Easy Carrot Cake

Last week we got together with family and it was suggested that I bring a cake or something sweet.

So...I did both!

I had seen somewhere that a creative blogger had created an Easter Egg Fruit Salad.  (Sorry I don't recall my inspiration source!)  So, I decided to give that a try.  It was easy and turned out beautifully!

Thinking of Easter and spring and bunnies, I decided to make my cake something that I haven't baked in a long, long time... Carrot Cake!

Look at all that decadent deliciousness!  

Doesn't the orange-y beautifulness of those carrots look great?

Ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
1/4 cup applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup pecans
2 tubs cream cheese frosting

Instructions:

First, I thought you needed to enjoy a beautiful photo of the rich, orange carrots pre-cake style!

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

And...another look at those beautiful carrots!

• Grease and flour two nine-inch round cake pans and set aside.

• Using the food processor, grate the carrots to a rough chop.

See, they are still beautiful even after they are grated to a rough chop!

Another angle of that beautifulness!

• In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt till combined and set aside.
• Beat the sugar and oil till smooth in the bowl of an electric mixer.
• Add the eggs one at a time and beat well.
• Stir in the applesauce and vanilla.
• With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture to the egg mixture.

• Stir in the carrots and nuts.

Again, don't those carrots just look beautiful?

Even before it is baked, this cake looks absolutely beautiful!

• Divide the batter evenly between prepared cake pans.
• Bake about 40 minutes or till a tester comes out with only a few small moist crumbs attached.
• Let cakes cool in pans on wire rack for about fifteen minutes
• Carefully turn cakes out of pans onto wire racks to finish cooling completely.
• When cakes are completely cool, set one of the cakes rounded top side down in the center of an heirloom round ironstone platter that you inherited from your Granny.  (If you don't have said platter, any beautiful round cake plate will do.)
• Plop a couple of tablespoons of the frosting onto the cake and spread it out to where it is just beginning to ooze over the edge of the cake.
• Place the other cake on top of this layer of the frosting with the rounded top up.  
• Spread frosting around the sides of the cake.
• Then, cover the top of the cake with frosting blending it down to the edge of the sides.

Enjoy each morsel of yummy, chewy, goodness!

Chicken Pot Pie

This is truly a comfort food recipe.  It is delicious and easy, too. 

Ingredients:
2 cups chopped chicken
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can peas and carrots
2 cans mixed vegetables

Topping Ingredients:

1 cup self-rising flour
1 stick butter, melted
1 cup milk

• Gather all your ingredients because if you don't do that first, you might find yourself in the middle of preparing and realize, "Oh gosh, I'm out of..." and that is just so frustrating.
• Spray a casserole dish with non-stick vegetable spray.  I'm using my Pampered Chef Deep Covered Baker but just because it is a good size for this and the crust comes out a nice thickness.  You can use any 9" x 13" baking dish.

• Drain the liquid into a bowl, pour in your vegetables into the casserole dish, and give them a little stir to mix them together.

• Since I was using canned chicken chunks, I drained the juices out into the liquid bowl and dumped the chicken into another.  (I have used left-over chicken and that meant I had to add a half-cup or so of chicken broth.)

• With a fork, break the large chunks up till it is almost like shredded chicken and blend this into the veggies.

• Blend together the liquids from the veggies and the chicken with the can of soup because that makes the liquid ingredients a nice consistency and so much easier to stir in than that gloppy, clumpy blob of cream soup.

• Pour the blended liquid mixture over the chicken and veggies and stir it up till it looks like a calico quilt.

Now it is time to make the topping - better known as that rich, buttery crust!

• Melt a stick of butter.

• Add a cup of milk and stir.

• Add a cup of sifted flour.  I know that pile of flour looks like it wasn't sifted but it was... OK. OK.  I did just dump it into the bowl but it still will turn out just fine... trust me.  Stir all that together to make a creamy batter.

• Pour that batter on top of your casserole, place it into a 350 degree oven, and bake for sixty to ninety minutes or until the topping turns a golden brown.

• Let set for a few minutes or you will burn your mouth when you dig in!

• Doesn't that just look like a golden picture of bubbling wonderfulness?  I hate this isn't one of those scratch-and-sniff blogs because that dish is smelling like a warm cuddle on a cold, shivery day!

• Scoop some out onto a purty Blue Willow plate and set that on a red gingham placemat and it will be a feast before it even hits yore belly - before it even touches yore tongue.  Whew!  That is some kind of wonderfulness!

This is one of those one-dish meals that is so buttery and delicious that it is hard to just eat a little bit on a cold day.  I have substituted ground beef or ham for the chicken and had that as the base for the pot pie and they were equally delicious. I've also substituted the cream of chicken soup with cream of celery or mushroom with success.

Beef Stew

Left-over roast beef - I had enough to almost fill a quart container or about two pounds.
1 small onion
2 Tablespoons butter
2 cups beef stock
1 can or bottle of beer
2 Tablespoons tomato sauce
2 teaspoons Paula Deen's House Seasoning
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 cup water (more, if needed)
3 large carrots
3 small potatoes

• Prepare roast beef.  I had a left-over roast that Mike had smoked and we froze 'the remains' as he calls left-overs after a couple of meals.  So, I simply thawed it and diced it up into bite sized pieces with my kitchen shears.
• Melt butter in the bottom of a 4-quart pot.
• Dice the onion into large pieces and cook and stir it in the butter over medium heat till it is a bit brown around the edges.
• Add beer, tomato sauce, seasoning,Worcestershire sauce, and beef stirring to scrape all the crusty bits in the bottom of the pan and bring to a slow boil over medium to medium-high heat. 
• Scrub carrots and potatoes and dice into bite-sized pieces.
• Add carrots and potatoes to boiling mixture and cook about a half-hour more.  (Add more water if stew begins to dry or thicken too much.)
• Serve with cornbread or a crusty French bread.

This recipe was inspired by The Pioneer Woman's Beef Stew with Beer and Paprika.  It was easy to prepare and delicious.