Tunnel of Fudge Cake

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Mr. T and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary last month.

As with many people in the current economy, money is tight. We opted to stay in and spend money on a nice meal with the family because it would have been outside our budget to hire a babysitter and go out or to take everyone out for a nice meal.

I made bacon wrapped filet mignon, mashed potatoes, a wedge salad with a homemade buttermilk peppercorn dressing and a tunnel of fudge cake for dessert. I meant to serve a delicious baguette with our dinner as well, but totally forgot. I was trying to make a meal like we might get at a nice steak restaurant, but do it for a fraction of the cost at home.

I posted a picture of the Tunnel of Fudge cake on my Facebook, a bunch of my friends thought it looked delicious and asked for the recipe. I really wanted to put it here on my blog, but I wasn't sure about copyright laws and my putting the recipe on a blog. The recipe is from an issue of Cook's Country magazine.

The cake was so delicious. It was just what I wanted. I wanted a rich chocolate dessert. That is what I got! It was so decadent and delicious that my children couldn't finish their pieces. I, of course, had no problem polishing of my piece, since I am a choc-o-holic! We did give away a good part of the cake though as it was so rich that I knew we would never finish it all before it went bad. Why not share the yummy-ness, right?! 

Look at all the delicious chocolate....makes my mouth water just looking at it!

In thinking about posting the recipe here, I decided to contact Cook's Country and ask them about if I could have permission to post the recipe on my blog or if they would give my readers a free link to get the recipe from their site. The recipe is on their site, but it is currently premium content. I didn't want you to have to sign up for a free trial or pay for a membership just to get the delicious recipe.

I actually heard back from them. I really didn't think I would as I am not a big time blogger or famous or anything other than just little old me :-). They are willing to let you have access to the recipe for 1 week. I am waiting to hear back the exact date that this link is good until and I will post that as soon as I know. For now, just go get the recipe. The link is at the bottom of this post.

UPDATE: I heard from Cook's Country. The link for this recipe is good until 4/6/2012.

I highly recommend making this super decadent chocolate cake. I doubt you will be disappointed.

Now, let me give a quick shout out to Cook's Country since they were so nice to share the recipe with us.

I first learned about their family of cookbooks and magazines back when we moved to Oregon, about 8 years ago. I was smitten from the beginning. I really like how they try the recipes so many times to find just the right thing that works. I found their The Quick Recipe cookbook while we were living in corporate housing(which is ironically my least favorite of the cookbooks I have bought). I had no cookbooks and was in desperate need of one because I can't cook without a cookbook. I then got a subscriptions to Cook's Illustrated. Then I learned about The Best Recipe cookbook. It went on from there. The thing that I have learned (bear with my nerdy side again) is that if you read the desciption of how they came up with the recipe and all their trial and error to find the 'right' recipe, you can really learn a lot about cooking. It is chocked full of nuggets of cooking information. I have been able to carry this information over to other recipes and cooking and, in my opinion, improve on other recipes I have found other places.

What I like about Cook's Country is that, to me, they are the 'easier' recipes with still awesome tasting results. I really like Cook's Illustrated and all the America's Test Kitchen recipes, however so many of them are a bit finicky and take time to pull together. While I really love cooking and I do enjoy taking my time, I have two young kids, so that just isn't going to happen often in this season of my life. For that reason Cook's Country has become my favorite magazine. The recipes are well tested and taste great and they don't take 2 hours to put together. They also use real food, which for this natural/organic mama is a must. They also have a center section in each magazine with pull out recipe cards that can all be made in about 30 minutes. I have put a carousel of some of my favorite America's Test Kitchen items below....so feel free to check them out.

Thanks to the folks at Cook's Country for letting us have this recipe! Click the link below to get the recipe.

Link - Cook's Country - Tunnel of Fudge Cake Recipe - This link is good until 4/6/2012

Oh by the way, the recipe calls for dutch processed cocoa. I had no trouble finding it in AZ or OR when we lived there, but I can't find it in the place we currently live. So, if you can't find it or don't want to spend the money on it, the cake turns out just fine with regular cocoa. I do know the other tastes better, but I figure regular cocoa and yummy cake is better than no cake!

Enjoy your day and happy cooking and yummy eating to you!

The Real Roller Coaster Ride of Motherhood

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What I am about to tell you is the truth, the real truth and nothing but the truth.

OK, melodramatics over, however, I do want to vent share with you some of my current life.

For those of you who don't know me personally, I am a 40 year old mother of 2. I have 2 girls that are 10 and 5. I homeschool my girls because that is just what we ended up deciding to do and stuck with it because we enjoy it (most of the time). My girl are simply fantastic and I love them so much. They are both very thoughtful, kind, generous and well mannered (most of the time), in public at least. LOL!

My two girls. So beautiful.

While they are simply fantastic, they are still kids and human beings after all. We all have our thing, right?

Sometimes as a Mom, I don't like going through those "things" with my kids. I would rather that they just already know all these things and make my life a little easier. Sounds selfish doesn't it, but I am going to guess that if you are a Mom or have spent plenty of time taking care of kids you would, at times, agree with my statement.

I am in one of those seasons now. I have one child who I suppose could be classified in so many ways. You could say that she is spirited, strong-willed, challenging, or whatever word you want to put on it. She is the type that you can tell her the direction ten times and until you force the issue, she will most likely not do what you are telling her she needs to do. While this isn't her way all the time, she goes through phases, like our current phase, where it doesn't matter what I do, what I say or what consequence occurs because of her behavior/attitudes or actions. She is going to do what she is going to do and that is that.

