Glazed Grapefruit Cake

So I went to Costco... any posts that begins that way is going to get interesting... and I was in the mood for produce. Costco had some great produce, including grapefruit. I would probably have been fine with just one grapefruit.  But I bought the 10 pound bag. I had one for breakfast and it was wonderful.  After I ate one, I looked at the bag.  There were a LOT of grapefruit left in that bag.

My hubby just can't be persuaded to eat grapefruit which leaves a whole lot of grapefruit for me. Probably a few more than I can finish before they have "passed their prime".

This got me to thinking of grapefruit recipe options. Which lead me to try making a grapefruit cake.  This recipe is a glorified lemon cake meets not quite a pound cake.

Here is the recipe:

1/2 cup (one stick) butter at room temperature
1 1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
2 eggs at room temperature
zest from 1 grapefruit
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup grapefruit juice, divided
1 cup whole milk at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the glaze:
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoon grapefruit juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a loaf pan.

Cream butter and 1 cup of the sugar in a stand mixer.  Once fluffy add the eggs, one at a time, mixing completely between additions.

And this is what one grapefruit's worth of zest looks like along with a naked grapefruit

Add the grapefruit zest along with the second egg.

In a separate bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  In another bowl combine 1/4 cup grapefruit juice, milk, and vanilla extract.  Add about 1/3 of the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar. Mix to combine.  While mixing add about 1/2 of the milk/juice mixture to the mixing bowl.  Next add about 1/2 of the remaining flour mixture to the mixing bowl and mix to combine.  Mix in the remaining milk/juice mixture to the mixing bowl then the rest of the flour mixture.

Pour batter into greased and floured loaf pan.

Bake 50 - 60 minutes until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Make grapefruit syrup by adding the remaining 1/2 cup grapefruit juice and 1/4 sugar to small sauce pan. Heat over low heat until sugar is dissolved.  Set aside.

Once cake is done, remove from oven and let sit in the pan for 10 minutes.  Remove from pan to cooling rack. Pour the grapefruit syrup over the cake.  You can poke small holes in the top of the cake with a skewer if you like before pouring the syrup on the cake.


Once the cake is completely cool make the glaze.  Combine the confectioners sugar and grapefruit juice in a small bowl.  Whisk until completely combined.  Drizzle glaze over top of cake.

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Homemade Tomato Soup

This is the time of year when I am happy that I canned all those tomatoes!  

78 pounds of tomatoes harvested before the first black frost

Homemade tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich is a very satisfying and nutritious winder meal.  And surprisingly, both the soup and the sandwich can be made in less than 30 minutes!

For the soup you will need the following:

2 Tablespoons butter

3 cloves of garlic

2 cups chicken or vegetable stock

2 cups stewed tomatoes (optional)

6 cups tomato sauce

2 teaspoons dried basil

You may also want some some shredded cheese and some baking soda... read on to learn why.

If using, drain the stewed tomatoes into a colander.  I like to add the stewed tomatoes to the soup to give it a variety of textures.  If you want a thin liquid soup, leave them out.

I canned these tomatoes in one pint jars but I use two jars for the soup. After draining off the liquid, there are only about 2 cups total of the tomatoes.   Apparently I am not very good at packing my jars tight while canning.

Add the butter and garlic to a medium sized pan.  Saute the garlic until it is light brown and makes everyone in the house hungry.

To the pan add two cups chicken or vegetable stock.  If had had any homemade stock on hand I would have used that.  Time to get a whole chicken!  Also add the stewed tomatoes (if using) and all the tomato sauce.  Stir and heat over medium heat for 10-15 minutes.

While the soup cooks, make those grilled cheese sandwiches.  No recipe provided...yet.

After your 10-15 minutes of cooking time, the soup should be boiling lightly.  Taste the soup.  If it is too sour, sharp, acidic, or however you want to describe it, add a small pinch of baking soda to the soup and stir.  It will bubble and fizz for a moment.  The baking soda is neutralizing some of the acid in the tomatoes. Taste again.  If still too acidic, add another pinch.  I find I often add three small pinched (which is probably less than 1 teaspoon of baking soda).  If you add too much baking soda the soup will taste really salty and flat and basically need to be tossed in the trash.  So don't do that.

