Toasted Coconut + Lemon Tres Leche Cake

If you follow me on Instagram you have already seen this video earlier this month. So you may already know that along with  help from my little Monkey Man, we made a Tres Leche Cake but what you didn't see was it getting topped with ooey gooey lemon curd, fresh whipped cream and toasted coconut! We made it to take to a cookout at my Nana's, I also took a chocolate pie and my sister made some ooey gooey butter bars that were amazing and some sprinkle sugar cookies that my kids loved. Food, as always, was the best!  Maybe one day Lee can learn to do what ever kind of magic my Dad has over the grill. :)

Back to the cake! I've been dreaming of a tres leche cake for sometime now and finally settled on this combo but I've thinking of making a chocolate version that may include dulce de leche. I can't wait! But in the mean time, this little guy was pretty fantastic and EASY! Considering my four year old did most of the work on the cake. Easy and delicious, what could be better?

adapted from: Shutterbean

For the Cake:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

6 eggs, separated

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

zest of 1 lemon

1/2 cup shredded coconut

1 cup a/p flour

1 (12 oz) can evaporated milk

1 (14 oz) can unsweetened coconut milk

1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk

2 cup whipping cream (heavy cream)

1 cup lemon curd

1 cup shredded coconut

Preheat oven to 350° F. Coat a 9x13 baking pan with generously butter and set aside. Whisk egg whites, baking soda and and salt until stiff peaks form. (I used a stand mixer but a hand mixer would be fine and if you are looking for a work out this could be done by hand also) Beat in yolk on low speed once combined gradually start adding in your sugar. Fold in remaining butter, then coconut and lemon zest. Gradually fold in flour 1/4 cup at a time. Pour into pan and bake 18-20 minutes. 

While cake is in the oven, in a large measuring cup or medium bowl combine your three milks and set aside. Once cake comes out of the oven use the back of a wooden spoon or a fork pierce the cake several times, the more wholes the better it absorbs. Immediately pour milk mixture over and let sit until pan is cool to the touch, then top with curd and refrigerate for 5 hours minimum. While oven is still warm spread coconut out in a thin layer on a baking sheet, toast the coconut for 5-8 minutes. Do NOT leave it. Once it is golden brown remove it, it will burn int the blink of an eye. Let it cool at room temperature. Once the chilling time is up and you are ready to serve, whip your cream to soft peaks and top cake. Sprinkle coconut on top. 

Enjoy!!!!

Mickey Party Part 3: Recipes and other fun

These are some of the recipes we used. I don't have links to all of the yet, but I will get them and update the post as soon as I do. We simplified this year by only having desserts on the menu. All of these recipes are really easy and most can be made in advance. You can freeze cakes and frosting, jello will keep for day before hand and cookie dough can be frozen as well.  

My boys love cupcakes, then again, what kid doesn't?As I mentioned before I wanted to simplify and I knew most of the kids wouldn't be able to tell the difference between cakes made from scratch and boxed mix so my Mother in Law made the cupcakes with a strawberry cake mix and I topped them with this Swiss Meringue Buttercream that I had frozen left from Liam's birthday dinner, I added a teaspoon for strawberry extracts and red food coloring and topped them with red sugar.

Once again, we had jello. We've had it in some form at Caleb's 2nd and 3rd birthday parties also. We used Food Librarian's Finger Jello Recipe (again) except we used Pineapple Jello and Strawberry Jello to make it in our color palette. 

If you know Caleb you know that boy LOVES doughnuts so we made Fudge Doughnuts (recipe to follow in a separate post) and Cherry Lemonade Doughnuts. I made a double batch the the recipe and baked it in a full size doughnut pan for about 8 minutes. I made the glaze thinner as well but that is just my preference. These doughnut are delicious and I high recommend them! 

Caleb asked for an orange cake and I don't have the exact recipe to share since my Mom made it out of a few different recipes but it was a white cake with orange zest and orange extract with orange curd between the layer and a basic buttercream scented with orange zest and orange extract. It would be an easy thing to replicate with your favorite cake recipes and you could use this lemon curd and swap lemon juice and extract for orange.  

