Category: Cooking & Baking

Cast Iron Skillet “Shepherd’s Pie”

My girls love “shepherd’s pie.”  Well, they love the shepherd’s pie that I make for them which has no vegetables in it.  Which, to me, is not really shepherd’s pie.  No matter what they say.

However, the “shepherd’s pie” that I make for them is an adaptation of one of my favorite things my mom would cook for us when we were growing up.  I’ve taken her base recipe and melded it with a shepherd’s pie recipe to create something of a hybrid of the two.

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Mom’s was mostly ground beef and mashed potatoes – with a lot of seasonings, of course.  I took that, along with the shepherd’s pie recipe that I learned from an old work chum who was from Britain and made something that my girls would eat.

Personally, I love shepherd’s pie. I love the amalgamation of meat, veggies and a hearty broth topped with mashed potatoes.  Comfort food at the very best.  But the girls would turn their noses up at the veggies and I would never get my shepherd’s pie.  So, I compromise – make this hybrid that they love and everyone is happy.

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This one I made in my cast iron skillet. It was genius – one less pot to wash – and I think it turned out really well.  You can certainly add some frozen mixed veggies to this to make it more of a true shepherd’s pie. If I was making it for grownups, I’d do that for sure.

Cast Iron Skillet “Shepherd’s Pie”

1 1/2 pounds ground beef
2-3 cups beef broth
1 cup finely diced carrots
1 cup finely diced onion
1-2 tsp minced garlic (about 1-2 cloves)
1 packet brown gravy mix
5-10 large potatoes
Worcestershire sauce
milk, butter, sour cream for mashed potatoes
salt & pepper
bay leaf

  1. Preheat oven to 350
  2. Peel, cut, & boil potatoes
  3. In a large cast-iron skillet, add some oil (about 1 tsp) and sauté the carrots & onions until the onion is translucent.
  4. Add the ground beef, seasoning with salt & pepper and garlic.
  5. When the beef is browned, sprinkle about 1-2 tsp of Worchestershire sauce over the mixture.
  6. In a separate small bowl, mix beef broth, gravy packet, to make a gravy.
  7. Pour the gravy mixture in the beef.
  8. Put one bay leaf in the mixture (remember to pull it out when you’re serving or someone will get a surprise)
  9. Mash potatoes, using butter, sour cream and milk. Season with salt & pepper.
  10. Top beef mixture with mashed potato.
  11. If you want, layer some cheddar or American cheese slices on top.
  12. Bake at 350 degrees until cheese is melted & bubbly. (about 15-20 min)

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A few notes: you want your mashed potatoes a little dry as they will absorb some of the gravy while cooking in the oven. If they are too most to begin with they get runny.

I snuck the carrots in on the girls (they had no clue) and would probably even try some other finely diced veggies if I thought I could get away with it in the future.

I hope you enjoy!!
Linking up here:

Cheesy Breadsticks

My plans for dinner on Tuesday night went awry when I couldn’t make what I’d planned – and I ended up coming up with a new dinner to cook.

I rummaged around on my Pinterest pins and tried to find something that would be easy to prepare and simple for the girls to serve/eat as I would not be home at suppertime and I wanted minimal fuss for them.

I ended up stumbling across this pin – and it was a fortunate stumble indeed. We thoroughly enjoyed these – and the girls took leftovers in their lunches today. I sent them with a salad and these breadsticks for a side.  They were pretty excited about their lunches (which is always nice).

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I’d strongly encourage you to try this one night. Other than the rise time, it was pretty quick to assemble and well worth the wait for the rise.  GREAT, kid-friendly food (and would be good for a game-day snack, too!)

I served ours last night with marinara for dipping. I had some leftover spaghetti sauce from Sunday’s dinner, but you could easily use a jarred sauce. If and when I use a jar sauce, my preference is to use Barilla or Bertolli Tomato Basil marinara sauces.

The secret to these breadsticks:

I think the secret to these yummy breadsticks is the fact that I tried to mimic the environment of a pizza oven like you’d find at a pizza kitchen. You know how they cook pizza in a screaming hot oven? Like 900 degrees or something crazy like that? Well, I think that is part of what makes them so good. The dough rises fast, cooks crisp and turns out fantastic.

