A Summer Gathering and Momma's Cooking

Hello friends if your in the summer climate as I am right now, I hope you're keeping cool. Earlier this month in the States we had the Fourth of July (Independence Day), yes way overdue writing this. We celebrated with a cookout, an event that usually is just involved Fangirl coming up, the Folk, and me, but this year my sister and I'll call her June Bug decided to bring their brood, making it a total of 8 people.

This caused my Mother to have to conjure up an alternative dessert plan. She off the bat created a new cake recipe that I call: Mom's Improv 4th of July Cake. Though don't let the title fool you it'd be great at any time. I don't have any pictures, it's a pretty simple cake, but I will share the recipe I originally posted on Gilded Wings:


Mom's Improv 4th of July Cake

Ingredients:

Berry Mix:
1 Cup Sugar
1 to 1 1/2 cup of Blueberries
1 to 1 1/2 cup of Strawberries (crushed)

Cake Mix:
2 Cups of flour
1 Cup of Sugar
1 Teaspoon of Vanilla
2 Eggs
1/2 cup of cooking oil
1/2 cup of evaporated milk (mixed with 1/2 cup of water)

Also:
Whip Cream
Cooking Spray
Preheat oven to 350

Instructions:

Preparing Your Berry Mix

Add your blue berries and strawberries to a bowl. Pour in the sugar and stir it all up. Let it set for an hour to two hours, stirring every 30 minutes till it forms a juice.

Preparing Your Cake Mix

First add the dry ingredients (the flour and sugar), then add the wet ingredients (everything else). Then stir till you get a smooth, well mixed batter.

Let's Mix These Two Mixes

Once your juice has formed strain out the berries into the cake batter. SAVE THE JUICE!
Mix the berries into your batter.

Bake Creation Bake!

Spray a 9 X 13 cake pan, and pour in the batter. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Test doneness with a toothpick.

After Baking
Once the cake is out of the oven, and still hot take spoonfuls of the berry juice you saved and spoon it all over the cake. MAKE SURE YOU SAVE AT LEAST HALF OF THE JUICE! Now let it cool down.

Nom Nom

Cut up the cake however you wish. Serve your cake piece topped with whipped cream. Finish by drizzling some of your remaining juice over it.

Enjoy!


After our feasting, we all went outside to enjoy the fireworks. My sister's brood had brought some glow sticks and a balls. June Bug made her a crown out of glowing periwinkle ring. She was like queen of the rave! Ok not really, but maybe the glow queen of the cookout.

There was one point I was sitting on the porch edge in the dying day watching my sister play catch with the boys as lighting bug, or you may call them fire flies (I think both names are beautiful), an I was like this was definantly almost like the quenticenal american Summer/Fourth of July. If it wasn't already cliche enough we later roasted marshmellows for s'mores over the grill's charcoal that was still burning.

I'm also going to remember it as the Forth we had watermelon out our ears. See as part of our usual Fourth menu we have watermelon, so my parents bought one. Well her comes my sister with one, which we used for out cookout, then my Grandparents up the road called saying they was gonna have to send the rest of their melon to us cause some rencent dental work was making it hard for them to eat it. So my sister and me had to get it. There was a half plus about 3/4's of another half we carried back along with bags of onions, yes there was qoting of Dirty Dancing after this. Needless to say our guests went home with Melon, cause our was untouched in the fridge. Actually I was eating that melon, when I wrote this back on the 11thm we still had half of it at that time.

I guess before I go I'll post this one summery type craft thing I fell in love with. I mean this post is summer related. It's a tutorial for Solar Color Changing Ombre Converse Sneakers from the Dream A Little Bigger Blog, props to Epbot's post for me finding it. I think that would be cool, or heck even getting regular paint and coloring up some shoes ombre style would be awesome. Though I don't know about this particular brand of flats, I know certain flat bottom tennis shoes are not the best protect on our gravel/rock drive way, and if you step on a single piece of sharp gravel in them, it's about as bad as if you did it barefooted.

Well I hope you have a good weekend friends and enjoy the summertime. God Bless You Guys!