When Life Gives You Lemons, Let Them Eat Cake!

A friend of mine is on a personal quest to find the best lemon cake ever. I have decided to help her with her obsession. Since she wasn't more specific about what type of cake (only that it must be lemon, there are two here for consideration)

Lemon Cake

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups granulated sugar

4 large eggs, at room temperature

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

Grated zest of 2 large lemons

Juice of 1 large lemon (about 2 1/2 tablespoons)

For the Glaze:

2 cups confectioner’s sugar (sifted)

Juice of 1 large lemon (about 2 1/2 tablespoons)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Grease a 10-inch Bundt pan, set aside. Sift flour, baking soda, and salt into a small bowl.

Use a wooden spoon to cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until fluffy and pale. Add eggs, one at a time, beat well after each addition, be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Gently fold in a third of the flour mixture with the creamed sugar, then half of the buttermilk alternate until all ingredients have been blended in. Fold in the zest and juice.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 1 hour to 1 hour and 15 mins. Or until a toothpick comes away clean. Let cool on a wire rack

Make the glaze by adding the lemon juice to the sugar, beat vigorously to dissolve sugar. The glaze should be thick but pourable. You can add 2 tablespoons sugar at a time to thicken if needed.

After the cake has cooled 10 minutes, invert onto the wire rack set over a baking sheet. Spoon the glaze over hot cake and allow to cool completely before cutting.

Lemon Chiffon Cake

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 1/3 cups plain cake flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

7 large eggs, 2 left whole 5 separated and brought to room temperature

2/3 cup water

1/2 cups vegetable oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

zest of 2 large lemons

2 tablespoons lemon juice.

Heat oven to 325F

Whisk first 4 ingredients together in a 4 quart or larger bowl. Whisk in the two whole eggs and 5 egg yolks, water, oil and vanilla. Add the zest and lemon juice and whisk until well blended.

Beat the egg whites for 1 minute at a low speed until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and slowly increase the mixer speed to medium high. you want the whites to be thick and stiff, this takes 10 minutes with a hand held mixer. Fold the whites into the batter, smearing any blobs that don’t ant to integrate into the batter.

Pour batter into an ungreased 9 inch tube pan. Then rap the pan on the counter top at least 5 times to rupture any air pockets.

Bake 55-65 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Hang cake upside down to cool. If you can’t hang it, place it upside down on a bottle. allow to cool two hours.

Glaze for the Chiffon cake

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

4-5 tablespoons spoons lemon juice

2 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar

beat together. let glaze stand 1 minute then test on cake, if cake tries to rip thin glaze out with 1 tables juice.

Rainy Day? Good time to prep for preserving

Spring in the Heartland means storms, lots and lots of storms. You can use these days to catch up on your neglected housekeeping as the garden has kept you a bit too preoccupied for such mundane things, or you can forgo all of that and begin some preparation for your up coming fruit and berry harvest.

Simple Syrup is a staple to making just about anything out of your berries. You can find my directions on how to make it here>>> The Secret to Simple Living? Simple Syrup.

Strawberries shall be plucked soon, and simple syrup helps preserve them in various ways, you can make pop, pancake syrup, preserves and some very fancy dinner sauces.

It's good to keep on hand for real sweet tea.

I love using it for my pears, making lilac syrup, and for peaches. The uses are just about limitless. Canning is no biggy, as you will replace the simple syrup later with the flavorings you add to it.

Oh it just started raining here.

Just doin'

I am canning and dehydrating this morning. And have already told you about how to do those things.

Dandelion Jelly

Dehydrated Beef Broth.

So I really can't think what to tell you.

Yesterday I was watching a new program called Headbanger's Kitchen. (there is cussing in it) I am really enjoying it. On the side bar it had suggested video's. The Heavy Metal Farmer got my attention. It is an older video so many have already seen it. (both on youtube)

I came to the conclusion that maybe this blog could use a theme song. Will have to ask some of my musician friends for a nice Death Metal Homesteader theme song.

It is finally a nice day out today. This means garden work, mainly. Every two weeks, until the end of this month, I plant cooler veggies. And then plant them again in August for a fall crop.