So, I tried to do this in my oven. There are a few suggestions for you:

  1. Preheat your oven.  As hot as you can. 500 degrees is the max on your oven? Go for it. I cooked mine at 500 degrees.
  2. Preheat your pizza stone. While the oven is heating, put it in there and let it get smoking hot, too. Don’t have a pizza stone? Use an upside down cookie sheet. (suggested in the original recipe I linked to above)
  3. Roll out your dough on parchment paper. This will allow you to just slide your parchment paper right onto the baking stone and then right off the stone and onto a pan when you take the pizza out. Less chance for accidents that way.

I did make some modifications to the original recipes, so I thought I’d share my finished recipes with you here –

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Cheesy Breadsticks

1 recipe pizza dough (recipe below)
2 Tbsp butter, room temperature
2 tsp minced garlic
1 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 c parmesan
2-3 c mozzarella (or Italian cheese blend)
salt/pepper

  1. Preheat oven to 500 degrees (or as hot as you can)
  2. Add pizza stone to preheat with oven.
  3. In a small bowl, mix butter, garlic & Italian seasoning. Set aside.
  4. Roll out your dough on a piece of parchment paper. If you are using the fool-proof recipe below, you should get two “pizzas” out of it. I rolled mine to about a quarter of an inch thick by about 12-14 inches in diameter. (although it was nowhere near a perfect circle)
  5. Spread the butter mixture on the dough
  6. Sprinkle your cheese on the top.
    (I also sprinkled some mini pepperoni on there before I put the cheese down)
  7. Slide parchment paper onto a cookie sheet and then off the cookie sheet and onto the baking stone in the oven.
  8. Bake for about 9-10 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and brown. Your dough should also bubble up nicely, too.
  9. Remove from oven. Let cool for 1-2 minutes before slicing into strips.
  10. Serve with marinara for dipping.

Pizza Dough

1 cup very warm water
2 1/4 tsp yeast
1 Tbsp honey (I used Agave syrup)
2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp Italian Seasoning (I used Mrs. Dash Italian Medley)
~3 Cups flour (I used King Arthur White Whole Wheat flour)

  1. In a mixing bowl, combine water, yeast & honey. Let the yeast “bloom” for about 5 minutes.
  2. Add the oil, half of the flour (1.5 cups) and mix with a dough hook.
  3. While mixing, add the Italian Seasoning, salt and gradually add the remaining flour a little at a time until the dough begins to form a ball and pull away from the sides of the bowl.
  4. Knead for 6 minutes.
  5. Once the time has elapsed, remove the dough hook and form the dough into a ball.
  6. Lightly oil the mixing bowl and put the dough ball back in.  Cover with a towel and let rise in the for 45 minutes to an hour. (preheat your oven while dough is rising)

You can use this dough for breadsticks, pizza, calzones, etc.

You can also add 1/4 cup of grated parmesan cheese to the dough for a cheesier crust. You may need less flour if you do this.

Remember, doughs are going to behave differently based on the humidity in your home – if it is a rainy day, you may need more flour than the recipe calls for. If it is dry, you may need less. The three cups the recipe calls for is a good guideline, but use your instincts and go slowly adding the last half of the flour into the dough. Let it incorporate a little at a time until you have the right consistency.  If you’ve got enough flour, your dough should not stick to the sides of the bowl and you should have a nice ball of dough that is not sticky to the touch.  (the original recipe I used has some good pictures of the consistency you are looking for)

Linking up with the Weekend Potluck.

Saturday Sweetness: Lunch Lady Peanut Butter Bars

Saturday SweetnessI stumbled across these bar cookies on Pinterest.  I decided they were going on my must-make list right away.  So, on a Saturday afternoon a couple weeks ago, I made them.

All I can say to you is this – You need to make these.

Like now.

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Go, get thee to the grocery store and get the ingredients if you don’t have them already.

Seriously.

These make great after-school and lunch snacks.  And because you’ve made them yourself, you know they only have real food in them, not a bunch of artificial junk.

And they’re deliciously addictive. It is hard to eat just one.

You’ve been warned.

