Cream Cheese Coffee Cake

Cream Cheese Coffee Cake
This is a great recipe that I found in the Southern Cooking cookbook.

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Topping (recipe below)

Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with mixer until creamy; gradually add sugar, beating well. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to butter mixture alternately with milk, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Mix at low speed after each addition. Then stir in vanilla.
Pour batter into a greased 13 x 9 inch baking pan. Sprinkle with topping. Bake at 350 F for 40 minutes or until toothpick stuck in center of cake comes out clean.

Topping
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup butter, melted

Combine all ingredients to make the topping.

This has got to be one of the best tasting coffee cakes I have ever tried. Try it, you won't regret it. It's wonderfully light and moist and tastes best while still warm. Now I am off to watch the second episode of the new season of Hell's Kitchen..yay. :)

Cookie-Sour Cream Cake

Cookie-Sour Cream Cake

This recipe came from that Betty Crocker cookbook I have been borrowing from the library. 

1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup water
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
8 Oreos

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and lightly flour a round cake pan. Beat all of the ingredients together, except for the Oreos in a medium bowl on low speed for 30 seconds and then on medium speed for 2 minutes. Coarsley crush up the 8 Oreos, then stir them into the batter. Pour into cake pan and bake for 30-35 minutes. Frost with Sweetened Whipped Cream and garnish with Oreo cookies.

Sweetened Whipped Cream

For 1 cup of whipped cream, beat together 1/2 cup of heavy cream with 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar in a chilled bowl until stiff.

This was such a good cake, one that I would definitely serve to company. It is a very light, moist cake. The crushed cookies in the cake are wonderful because they are not hard at all, they taste like just another part of the cake. It is really easy to make too; it took no time at all. Try it you may like it..we all did. :)

Mandarin Orange Cake

Mandarin Orange Cake
This cake, although good was not made completely from scratch, since it uses a boxed cake mix. I would have liked to find something a little more challenging; but still all in all a good tasting cake. I found this recipe online and switched it around some, but it still needs a few more alterations.


1 box orange cake mix
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 can (11 oz.) mandarin orange segments, undrained
4 eggs
1 can (20 oz.) crushed pineapple, undrained
1 box (4 serving size) vanilla instant pudding
1/2 teaspoon orange extract
1 cup whipped cream, thawed


Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease bottom only of a 13 x 9 inch pan.
In a large bowl beat cake mix, oil, orange segments and eggs for 30 seconds on low speed and then 2 minutes on medium speed. Pour into 13 x 9 inch pan. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool thoroughly.
For frosting, stir together the pineapple, dry pudding mix and orange extract. Gently stir in whipped cream; then spread onto cake. garnish with shredded coconut and mandarin orange segments if you desire. The coconut really helps if sprinkled over the whole cake; which I did after this photo; since it gives it a different texture, along with the textures already there.

This cake was a good tasting cake and was moist to boot. The frosting was a bit too runny in my opinion, but still had a good flavor to it. I wound up using the whole container of cool whip to try to stiffen it up some, but it just didn't work. I would suggest either using less of the juices from the can of crushed pineapple or a bigger box of vanilla pudding mix. As I stated in an earlier post, my presentation of the food I am making is not the best, but I will learn in time. :)