Yellow Cake with Sour Cream Frosting

My dear friend Leslie's birthday is tomorrow, June 1 (Hooray!), but her birthday party was last night, and I thought I would bake her a cake. At first I was frustrated because all I wanted was a recipe for normal yellow cake, and apparently, on the interwebs, this does not exist. Even the simple recipes seemed a lot more difficult than I was expecting. So last weekend when I was at my parents' I looked in the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook my mother's had for about four decades.

Ah-HA! The very first recipe was for yellow cake and just made sense. Unfortunately, I got batter all over my copy, but I'll try to get it again and post it sometime.



Even though the cake was great, I was a little disappointed with the frosting. First of all, I take issue with the fact that that is called a "frosting" in the first place. It seems more like an icing or a glaze to me. Other than that, the taste was good. I like the idea of a sour cream frosting, so I might try to play around with it a little. I should also point out that the runniness might be my own fault since I melted the butter in the microwave, and that consequently melted everything else, but whatever. I also omitted a bag of chocolate chips that was supposed to be double boiled with the butter, so that probably had something to do with the consistency also, now that I think about it. Oh well. It was delicious none-the-less!

Happy Birthday Leslie!!!!




Sour Cream Frosting
(This is enough for 2 9'' cakes)
1/4 c. butter
1/2 c. sour cream
1 t. vanilla
1/4 t. salt
2(1/2)-2(3/4) c. sifted confectioner's sugar

Melt the butter, and blend in sour cream, vanilla, and salt.
Gradually add sugar for spreading consistency, and beat well.

Chai Tea Latte

This post could almost be entitled, "Treasure Island is a very dangerous place." For those of you not in the know, Treasure Island is a Chicago grocery store called "The most European supermarket in America" by Julia Child. It's amazing, and I really need to learn self-control when I go in there. So far I've come out with wasabi mayo, liquid smoke, 6-packs of Aranciata and Limonata Sanpellegrino, and a loaf of Lithuanian bread that I bought only because I was unfamiliar with the bakery. I almost bought wasabi cheese and korean bbq sauce, but I stopped myself. I'm trying to conserve room in my car when I move.

Anyway, on my last trip to Treasure Island, I grabbed the last thing on my list (organic chipotle salsa, which is what makes me want to try the liquid smoke in normal salsa), turned around, and saw this:



People are very passionate about the chai tea lattes. I first found this out when I was in Caribou and a woman who had just gotten her drink stormed back in--livid--marched up to the barista and said, "This is NOT a chai tea latte. I get one every day, and I know what it is, and this is NOT a chai tea latte." While I'm not as crazy as that miss, I still don't really blink at dropping $5.00 on a small drink. (That's really not an exaggeration since soy milk is 40 cents extra and Chicago has a 10.25% sales tax). So I was especially excited when I found this lucky package.

This is a really long post for something so simple. Really, you just mix 1 part milk (since it's a "Vegan" chai tea mix they say to use soy milk, but really, who cares) to 1 part mix and heat it up.



ZOMGZ. It's good. Really good.

Crustless Quiche

First of all, I want to address something that I was initially concerned about: why is this a crustless quiche and not a frittata? Well, friends, it's not a frittata because it's not in a skillet, and I didn't broil it. Now onto bigger and better things.

I had a pretty lazy day today. I didn't work out because my muscles were killing me. I had Coldstone ice cream around 5:00 because tomorrow is the last day to use the free coupon from my birthday. And as I was lighting the flame to boil my water for my Friday night macaroni and cheese, I told myself, "no." I deserve something that requires effort. Luckily, Joy the Baker's blog has two different quiche recipes I wanted to try: Crustless Quiche with blue cheese, spinach, and mushrooms, and Creme Fraiche Quiche with (obviously) creme fraiche, gruyere, and bacon.

I didn't feel like waiting for a pie crust to thaw, so I went with the crustless quiche, but decided to add bacon (I know..ME! Cooking meat!), mushrooms, gruyere, and I had some red bell peppers, so I added that as well.

Proof of the bacon:


Here's the recipe I followed:

Slice bacon (I used 7 strips because it was hard to cut through the fat and I got frustrated) and fry it. Slice some mushrooms and red bell peppers, and sautee those in the bacon grease. Toss those into a buttered pie plate. Meanwhile, whisk 3 eggs, and then whisk in 1 cup of half and half (I want to point out that I actually almost got fat free half and half, but then I thought about the rest of the ingredient I was using, and decided that would just be stupid). I sprinkled the bacon crisps over the mushrooms and red pepper, topped that with shredded gruyere, and then poured the egg mixture on top.



Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 35 minutes, or until it's browning on top.



I really don't like cooking in my apartment kitchen for some reason, so I was proud of myself for actually making something. Hurray!



It was nice having the gruyere crust on top, but I still think I'd prefer to have it incorporated throughout. Next time I also would add shallots and spinach.

Kuma's Corner

Kuma's Corner
2900 W. Belmont
Chicago, IL 60618


This past weekend was full of really a lot of good eats: Minnie's for lunch on Friday followed by a four course meal at Phil Stefani's 437 Rush for dinner; brunch at Orange on Saturday and then dinner at Fonda del Mar. Now, I'm not saying Kuma's Corner necessarily ruined that trend. It really was good.

I had the Yob burger: Smoked gouda, roasted red peppers, bacon, and roasted garlic mayo.

Here are pictures of my leftovers since I forgot my camera when we went:





Drew had the May special: The Swine flu burger. It had chorizo hash, tortilla strips, roasted green chile, pico de gallo, cilantro, and cream sauce (although we both agreed it tasted like Indian food).

I should point out that I also swayed Drew away from the Slayer: a pile of fries with a 1/2 lb. burger on top, chili, cherry peppers, andouille, jack cheese, onions, and anger.

Yes, the burgers were good. Pretzel bread buns were a nice touch. The appetizer was also good: waffle fries with pulled pork and jack cheese (well, ga-duh these were good. The bbq sauce was just Sweet Baby Ray's though, I'm pretty sure). They had homemade chips, which I always appreciate. But was all that worth waiting (both to get a table and subsequently at the table) 3 hours? Nyyeeeehprobably not.

Looks like DC is 2-0 in the Great Burger-Off with Chicago.