(here’s the link to the original recipe)

Lunch Lady Chocolate Peanut Butter Bars

Ingredients

1 1/2 C All-Purpose Flour
1¼ tsp. Salt
½ tsp. Baking Soda
¾ C Butter
¾ C Sugar (I used Sucanat with Honey)
¾ C Brown Sugar (I used Sucanat)
1 ½ tsp. Vanilla
1 1/2 C Creamy Peanut Butter (split – I ended up using a whole jar of Peanut Butter)
2 Eggs
1 ½ C Quick Oats

Frosting:

½ C Butter (1 stick)
3 ½ C Powdered Sugar
(I used Sucanat with Honey and just “powdered” it in my blender)
2 T Cocoa
¼ C Milk (I used 1%)
1 tsp. Vanilla

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. In a small mixing bowl, mix together flour, baking soda and salt.
  3. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter, sugars, 3/4 C peanut butter, eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy.
  4. Gradually add dry ingredients, just until incorporated.
  5. Then, stir in the oats.
  6. Spread onto a greased 11 x 15 Jelly Roll Pan (cookie sheet). (I used my Silpat mat and it worked great)
  7. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool for 10 minutes.
  8. The frosting is a two step process.
  9. First, whip the remaning ¾ C Creamy Peanut Butter until it becomes lighter colored and fluffy.
  10. Carefully spread the whipped peanut butter over the pan cookie. (the cookie should still be warm so the PB will spread, but not melt)
  11. Then, add butter to a small sauce pan and melt the butter.
  12. Add the milk and cocoa.
  13. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. Heat just until boiling.
  14. Remove from heat and add vanilla.
  15. Then, gradually add the powdered sugar. Stir until thickened.
  16. Pour over the peanut butter and gently spread over the cookie.
  17. Cool completely, and slice into bar cookies.

And devour them like you’re the Cookie Monster

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I’ve also linked up with the Country Cook Weekend Potluck.

From my kitchen

 

Today is my crazy busy day – for work and for the girls.  Both of them have dance class and I have an afternoon of back-to-back conference calls. It makes for one tired mommy in the evening, that’s for sure.

To combat that, I try to do a little prep work ahead of time in the morning – preparing something yummy & healthy for dinner and planning out whatever else I need to for the rest of the day. It just saves my sanity and helps me to enjoy being with my kids more rather than stressing out and being cranky.

Today, I changed up my planned dinner. Usually, Thursdays are leftover nights (because it is easier to warm things up than cook from scratch when you’re running back and forth between school & the dance studio. can I get an amen?)

But today, I was thinking about the jumbo pack of mini-sub rolls I got at the warehouse store the other day… the same mini-sub rolls I just knew the girls would love for cute little sandwiches for lunch.  And the very same mini-sub rolls they most definitely do not like for their lunches – as evidenced by the returned, uneaten sandwiches two days this week. Sigh.

So, I was trying to figure out how I was going to use those rolls before they became a science experiment on my counter.  I don’t eat (much) bread and SuperMan is trying to cut back… which leaves quite the dilemma. Until you start to think about things like… garlic bread!

So, once my mind went to garlic bread, I decided to try out this new recipe I’d found on Pinterest – it’s for a crock pot ravioli casserole.  Perfect! And because I’m-a good-a little-a Italian girl, I have all the ingredients on  hand. (wink, wink)img_1962

With dinner planned out, I decided to tackle another looming kitchen problem. Bread.  I have gotten back on the wagon of making my own bread; partly to help Big Girl’s tummy issues and partly because it’s just so darn good.  But the problem is that Little Bit doesn’t like it and SuperMan isn’t wild about it (he’ll eat it, but I think he only does it because he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings).  They say it is too dense. Which, ironically, is what Big Girl and I love about it.

ANYWAY – I rummaged around and found an old bread recipe and decided to whip up another batch to see if I could make a lighter loaf.

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I made one as a cinnamon raisin bread and the other plain.  They’re cooling on the counter now, so we will see what the troops think when they return home tonight.img_1968

They sure SMELL GOOD – between the garlic and the bread, my house smells SO GOOD right now.

And speaking of garlic – here’s another fallen soldier:img_1967

I am going to have to start counting how many of these I go through in a year. I think I open a new one about every 2 months.

No vampire problems here, that’s for sure.

So, what’s going on in your kitchen this week?

 

Bourbon Street Chicken

 

With the new schedule for the girls’ schools and after-school activities, I’m on the hunt for some new, easy recipes to cook. The after-school schedule is different enough that I’m having to get creative with some dinner routines. I’m shooting for 6:00 for suppertime, but that doesn’t work on the nights that Big Girl has dance classes because they are later in the evening. I think she and Super Man will be eating late dinners together those nights and Little Bit and I will eat together earlier. It’s a juggling act and we’re just going with the flow for right now.

