Snozzcumber Cake and Frobscottle

BFG birthday party, can't you guess?!

All the recipes I found were way too complicated, so I had to wing it.  Here's what I did:

I ended up using my vanilla pound cake recipe, which is great on it's own, but a little heavy with the rest of the components.  A simple vanilla cake would have been good, the Betty Crocker cookbook has a good one I'm sure.

I baked it in a cookie sheet, trimmed the edges into small "plain" pieces.  Then I cut the whole thing down the middle and slathered it with Lime Curd (made just like my Lemon curd, but with Lime, a drop of green food coloring, and I used all the zest for extra flavor).   I stacked the two halves, sprinkled with green sugar, piped Reddi Whip in stripes, and sprinkled mini chocolate chips elsewhere.

Thankfully we did just have a meat cleaver lying around for theatrical cutting.  The parents that had some all thought the cake was good, but the kids either weren't hungry, or didn't like the look or taste of it.  No one asked for a piece of plain cake so I'm going to assume they weren't hungry.

Now, for the Frobscottle, my little one and I decided Ice Cream Floats would be good.  So one 1/2 gallon of Vanilla Breyers, and some good sodas like Virgil's Root Beer and Izze Sparkling Juice, these were very popular.

Easy Lemon Curd

1/2 cup of Butter
1 cup of Sugar
3 Tablespoons of Lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon of Lemon Zest
1 Egg, well beaten
1/4 cup of water

Combine all ingredients in a sauce pan, over medium heat, stir constantly until bubbling.  Remove from heat and let cool before serving.

My Secret Recipe Pound Cake

Here is my recipe, which was modified for ease and finished product perfection, from Paula Deen's pound cake recipe.

2 sticks (1 cup) butter
1/2 cup Canola oil
3 cups white granulated (pure cane) sugar
5 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup whole milk

Lemon Pound Cake:  Stir in the zest from one lemon with the Vanilla
Cranberry Pound Cake:  Stir in a bag of rinsed and sorted whole, raw, cranberries (but only after you have added 1/2 cup of batter to cover the bottom of the cake pans, so the berries don't stick.
Pumpkin Pound Cake:  Add 1 cup of canned Pumpkin, and the spice mix on the Libby's can.

Preheat oven to 350.  Arrange racks in the middle, you will need both.  Start by slightly heating up butter in the microwave still soft, but not melted.  Using a hand held mixer, beat butter and oil together.  Beat in sugar.  Beat in eggs one-at-a-time, and vanilla.  Gently stir, then beat in till just together, 2 cups of the flour mixed with the baking powder and salt.  Gently stir, the beat in all of the milk.  Gently stir, then beat in till completely incorporated, the 1 1/2 cups of remaining flour.

Divide batter amoung buttered and floured metal cake pans.  Each small loaf pan takes 1 1/2 cups of batter.  I never measured for the standard loaf, it was always what was left over after I filled 3 small loaf pans.  Or, each muffin cup will take 1/4 cup of batter.  The cake is very greasy so you will want the aluminum and paper muffin cups.

Standard loaf bakes for 1 hour and sometimes an additional 10 minutes
Small loaf bakes for 50 minutes
Muffins bake for 30 minutes

You must switch oven placement, top for bottom, at the 30 minute mark or the top will get too brown, and the bottom will get too crusty.