My Mom made these cookies. I know they were a cream cheese sugar cookie and they were delicious! But, I don't know what recipe she used on these either but when I find out I'll update and post it. We got the cookie cutter from The Disney Store. 

The punches were a Berry Lemonade and a Pina Colada Punch that was similar to this. The lemonade was a mix (simply because of sheer volume needed) with frozen berries stirred in that flavored it as they thawed.

Well, that is it for the food. This year was pretty simple. Of course most of the fun came in the form of the bouncy house. We love having it and so do the boys. We also love that my in laws do that for the boys as their birthday gift too. We may need to start looking into investing in one since we would be a third of the through paying for one by now. :) I believe the conclusion is that we need a slide next year though and as much as I hate to admit it, I have to agree. Although that injured back of mine did not love me after I got out of that thing, it was worth it to play with my boys. 

 It's hardly noticeable but I used my other Ikea end table by the bouncy house as a place to for people to leave their jewelry, glasses, drinks, etc and to store shoes underneath. I also placed another sigh that said Liam's and Caleb's Playhouse. I'll be making blank or generic forms of those signs and posting as PDFs soon. Then I will be done posting about the party, finally. :)

***UPDATE: for more info on the party look here, here and here. 

Super Hero Party

  My little Monkey just turned 3!!! On his birthday, we did our usual birthday traditions. There were sprinkle pancakes with whipped cream for breakfast and dinner with ALL 8, yes 8, grandparents at the restaurant of his choice. This year we wound up at a hibachi steak house. He was totally enthralled with the chef and the fire!

  For his party, we planned a super hero theme party. I started working on it months ago, knowing that I was going to have a new baby when September rolled around. There are tons of cute ideas floating around the interswebs for Super Hero/Avengers themed parties, just look at my Pinterest board. The back drop is a shower curtain from Target. I stole the idea from The Thriftress. I found this link and made them into a banner. We had some of the serving platters but the rest were bought at The Dollar Tree, where I also bought all the candy for the goody bags. We happened upon Avengers and Justice League candy that we gave out in little cello bags tied with black ribbon. I forgot to snap a pic of them, though they were super cute. The plates and napkins were from the clearance section of Walmart and the little buckets holding the forks were Avenger's from the Dollar Spot at Target. 

 We all wore super hero themed t-shirts even little bitty baby brother. :) 

Caleb chose a Spider-man shirt, I wore Wonder Woman, Lee naturally went for his favorite Green Lantern and Liam had on Captain America.  

 I made the menu by starting with Caleb's favorite super heroes and then made matching menu cards. 

The menu included:

Captain America's Patriotic Cake

There two flavors of cake, Lemon and Strawberry both at the birthday boys request. 

Spider-man's Webbed Cupcakes

I actually followed a recipe from start to finish with this one and it they were AMAZING!

Sweetapolita's Chocolate Birthday Cupcakes with Nutella Cloud Frosting

Batman's Jello Bombs

On this one, we followed the recipe and made it in Batman colors. Lee and Caleb made them and it was a great recipe to do with kids. They mixed 2 grape jellos with 1 orange and added some black gel food coloring to get the black and added a bit of the black coloring to the cream gelatin mixture to get gray. The jello tasted like a creamy fruit punch flavor and were very yummy! 

Food Librarian's Broken Glass Jello

Iron Man's Arc Reactor

These are sooooo addictive! We went through approximately 150 of these! Luckily for me, my Mother-in-Law is clairvoyant and knew I was nuts for thinking that we need like a third of those and made three batches! 

Iowa Girls Eats' Mini Corn Dog Muffins

Green Lantern's Veggie Constructs and Power Battery Dip

The veggies are self explanatory and the dips were Hidden Valley Fiesta Ranch Dip and Baba Ganoush, which is an eggplant dip. My Mom made it and I don't have the recipe yet but I'll be making it again soon and there will most likely be a post about it. 

Thor's Mighty Mjolnir (Hammer)

These were cheese cubes with pretzel stick for the handle. One thing we learned was that you want to make these fairly close to time to serve them the pretzel gets very stale from the cheese if they sit out too long.

Wolverine's Shredded Chex Mix

 Chex Lemon Buddies

This one is going to become a regular at family get togethers from now on. It is SOOOOOO good!