Last night, we tried something relatively new for dinner.  I’ve made it once before, but no one seems to remember eating it and I can’t remember if everyone liked it or not!  As I cooked, I was wondering if I was making something I was just going to throw in the garbage because of this, but it turned out to be a success and everyone loved it.

This will definitely go into my list of regularly-cooked menu items, I think.  It’s a sweet and tangy glazed chicken dish – reminiscent of some of the chicken dishes I remember having at the quick-cook Asian restaurants when I worked downtown.  It’s not technically Asian in origin and I think the original recipe hails from Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Regardless, it is really good and worth a try!

(sorry for the grainy cell phone picture – I forgot to take a “real” one before we ate!)

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Bourbon Street Chicken

4-6 servings

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts; cut into bite-sized pieces
1-2 Tbs olive oil
1 heaping tsp minced garlic
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 pinch red pepper flakes (more if you like it spicy)
1/4 c apple juice (I just used an apple/grape juice box I had in the fridge for kids’ lunches)
1/3 c brown sugar (or 1/4 c Splenda brown sugar blend)
2 Tbs ketchup
1 Tbs apple cider vinegar
1/2 c water
1 Tbs corn starch (to thicken sauce)

  1. In a large skillet, sauté the chicken pieces in the olive oil.
    (I seasoned mine lightly with Houston House Seasoning)
  2. While chicken is cooking, whisk remaining ingredients in a large mixing bowl.
  3. Once chicken is browned, pour in the sauce. Stir to coat chicken and bring to a rolling boil.
  4. Reduce heat and simmer on low, uncovered, for about 15-20 minutes. (Until sauce thickens)
  5. Serve over rice.

I also served mine with some steamed veggies.  It was a huge hit – Big Girl even ate two helpings!

I think next time I might even toss some sesame seeds on the chicken right before serving.

 

Pesto Palooza

Happy Monday!

I hope you all had a good weekend. We did. It was full of friends and fun – and a little date night for SuperMan and I as well. So nice.  We went to a local German restaurant and the food was incredible.  We enjoyed our dinner so much, lingering over our food with just one more glass of wine and some great conversation, that we totally missed our movie!  It was just as well. I told SuperMan I’d rather sit and talk with him than watch a movie any day.

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Sunday afternoon the girls and I spent a few hours with our good friends – they invited us over to make homemade pesto!  Cindy and I both have prolific basil plants and we had been talking about making some pesto with the leaves.

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I had never made pesto, so Cindy offered to give us a lesson.  Our other good friends joined in on the fun and we had PESTO PALOOZA!

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All of the kids got involved, from mincing the garlic to loading up the food processor, measuring the ingredients and spooning the finished pesto into the storage containers.

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Many helpful hands make small work …

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Our junior chefs –

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The house smelled SO GOOD – one of Cindy’s sons came home as we were in the middle of a batch and he said the house smelled like spices. And it did! Such good spices…

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I think we ended up with ten or eleven cups of pesto by the time we were finished.  Each family took a batch home to freeze and enjoy this fall – and I know whenever I take a container out of the fridge to use for cooking this winter I’ll remember the fun we had on that Sunday afternoon.  Good friends and good times.

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We enjoyed our first batch last night for dinner. I grilled some chicken and served it with some sun-dried tomato pesto pasta. SO good.

Here is the recipe in case you want to make some of your own:

Basil Pesto

from Family Fun Magazine

Makes about 1 cup of pesto

2 c firmly packed basil leaves (fresh)
1/3 c walnuts of pine nuts
3 Tbs grated Parmesan cheese
2 small cloves garlic (or 1 large)
1/4 tsp each salt/pepper
1/2 c extra-virgin olive oil

  1. In a food processor, combine all ingredients except the oil. Pulse until a thick paste forms.
  2. With processor on, drizzle in oil in a slow stream until mixture is well combined. You may need to clean the sides of the processor to ensure all ingredients are mixed in.
  3. Transfer to an airtight container. Cover with lid, refrigerate up to 4 days or freeze up to 2 months.

It’s all Greek to me

 

Little Bit had a sleepover the other day – it was her best friend’s birthday and she went to her house to help celebrate.  While she was gone, Big Girl was at a little bit of a loss as to what to do. With no little sister to pester, I guess she didn’t know what she should be doing.