Turn off the heat and add your dried basil and stir.  Let the basil sit in the soup for a couple minutes before serving. If you have fresh basil chop it up fine and add as much as you can stand.   Seriously fresh basil is awesome and healthy!

My husband loves to add a clump of shredded cheddar cheese to the soup. I just dip my grilled cheese sandwich in the soup. Enjoy.

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Hanging Paper Flowers

You may remember the paper flowers I made last week. Well my daughter decided that they needed to belong to her.  Funny, many of my projects end up that way.

I punched a little hole into a petal of each flower and strung them up with mono-filament to the canopy frame over her bed.

 We are looking forward to spring here in a big way.  These cute little flowers help.

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Dinner Rolls

Today I got home early enough from work to whip up some dinner rolls.  I often have to resort to biscuits because of lack of planning on my part.  We are going to indulge ourselves with some of my yummy ham and bean soup but we really need some bread to go with it.  These dinner rolls fill the bill.


This recipe takes less than two hours from start to ready to eat which includes  rising time and baking time.

You will need:
3 cups flour (I use 1/2  all purpose and 1/2 cups whole grain flour)
2 teaspoons yeast
1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 Tablespoons olive oil or melted butter
a greased 9 inch round cake pan (a 9x9 inch square pan works too just divide dough into 9 rather than 8 balls)

Add dry ingredients to your mixing bowl and mix. Next add water and oil.  Now it is time to knead.  I prefer to use my stand mixer for this but you can use a bread maker or even knead by hand.  In my stand mixer I knead the dough about 8 minutes.  Remember, if you are using whole grain flour, this type of flour takes longer to adsorb water.  Do not decide you need to add water until after at least four minutes of kneading.

If your dough seems dry and does not come together into a ball, add water a teaspoon at a time.  If your dough seems super sticky, add flour a Tablespoon at a time.  You want a firm ball of dough that is somewhat sticky.

After kneading put your dough onto a heavily floured surface and generously flour your hands.

Divide the dough in half, then divide each half in half.  Then one more time divide each quarter into half until you have eight fairly equal sized pieces.  Roll each piece into a ball and place into a greased round cake pan, seven around the edge and one in the center.  If you are using a square pan make 9 balls and line them up in 3 rows of 3.

Spritz the top of your dough with olive oil and over the pan with plastic wrap. The oil keeps the plastic wrap from sticking.  Leave the pan on your counter for 40 minutes to an hour or so to rise.

Once you have lovely risen dough, remove the plastic wrap and bake for 25 minutes in a 375 degree oven. Remove from pan immediately to a drying rack and serve warm. Yummy!

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Ham and Bean Soup

As promised here is my recipe for Ham and Bean Soup.  

You will need:

5 cups dried beans (this can be all one kind or an assortment)

Water (in which to soak the beans)

8 cups of water (for cooking)

Left over ham including ham bone (if you have it)

1 cup chopped onion

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 tsp salt

pepper

1 tsp thyme

Optional - 1-2 Tablespoons hot sauce

Step one: put your dried beans in a colander and pick out any discolored, cracked, or damaged beans.  Also look out for any rocks or other foreign matter.

I used 2 cups Great Northern Beans, 1 cup Navy Beans, 1 cup small red beans, and 1 cup black beans

Step two: rinse off your beans.  Remember beans are dried plant seeds.  In many places they are dried out in the open field then dusted off for packaging.  They usually have not been pre-rinsed before packaging because that would require another period of drying.  Trust me, unless you grew and dried the beans yourself (which we do for some beans), rinse the beans off.

Below they are all rinsed and mixed together.  I just thought it was a really pretty combination so I added the picture.

