Angel Food Cake with a Strawberry Cream Center

My childhood friend and her family were coming to visit a couple of weeks ago and her oldest son was turning nine. Which is difficult to believe but its true. It feels like it was just yesterday that his mom and I met. We met we were 12! Its so cliche to say time flies, but it does, it really does!!

Anyway, I digress. So they were going to be traveling on his birthday and arriving into town just in time to go out for a birthday dinner. She had said her son wanted strawberry shortcake so I offered to make one for him. I wanted to do a different take on it though, which could be going out on a limb. You never know with kids if they will be thrilled or disappointed that they didn't get exactly what they asked for. The one thing you do know is that they will probably tell you precisely what they are thinking about it, so I knew in a few short hours that I would find out if it was a hit or a miss.

I had looked through some recipes to get an idea. I liked a few concepts but needed to change a few things. I came up with one that worked well and was pretty simple. So if you are in the mood for a twist on a classic try this.

By the way, the birthday boy said "it was not what he was wanting, but it was better"! Whoo, saved my the second comment. :)

Ingredients:

1 Angel Food Cake (store bought works great)

6 ounces of cream cheese

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/4 tsp almond extract

Red food coloring

2 cups sliced strawberries (divided-1 cup filling, 1 cup for decorating)

1 (12 ounce) carton of whipping cream

gelatin (read packet for stabilizing amt and instructions)

Instructions:

• Cut a 1 inch slice off top of the cake; set aside. Make a tunnel by carefully hollowing out the bottom leaving a 1 inch shell all around. Cut or tear the removed cake into small cubes.


• Be cream cheese until fluffy. Beat in milk and lemon juice until smooth. Stir in extract and food coloring to desired pinkness. Stir in cake cubes and strawberries. Refrigerate.


• Whip your fresh cream adding the gelatin for stability ( I use electric hand beaters to whip fresh cream, just be careful that you don't overwhip. Once firm peaks begin to form, you can stop).


• Fold 1 cup of whipped cream into strawberry cream mixture.


• Fill tunnel with mixture, replace top.
  
• Spread remaining whipped topping over top and sides of cake.


• Decorate sides and top of cake with remaining sliced strawberries.


• Refrigerate overnight if possible or at least 4 hours.

Enjoy!

Pine Cone Bird Feeder

To feed wild birds in your yard try making an easy pine cone bird feeder. A fun project that makes bird watching extra fun.











What you'll need:

• Pine cone



• Twine



• Peanut Butter



• Bird Seed

Instructions:

1. Tie a knot around bottom half of pine cone or hot glue an edge to bottom area of the pine cone




2. Wrap twine around the pine cone and leave enough to hang from a branch




3. Smear pine cone in peanut butter




4. Roll in birdseed




5. Hang on a branch for birds to enjoy

Watch for birds as a family. Take the opportunity to talk about the birds that you see!

Long time, no blog

I have been m.i.a for a couple of weeks now and I have missed blogging. We had house guests for two weeks straight, which was great but busy and I finally got the time (I use that word loosely) to connect to the Internet and to my dismay it was not working.

This is a trend with our Internet connection. The phone company always says everything is fine and so we usually get no where after an hour long phone call to the repair center. This time was different, obviously, since you are reading my blog :). But not only was it different, it was pretty amusing. At least it is amusing as long as you have the ability to laugh at yourself. Which for me means not only laughing at myself but also acknowledging that I may not be very tech savvy.....surprise surprise......again laughing.

It turns out that my Internet worked just fine but for some very strange reason our home page had been switched to a page cannot be displayed error page. Odd. If this was some hackers idea of a joke to make a nice lady crazy, congrats! You did it! But now it is fixed and we can all have a good laugh....at my expense.

My point to telling you all this is to say, I'm back! I hope to have lots of fun ideas to blog about in the next few days. I have lots of recipes to share, going back to the house guests. So stay tuned.....