afro...yep you heard it) and I just found the photo so I thought I'd post it. The recipe is from the domestic goddess herself, Martha Stewart and can be found here.
Note what the original is supposed to look like. Well, ours had personality and a tasty hairstyle. Whatever...

Ice cream Sandwiches!

OMG Home made ice cream sandwiches are the greatest thing ever! Take extra thick and chewy oatmeal raisin cookies and sandwich them with haagen daas vanilla bean ice cream and get ready for happiness. So much better than the store bought variety. I originally just planned to make oatmeal raisin cookies for my favorite Ironman. The recipe is from Smitten Kitchen and I should say that the cookies are great on their own. But, like bacon, Ice cream makes everything better.

Red White and Blue Trifle

My friends Brenda and Craig are moving across the pond so for their 4th of July BBQ I thought I'd make a very English dessert: Trifle! But of course it had to have a bit of patriotic spirit cause you know I love guns and freedom too.

A trifle can be made in a million different ways. The three key parts are: Cake/biscuit layer; Fruit; and Pudding layer (custard, creme anglaise, whipped cream etc.). In MY trifles there is a key 4th ingredient: Booze :)

Berries: - 2 lbs strawberries sliced thin
- 1 pint blueberries
- juice of one large lemon
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp cornstarch

Cake: - Pound cake (store bought or even better make your own). I used a recipe from one of my favorite websites, The Joy of Baking: http://www.joyofbaking.com/PoundCake.html
- 1/4 cup Amaretto

Whipped Lemon Curd: - 1 cup lemon curd
- 1 pint heavy whipping cream
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine the berries, sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a simmer and cook just until the berries begin to break down and give up their juices, about 3 minutes. Take the berries off the heat and let cool; the mixture should thicken up as is cools. Slice pound cake into 3rds and brush a liberal amount of amaretto onto each layer. Cut up cake into large cubes.

In a clean bowl, whip the cream with the sugar and the vanilla to soft peaks. Put the lemon curd into a second bowl and stir in a little of the whipped cream to loosen it. Then fold in the rest of the cream.

To assemble, spoon a layer of the lemon cream into a large glass bowl. Add a layer of pound cake pieces. Then soak the cake with a layer of berries and their juices. Keep going to make 3 or 4 more layers, depending on the size of the bowl, finishing with a layer of lemon cream. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.I left it for 5 hours in the fridge but I think overnight would be perfect.

This was soooooo great. Make it while there are lots of berries around!