Recipe: Key Lime Cake With Meringue Topping

This moist and tart key lime cake, with its bright green colour, is a perfect dessert for Halloween or St. Patrick's Day, though it's fantastic any other time, too. (My own particular "special" occasion was that my toddler had chewed open a box of lime jello and I needed to do something with it.)

I was inspired by "Dot's Key Lime Pie" recipe (which is still for cake, not pie) and changed it to reduce the fat content quite a lot, as well as lightening up on the sugar.

Key Lime Cake With Meringue Topping

Cake
1/3 cup lime juice
1/3 cup powdered sugar
__________

1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. lemon extract
1 small package lime jello
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 cup plain, low-fat yogurt
3/4 cup diluted lime juice (I only had lemon on hand, and it worked fine too)
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

-Dissolve powdered sugar in 1/3 cup lime juice and set aside.
-Mix remaining ingredients in a bowl and beat until well-blended.
-Pour batter into greased 9x13 pan.
-Bake at 350 degrees C, 30 minutes or until tester inserted in centre comes out dry.
-Let cake stand 15 minutes, then prick all over with a fork and pour juice over.

Meringue
3 eggs whites
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
1/3 cup sugar

-Beat egg whites and cream of tartar together until frothy.
-Still beating, gradually add sugar, and continue beating until stiff peaks form.
-Spoon mixture evenly onto cake. Bake at 425 degrees for 5-7 minutes until golden.

(Sorry no picture; not organized enough with the camera. Next time!)

Boy/Girl Tea Party, Part 1

Let me be clear: I love having four boys. But not having a girl does deny me the option of certain experiences, like shopping for pretty frocks, making pretty crafts, playing with pretty dolls.  Well, I decided, that's life. But --boys or no boys, girl or no girl-- I refuse to be denied tea parties.

Guest List
My oldest and I began by drafting the guest list, trying to balance numbers of boys and girls. We ended up inviting an equal number of each, with four girls accepting and two boys (a third did as well, but in the end couldn't make it), plus my three out of four boys.

the finished product

Invitations
We decided on the theme of a "cupcake tea party." (That way I was only on the hook for producing cupcakes, should time, focus or inspiration fail me.) For invitations, we cut out cupcake shapes from construction paper, with the bottom and top from different colours, and glued them together. Then I simply hand-wrote the details with a coloured pen.

cupcake tops to cut out

Activities
I must admit I was not enthused by most of the activity ideas I found, as a lot was geared for girls (like makeup stations or crafting a handbag) or, if boys were the focus, the "tea party" aspect was largely overshadowed by the addition of pirate or monster themes. (Arrgh, matey! Pass the sugar, or I'll make ye walk the plank!) Nope and nope.

But in the end, a little inspiration and imagination gave us some fun activities:

Decorating Hats

• hats were thrift store finds, various kinds/styles
• kids chose their hat and the decorations from an assortment of feathers, sequins, pipe cleaners, pompoms, ribbon, foamy shapes
• parent-helper used a hot glue gun to attach the embellishments

Tea Cup Treasure Hunt

• kids were let loose to find the tea cups for the party hidden through the house
• certain rooms were off-limits (like the kitchen)
• hunters were instructed that no objects needed to be moved/opened to find the cups; all were in "plain sight"

Mad Hatter Tea

• similar idea to Musical Chairs, but always having the same number of chairs as players (i.e. no one is "out")
• at the start of each course, before serving the food, music is played and kids walk around the table; when the music stops, each kid sits down in the chair s/he is at and stays at that seat until the next round
• I must confess that this one did not actually work at our party. I faced a near-unanimous mutiny. But I still think it's a great idea. Link to the original idea is here.

All right, there were some pirates present.. but very well behaved.

Next instalment: Setting The Table and Food 

Reading: Want To Feel Like An Amazing Parent?

All of us have those days when we feel like we missed some important memo that would've told us the secret to doing parenting right. Well, after the kids are in bed on those days, crack open one of these great reads; they're sure to make you feel like an amazing parent!

Joyner's Dream by Sylvia Tyson
A friend lent me this book, and once I started reading it I had a hard time putting it down. (Thanks, S!) This is an enticing family saga, stretching from 18th-century England to 21st-century Canada. Like any family, this book's cast of characters is diverse: some are loving, nurturing parents, while others... not so much. My favourite example of the latter is a father who, due to his own demons, cannot accept his daughter, and so leaves the girl in the sole care of her grandfather. When the bad daddy reappears, he only sustains interest in the young woman as long as she aids him with cons, swindles and thefts. Nice, eh?


Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006) is a renowned and Nobel-winning Egyptian author. In Palace Walk, the first book of his Cairo Trilogy, we meet the al-Jawad family, headed by the imposing father, Sayyid Ahmad. Set in the late 1910's in Cairo, the book follows the paths of the various family members, outside of and inside of the family unit. At the outset Sayyid Ahmad is a sanctimonious, inflexible tyrant; as the book progresses he proves himself to be a two-faced, egotistical and vain bully. Thankfully, the other characters are much more sympathetic, and the writing is beautiful, giving a sensational feel of Egypt in the early 20th century.

Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

Anything by Augusten Burroughs is not for the faint of heart, and, honestly, I recommend this author's memoirs only for those with a dry sense of humour bordering on dark. Burroughs manages to recount the disturbingly self-absorbed antics of his parents and others as outrageously funny vignettes. One example: after his parents' publicly acrimonious split, young Augusten's unstable mother gives him to her therapist, whose ritual is to poop on the picnic table in the family's backyard and then demand that the other members of the household examine it to assess what deep truths the excrement imparts. ... Betcha haven't done that, have you?

How about you? Do you have any "this-parent-makes-me-look-amazing" books?

The Quilt: For Once, I Won't Channel Liz Lemon

photo from nbc.com
Tina Fey as Liz Lemon
(link to one of my favourite clips)

My partner's favourite show, hands down, is "30 Rock" with Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin. And one of his favourite lines is when Fey's character recites a list of her recent summer accomplishments, including starting a quilt, and Baldwin replies,"You'll never finish that quilt." To which she grudgingly retorts, "I know!"

For the uninitiated --a category I include myself in-- quilting can seem like the Sisyphean task of sewing: labour-intensive, never-ending and, ultimately, futile. I marvel whenever I see a completed quilt. Having confessed this, you can understand why I've been reluctant to admit that I've started a one.

I've kept it a secret because I gave myself a deadline to finish of two years, and I wanted to be sure that I could produce on schedule. When I began the quilt two years seemed like a generous amount of time, but that was back in January. Yes, as in 10 months ago. And so far, I have... cut out a bunch of little pieces of fabric. Faith in my ability to complete this project started to waver.

Until this past week! I... S-E-W-E-D...!! (Horn fanfare, please.)

Do not let my renewed enthusiasm mislead you: I (still) have lots more little pieces of fabric to cut, and I really need to get the lead out if this quilt is going to get done before global warming makes it irrelevant.

But, I now have hope. And I resolve that I will not Lemon out! (Stay tuned...)

Giving Thanks Amid The Colours

We were very happy to spend part of the Thanksgiving long weekend at our extended family's cottage.

The kids enjoyed exploring the beach, wading in the water, building sandcastles (which were then attacked by ferocious sea monsters) and hiking in the back forest. Good thing I learned from our summer camping venture to bring lots of extra clothes! And waterproof pants didn't hurt...

I hope you and yours had a wonderful time, too!

Decorating Pumpkins Without The Knife

Am I the only one whose kids have already been clamouring, "Can we carve the pumpkin today?" And, of course, my explanation that if we cut into it now (nearly 30 days before Hallowe'en) it will only go bad, gave little credence to my answer of "no."

Thankfully, Gail Gibbons' The Pumpkin Book rescued me. In reading this, my guys nabbed the idea to decorate our pumpkin without subjecting it to surgical re-invention.

Oh, no! My hair gel is out of control!

What we used:

• bottle caps for eyes
• frozen juice can lid for mouth
• play-dough for nose, hair (or whatever that stuff is supposed to be) and ears
• a discarded pacifier and a trinket we found on the street for earrings

Then we had the brilliant idea to make it look like he's climbing out of our front planter! So we cut the legs off a pair of old pants that were headed for the rag bin, wound an elastic around each on one end, stuffed them with plastic bags and finished them off with a pair of old mittens.

Why is this kid smiling? Can't he see I'm trying to get out?!?

Other items that would make great pumpkin features:

• buttons
• pins, brooches
• costume items like glasses and false noses
• Mr. Potato Head bits
• foam shapes or bits that you have lying around

What else?