So, I asked her to help me in some kitchen experimentation.  Together, we made some new dishes – completely from scratch. It was fun and we made a huge mess in the kitchen – and ended up with some yummy treats in the process.

I’ve been wanting to make my own hummus for a while now. I’ve been collecting recipes and ingredients and I was ready to give them a try.  So, we pulled out the food processor and became mad scientists – mixing and tasting and mixing some more.

This is one of the recipes we started with.  And there was another one that was a source of inspiration, but we truly just made it up as we went along. (I can’t find the other one, sorry)  I think we quadrupled the amount of garlic it called for and we added some roasted red peppers to ours, too.

Our final result was truly yummy.  I was surprised that Big Girl wanted more cayenne! (and more and more and more) Her palate is truly expanding and it’s fun to see her finding new tastes that she likes – like spicy hummus!

We also made baba ganoush, which is similar to hummus but made with roasted eggplant. I had tried some when I went to dinner with my brother in June and loved it. I have to admit that my baba ganoush was not quite as good as the one I had in June, but it was pretty good nonetheless.  And, I was especially proud of Big Girl, who made this one all by herself and happily dipped and tasted once she was finished with her concoction.

After we made the dips, we decided to make some homemade pita bread. After all, you have to have something to dip into the dip, right?  Our pitas turned out to be more like pita chips than pita bread, though.  Two factors worked against us – a rainy, muggy day (which meant they didn’t rise like they should) and Pinterest (which distracted me at the crucial baking time – and I overcooked them!)

The pitas tasted really good and we’re enjoying dipping them into the hummus and baba ganoush. It’s a great afternoon pick-me-up when it’s too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Healthy fats and good protein to carry us through until dinnertime. I think we will try the pita baking another time, too, but it’s simply too humid right now to successfully bake breads.  It’s like trying to bake in a steam room. Not good.

Here is the link to the baba ganoush recipe we used.  Since I don’t consider what we made perfected, I am not going to share my own recipe just yet. If I get it perfected the way I like it, I’ll post later on. But this was our base recipe.

And here is the link to the pita recipe we used.  It is so basic and so simple, I encourage you to try it. If you have flour, salt, water and yeast, you can make pita.  And the rolling out of the little pitas is actually pretty fun.  Our recipe made about 18 pitas that were about six inches in diameter.

So, let me know if you try it out! It was so much fun to mix and drizzle and roll and bake (and taste!) with my Big Girl.  Getting the girls in the kitchen is so much fun – it takes cooking from being a chore to being an adventure… and teaches them some new skills, too!

 

Saturday Sweetness: Lemon Pound Cake

As I was mixing this up on Friday afternoon, I thought I’d share this recipe with you again. It’s one of those family favorites that we go back to again and again… especially for special occasions.  And this weekend, we’re having special visitors and so I thought it was appropriate to bake.

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And I thought you should be able to enjoy it too! And since I can’t bake one for ALL of you – sharing the recipe is the closest I can come…

Grandma Achord’s Lemon Pound Cake

Ingredients

3 cups white sugar
1 cup sour cream
2 sticks butter
1/4 tsp baking soda
6 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tsp almond extract
zest from one lemon (optional)

Instructions

  1. Cream sugar and butter.
  2. Add sour cream and extracts.
  3. Add eggs, one at a time.
  4. Add flour and baking soda slowly.
  5. Beat only long enough to get flour mixed in well.
  6. Pour into greased tube or Bundt pan and bake at 325 for 1 hour 20 min.

We usually don’t ever get around to it because we gobble up the cake so quickly, but Grandma always made a glaze by mixing a few teaspoons of lemon juice with some powdered sugar (about 2 cups) and drizzled it over the cake.

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Black Bean Soup on a chilly Monday

It’s chilly here today – almost like Spring and Summer got mixed up. It was warm in February/March and now that we’re knocking on the door of May it decides to be cool and windy. Go figure.

Because it was in the 40’s this morning and my little toes were frozen, I decided soup would be a good bet for lunch today.  And because I have been craving black bean soup from my favorite restaurant and they only make it on Wednesdays (and I never seem to get out on Wednesdays for lunch) I decided that I’d make some here at home.