Now I am sure it will not come as a shock, I REALLY DISLIKE these phases. They are exhausting. I have been through enough of them now to know that they come to an end, but still the ride is no fun. To me none of it makes sense. I don't understand this mindset. It is not my nature to fight this hard. If someone said to me, "Get your schoolwork done by 4 pm or you won't be going to Girl Scouts," and Girl Scouts was really important to me, I would get that work done come hell or high water. Not this child. Like I said, I don't understand this mindset.

I have gotten so desperate this time that I have resorted to reading a non-fiction book! GASP...SHOCK... I love to read and I can go through fiction books like water. However, non-fiction books are another story. One of those will take me a year or so to finish, and this is a good time frame. For me to have read 1/3 of a non-fiction book, tells you how I am feeling through this phase. So far the book is a good read and is reminding me of what I already know AND really need the reminder of. I just am not the most consistent person on the planet, so when we are in these difficult phases, I get really good at practicing the skills in the book. Like being very direct with my directions, i.e., "Child, go put your shoes away in your closet now." Rather than, "Child, get your shoes out of the middle of the floor." Which surprisingly can mean the same thing in my mind.Once things ease up, I take a nice deep breath and relax a bit, but then I am sure that is a part of the problem. I NEED TO BE MORE CONSISTENT. It is hard for me!

This past weekend, after week 3 of this phase and the I don't know how many days of super long school days(i.e., finishing the marathon at 8pm...grrrrr), I had had enough! It was a weekend where I NEEDED to leave the house as much as possible in the hopes that when Monday morning rolled around, I would indeed like my children again. Now, if you are a mom of young children, stay real with me here, cause you know you have felt this way before....I am not the only one...or at least that is what I am going to tell myself and don't inform me otherwise if you live in some fairytale land with your children(unless of course I can join you, but I am guessing some kind of drugs would be involved to live in such a fairytale land, so I'm out).

I spent my weekend, scrapbooking and enjoying the company of adults! It was wonderful and refreshing. I didn't accomplish that much and I really don't care. I accomplished that thing called sanity, which is much greater than the number of pages I completed.

This weekend I intend to get my sanity on in a new way for me. I started running about 2 years ago, thanks to my cousin....it's all her fault! hehe! Anyway, I had started training and was ready to run a 5k but then injured my hip and it took months to figure out what was wrong. Then there was surgery and 2 months+ on crutches and therapy and such and so on. So, finally almost a year later, I got to start training again! Yippee!

My Cousin and I after our walk/run to complete the  Race for the Cure 5k in 2010

I am ready to run my first 10k this weekend. Well sort of, my knee started bothering me recently. It turns out to be a minor issue with my IT band. I have had to stop running and run/walk.

Everyone I talk with about this weekend's race keeps telling me I need to be glad to just finish the race, and I will be. BUT, given the fact that running is one of my outlets for this journey of motherhood, I just want to whine and be disappointed for a moment....can I fall down on the floor and kick and scream like a toddler for a moment. I WANT TO RUN THE RACE THAT I TRAINED FOR AND HAVE LOOKED FORWARD TO!!! OK, moment over. I'll get up and dust the crumbs off me (cause my floor is never clean). I am disappointed that I won't get to run the whole thing, however, I know in the end I will still get to do the race and I will be amazed that I did it....I finished a 10k!

When I get to the finish line, do you know who will be there cheering wildly for me? It will be two of the sweetest girls on the planet and my hubby! Makes my eyes water just typing that because I can picture them and their huge smiles on their faces and their cheering and yelling. There will be huge hugs and choruses of "Mommy, you did it," etc. They will be so happy and so proud of me. In that moment, none of the other stuff will matter. I am their mom, they are my girls...I will love them forever and for always, no matter what. In that moment, the current phase won't matter.

Those moments are the moments that we all live for in this long journey of motherhood.

Now I'm off to eat Ohh La La omelets made entirely by the kiddo going through the 'phase' with no help from me. There is a reminder that even in the hard phases, there is always still some good. She can be equally frustrating and awesome at the same time.

Welcome to the wonderful roller coaster ride of motherhood!

Digital Delights: Easter Egg Hunt Pages

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Since it seems that Easter is the theme d'jour on most blogs of the blogs I follow, I thought I would show you 2 pages from our Easter last year.

I love these pages. They are very simple and simple to put together and on top of that they are very visually appealing (at least to me).

I like using my own photos as the background on a page. Not only does it look really neat, but it is an easy way to add an additional picture to the page. For years I have taken pictures of the girl's Easter baskets and scrapboooked them, now with digital scrapbooking I am able to keep this same memory/tradition and integrate it into the page design. Bonus and it looks good too!

Click on either picture to view it larger.

What I used:

ü   Creative Memories Storybook Software 4.0

ü  Cheerful Digital Predesigned Pages (page 1)

ü  Simple Click and Fill 12x12 Pages (page 2)

      Page 1

      I started with the Simple Click and Fill page and filled it in with the elements below.

o   Photo of my daughter’s Easter basket (background)

o   NSD Fun & Fab Paper 4

Page 2

I started this page with Cheerful Predesigned Page because I liked the layout. I changed the background.

o   Photo of my daughter’s Easter basket (background)

o   NSD Fun & Fab Paper 4

Font used: 

Fontmoochers

                       

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Thanks for stopping by!