Corn will be planted every two weeks from now until the end of June, for a rotating crop and not being overwhelmed with the amount of harvest coming in at one time.

Husband has started berming the house.

We had our first severe storm of the season, with nickel size hail and microburts.

We also got ourselves a pig. I think it is an American Yorkshire.



Currently she is in a temp cage. And we are in process of building a tractor pen for her. I will let you know about that once it is finished. I tried looking up information for the pen, but only found a couple of pictures. Looks like this method of hog rearing isn't a popular one. But as we have no intentions of constantly retaining pigs, a tractor will work for us, and give the land a break between pigs.

A Tractor and a Winner

The winner of the April Fool's Day give-a-way is. . . .

esp!!!

(email me with your mailing address please)

Husband got a new toy, a 1951 Ford 9n

It reminds me of a dune buggy.

Anyone want to calm me down? With this, my yard will never be the same.

Once the tractor stopped, and turned off, Winston finally got up enough nerve to confront it.

And Survival Times has me listed as #1 on their top 100. Cool

Bob Dole Chasing the Ladies

I finally did it! I just happened to look out and see Bob Dole Chasing the cows (a lady and a bull). And no, not the Senator from Kansas. Bob Dole is the name the boys gave to our ram.

Sorry that the video isn't the greatest, not only am I still learning this new camera, but if I get too close, he stops.

3 ways to preserve your broths

Before we start, does everyone here know how to make a basic broth?

There are 3 ways to preserve your homemade broths, be it beef, chicken or vegetable stock. (broth and stock are indeed different, however are interchangeable in your recipes). With all the following preservations, remove as much fat as possible. You can freeze the fat for use later in soap recipes.

The first is canning. Pour your hot broth into a pint canning jar and pressure can 20 minutes at 10 lbs (11lbs on dial gauges). Allow to cool for 24 hours and then stack up in your pantry.

Next is freezing.

Pour your broth evenly into an ice tray. I highly suggest you line your tray with parchment paper or foil. Allow to freeze, remove and store in a freezer bag. Each cube is 1/8 cup of stock. This is also considered a cold bouillon cube.

And finally, and my favorite, dehydration.

Pour 1 cup of stock onto a fruit rollup tray and place it into my dehydrator. Set it on the meat setting or 145F. It tends to withdraw from the center and pool along the edges. Let sit overnight.

Once dry, peel and crack off the tray onto foil.

Tightly fold up your foil and place into a zip-lock type bag. If you have a food saver I would use it, and remove as much air as possible.

You end up with a little packet of flavoring that equals 1 cup broth. Kind of like those Ramen packets. You can do more than 1 cup at a time, just be sure you keep track of how much you use. You will need to add the same amount of water to rehydrate it.

This packet makes 3 cups of broth.

ok Fess up!

Who is talking about me?

No, I am not being paranoid. Just curious. The past few days there has been a huge influx of people googling "A Homesteading Neophyte" usually readers find me by the search words "homesteading blogs", or "how to butcher (insert animal here)". Not usually by name itself. And usually blogs leave links to other blogs, not the case here.

It's cool, you can confess, I won't get mad. Though I might put your name into the contest that might have some serial killerness involved. (HLS that is a joke not a threat).

Well if you don't want to tell me, thats ok too. Thanks for the plug.

Homesteading front, next week I plan on talking about numerous way to preserve your homemade broths, a bit more about gardening and the dune buggy tractor. Got something on your mind? ask. I like questions as it gives me things to talk about on my slow days.

psst. . . your machismo is showing

Now this is probably only funny to Husband and I, but it happens every morning.

you will need sound

Your Chance to Win a new car!!!!

You really didn't fall for that did you? It is April Fools after all.

Lucky you however for at least checking it out, even if you knew it was a hoax. Why? Because I am really truly having a give-a-way. Seriously.

But I am not going to tell you what it is. It could be just about anything at all. It could be a zonk. It could be a book, or food. Or I am just a serial killer waiting for the right person. You just don't know. And that my friends is part of the fun.

So if you would like a chance to find out what the prize is, leave a comment and tell me;

Would you be a fool to enter?

Or would you be foolish not to?

~insert evil laugh here~