Step three: soak your beans overnight.  Put the rinsed beans into a large cooking pot and cover with at least 10 cups of water.  You may be surprised with how much water the beans will adsorb over night.  The pre-soaking cuts down on the cook time.  And yes you can use a pressure cooker to cut down on the cook time too but I do not like to use mine unless I am canning something (personal choice).

 Put a lid on the pan and let it sit out on the counter overnight.

In the morning the soaked beans will look like the picture above.  The water is now cloudy and murky and the beans have swelled up and changed color.  Drain the beans into a colander into the sink.

Here is what the soaked beans look like up close.  Funny how the Great Northern Beans are now blue, the small red beans are now orange and the black beans are now red.  The Navy beans are still white.  Go figure.

Return the beans to the soaking pot and add 1 cup chopped onion and two cloves of garlic, minced.  Then add your ham.  In the picture above I put in the ham bone which still has a lot of meat on it.  Cooking the bone in the soup makes the soup so much more nutritious.

I then added some additional ham (probably about 3 cups worth but use what you have), 2-3 teaspoons of salt (I don't measure and the beans need salt), a few grinds of pepper, and a couple of teaspoons of dried thyme.  To all this I added 8 cups of water.  The pot was covered and put on the stove to boil.  Once boiling, the pot was stirred and the heat reduced to a gentle simmer.

Let the soup cook a few hours.  How long depends first on when the beans are cooked through and soft. How long also depends on whether you want the soup to have whole beans and a liquid broth, or if you want a thicker soup with the beans having melted to a velvet consistency.  I go for the second option, cooking the beans until they fall apart because my family likes this texture from the soup better than the whole beans in broth.  But there is no correct way.

Once the soup is done to your liking, remove the ham bones.  For most hams there will be two bones.  You may also find some other ham parts you want to remove as well.  Add the hot sauce if using.  If you do not want to use hot sauce but think the soup is a bit flat, add 1/4 apple cider vinegar or lemon juice, but add it one tablespoon at a time and taste between additions.

The picture above is the soup after cooking three hours.  The beans are soft and the meat has fallen off the ham bone.

The picture above is after 5 hours of cooking.  See how the broth is no longer a clear liquid but instead is a thicker texture.  Yum!  Serve with thick bread and enjoy.  This also freeze well!

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January Savings Challenge

Paper Flowers for Cards, Scrapbooks, Decor and More

Look what I made. These paper flowers are so simple and pretty.

You will need card stock, glue, water in a spray bottle, and a way to cut out paper flower shapes in two or three different sizes.  I used my Silhouette but paper punches, or good old fashioned scissors will work just fine.

I created flower shapes on my Silhouette.  I made two different 5 petal flowers, a 6 petal flower and an 8 petal flower.  Each of the different paper flower cut outs gave a slightly different end result.  Click Here for the link to my Google Drive for the templates I made in both pdf and studio format.

The difference between the end results were mostly negligible between the 5 and 6 petal cut outs.  The 8 petal cut out creates a much fuller flower.  The big three color purple flower pictured above was made with three sizes of the 8 petal flower cut outs. 

For the blue flowers I cut a 5 petal flower out of three different colors.  The dark blue is a 3 inch cut out, the middle blue is a 2 inch cut out, and the smallest is a 1 inch cut out.

Spray each cut out lightly with water then scrunch the cut outs.  You want to start by holding the center and forcing the petals up to the middle  and then scrunching them together.

Let them dry, or mostly dry.  Then carefully open them back up.

Then using craft glue you put the layers together.  I used three of each sized cut out.  I found the craft glue works better than glue dots because you can twist the cut outs around to give you the best petal layers.  With glue dots, once affixed, you cannot move the layers to a better position.

In this picture the yellow flower on the left was made from 5 petal cut outs. The yellow at the bottom of the picture was made from 6 petal cut outs.  The large purple flower was made with the 8 petal cut outs.

These flowers will work beautifully on homemade cards and scrapbook pages.  My daughter wants to hang them from mono-filament from the ceiling in her room.  That would be very spring like in these bleak winter days. These would also look great on a door wreath.

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