Traditionally, I make black bean soup from dried beans. It’s a labor-intensive, time-consuming process which is really not worth it because I’m the only one in my house who really likes black bean soup.  SuperMan will eat it, but it probably isn’t his first choice of things to eat.  The girls are grossed out by it and won’t even give it a try (hoping one day that changes)

So, because of this, I rarely make black bean soup at home – and eat it out almost as rarely because, as I said earlier, my favorite place to eat it only makes it once a week and I am not usually there on that day to eat it.

I decided today to do a little experiment and try making some using canned black beans. I keep these on hand all the time as I love them in chili and in my quesadillas, etc.  So, why not, I thought?

The result was yummy goodness.

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I thoroughly enjoyed my little bowl of goodness and have enough for lunch all week, unless SuperMan decides to sample some himself one day.

Super easy and super quick to make. I think I made it from beginning to end in less than 20 minutes.  It would make a great meatless meal one night.

Black Bean Soup

Ingredients:

2 cans black beans, drained & rinsed
1 can fire-roasted tomatoes (you can substitute a jar of salsa or can of diced tomatoes with chilies if you don’t have these)
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1/4 cup minced onion (about 1/4 of a small onion)
1 Tbsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cilantro (dried)
~ 1 cup chicken broth
olive oil
salt/pepper

  1. In a small stock pot, heat the olive oil and sauté the onion & garlic until onions begin to become translucent. Be careful not to burn the garlic. (use medium heat)
  2. While this is sautéing, rinse your beans and dump them, along with the tomatoes, in a food processor.  Pulse a few times until the beans are slightly creamy. You can determine how “chunky” or creamy you want this to be.
  3. Add the tomato/bean mixture to the stock pot.
  4. Add chicken broth until soup is desired consistency.
  5. Add cumin, chili powder, cilantro & salt/pepper.  Simmer 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until everything is hot & flavors combine.
  6. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and some tortilla chips.
I also added about 3-4 tsp of my favorite tomatillo salsa to my soup when I ate it.

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Springtime Sunshine Cake

Revisiting one of my all-time favorite recipes today. If you haven’t tried it before, you should!

Springtime makes most of us instinctively want to clear things out – out with the old, in with the new. Out with the clutter, out with the dark tones of winter, out with the heavier foods and in with the light. Lighter colors, lighter clothes, lighter foods.

This is one of my favorite things to make in the springtime.

Mom stumbled across this recipe years ago. It’s been one of our standbys ever since. It is so easy and quick to make, yet it is from scratch and feels wholesome to prepare.

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I love the light texture of the cake – it’s technically a pound cake, but it is in no way heavy like some pound cakes are. This cake bakes up light and airy.

The flavor is light as well – it sings of springtime, with its hints of orange, lemon, and apricot.

There is a glaze in the recipe, although I never make it. My kids are anti-glaze, anti-icing, and prefer their cakes and cookies au naturel.

Works for me. Less sugar to consume.

Anyway, I hope you will give this a try.  The first time I made it, I thought, “Apricot? Really? Huh.”

But, I am so glad I tried it. It is one of the family favorites – and one that is requested often by our friends as well.

I would imagine you could substitute the apricot juice with some orange juice or even lemon juice, but I love it just as it is and have never felt the need to swap it out. I buy the six pack of the little bitty apricot juice cans in the grocery store, so I always have one on hand for the cake.  It takes about half of one of those cans in the cake and I use the rest in the glaze if I make the cake for friends.

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Sunshine Cake

3 cups sugar (I use 1 1/2 cups splenda sugar blend)
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup apricot juice/nectar (or you can use apricot brandy)
1 cup sour cream (do not use low fat sour cream, it won’t work here)
1 cup butter, softened
6 eggs
1 tsp orange extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze:
1 1/2 c powdered sugar
1/2 c (apprx) apricot nectar

*if you have them on hand, you can zest a lemon and/or orange into the batter and glaze. It just amps up the flavor.

  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
  2. Grease and flour Bundt pan or tube pan.
  3. In large mixing bowl, cream butter & sugar.
  4. Add in the apricot juice.
  5. Add the sour cream, extracts and eggs, making sure they are incorporated thoroughly.
  6. Add the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt)
  7. Pour into baking pan.
  8. Bake for 1 hour and 20 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
  9. Cool for 20 minutes before inverting onto cake plate.
  10. Continue to cool for approx. 30 minutes more or until cake is completely cool.
  11. Drizzle with glaze, if desired.

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