On my son's cake...because it's his day

As of forty-one minutes ago, it is officially Bear's 5th birthday.......HAPPY BIRTHDAY BABY! What an incredible adventure the last five years have been, getting to know this very special, funny, incredibly smart little person. He is quirky (seriously, given the choice of four colors, who chooses violet, silver, magenta, and chartreuse?! see previous post if you have no idea what I'm talking about), has an awesome vocabulary, has gorgeous twinkly eyes, and is incredibly cuddly and loving. I am so looking forward to him opening his presents from us tomorrow.....I'm totally psyched about a few of them.

And as it's his birthday, and as one of my huge missions in maintaining this blog is to transfer my recipes to something a little less volatile than my heavily-floured, heavily-oiled composition book "recipe book"....here is the recipe I used for his birthday cake. It produced a subtly-lemony, super moist cake that I was really pleased with. The green slime icing was a lemon buttercream frosting dyed green, which was extremely lemony, so the two were beautifully paired.

Terrible photo, I know.....in the future I'll provide better shots 

MOIST LEMON CAKE

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup butter, softened 

1 1/3 cups sugar

3 eggs

4 Tbsp lemon juice

2 Tbsp vanilla extract

3/4 cups milk

2 Tbsp lemon zest

1/4 cup mayonnaise (bear with me on this one....)

1. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

2. In another bowl, beat butter for as long as you can stand it, then add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Or until your arm feels like it's going to fall off. Whichever comes first. 

3. Add eggs one at a time, beating until incorporated after each one.

4. Add lemon juice and vanilla extract. 

5. Add mayo. Try not to be too weirded out.

6. Add flour and milk alternately into the above mixture, starting and ending with flour.

7. Stir in zest. 

8. Bake approximately 30 minutes at 350F.

Now, about the issue of mayonnaise in the cake. So I read in various places (none of which I can currently recall but all of which were totally unreputable, user-comments-type places, not official foody advice) that adding some mayo to your cake/cupcake batter will result in a beautifully moist cake. I was very skeptical. 

But it works. Wonderfully. It does keep it extremely moist. I read that sour cream works as well, but have not tried this one as I did not have any available. I would imagine that whole milk yogurt would work, too, as it is the fat that keeps it extra moist----and it is probably a more palatable idea and healthier end product. But again, I did not have any at hand. I do remember my mom sending me a delicious-sounding strawberry cake recipe that incorporated yogurt, which I have yet to try but which she said was amazing. So that would back the yogurt idea....I'll try this one at some point soon. In the mean time, mayo works great, you don't taste it at all, and another day soon I'll post the recipe for green slime icing. 

Oh, and yummy healthy snack idea of the day:

Prunes rolled in unsweetened coconut. YUM! Sounds a little unusual, yes, but let's face it, after you've just stomached the idea of mayo cake this should sound perfectly normal! And it's fantastic, actually. I have a couple of treat bowls out in the living room and dining room, which I keep stocked with nuts, dried fruit, homemade trail mix, etc. Well, I put these out a couple of weeks ago and they went within the day. I put out some more, went within a couple of days. Put out plain prunes yesterday and Bear requested that I cover them in coconut....was very sad to hear that we no longer had any coconut in the cupboard. But I will have to make sure to buy some more coconut soon, because a totally whole-foods, sugar-free, packed-with-nutrients treat that goes as fast as cookies is a MUST-MAKE-AGAIN in my books!