Aquaman's Atlantis Cooler

Ok, you got me. It's just water, but the hubby thinks that Aquaman gets a bum wrap so I had to add him in there to show off his awesomeness! ;-)

Scarlet Witch's Brew

LOVE LOVE LOVE this stuff! There is not a real recipe because it depends on the sweetness of your watermelon. This time my Brother-in-Law made it with little to no instruction and it was super good. You need Country Time Lemonade Mix, the juice of a water melon and a 1 liter Sprite just keep adding a little of each until you get the correct amount and right flavor.  

Hulk Smash Punch

You'll need:

4 3oz Green Apple Jello (we couldn't find Jello brand and used Jolly Rancher brand gelatin)

1 cup of sugar (trust me it needs it)

12 cups of water

2 46oz cans of Dole Pineapple Juice (or you could juice 2 pineapples if available)

2 liter Sprite

Bring water to a boil and mix in jello and sugar. Chill until time to serve, add in juice, sprite and serve. 

Caleb owns most of the super hero masks and accessories that are on the market so I dumped them into a bucket for kids to play with but it turned out more adults did than the kids. I wish I had time to make a photo booth... Maybe next year. 

Anyone who owned superhero shirts wore them.

Caleb got a bouncy house again this year. Thanks to grandparents who love him and spoil him rotten! He was in it from the time he got there until we left. He probably bounced a total of 5 hours! No exaggeration there! He bounced with anyone who would get in. I'm sure there were plenty of sore knees, legs and backs the next day! I'm not sure he would have eaten anything except Lee drug him out of it and made him a plate! 

  Needless to say, he had a great time and so did everyone else. I had so much help from Lee, my Mom, my Mother-in-law, Brother-in-law, Sister-in-law and my Bob (that's a long story) there's no way I could have pulled it off with out them. Although, other than the bouncy house it was pretty easy and very doable with a small budget! 

Robot Birthday Party Part 3... The FOOD

The recipes I used for the party are...

Cosmic Cookies via Bakerella. 

I ♥ her so much!!! They were very butterscotchy! I loved them that way though. A few people thought we should cut back on the butterscotch chips next time. But honestly I loved them that way so I will probably leave them just the way they are.

Gear Gumdrops also from Bakerella. 

Told you I love her. These are a lot  of work but very much worth it. The orange were root beer flavored and the blue were bubblegum flavored. I did two recipes and wound up with left overs. Next time I think I will do a fruit flavor and cut down to one recipe. Maybe next time I will remember to put out the treat bags so guest can take them home too.

Gadget Gellies from Food Librarian. 

I used berry blue and orange flavors. I now have a major obsession with gelatin related recipes. I bought the tiny spoons from Bake It Pretty but now they have these spoons that I think I like better. They have everything you need and more! I bought the shot glasses from Oriental Trading.

Mechanical Marshmallows

These are pretty self explanatory. Just put lollipop stick in marshmallows then dip in melted chocolate and shake on the sprinkles let set until chocolate hardens. Easy!

Contraption Cupcakes

(mango lemonade cupcakes)

I'm not going to give you the recipe I used for the cupcakes. It was a new recipe and it was dry and had a weird texture. So I recommend using this cake just add lemon zest and reduce the milk but the amount of lemon juice you add. I would add 1/4 cup of lemon juice and zest of at least 3 lemons.

For the butter cream we still haven't perefected that either. It had an amzing flavor but the textuer was odd. We used...

2-3 cup powered sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 cup fresh mango puree

but next time I think we will strain the puree and maybe cook it down until it has thickened and let it cool. Then add it to a cream cheese frosting. Maybe! Who know what I will do.

Bionic Brownies

1 cup butter
2 cups cugar
1/2 cup cocoa
4 eggs beaten
2/3 cup AP flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups chocolate chips
1/2 cup nut optional

Heat oven to 350 F. Grease 13x9 pan. Melt butter in medium saucepan over low heat. Add sugar and cocoa; stir to blend. Remove from heat, stir in eggs. Stir together flour, salt and baking soda; stir into chocolate mixture. Stir in vanilla, chocolate and nuts. Bake 30-35 minutes or until brownies begin to pull away from pan.

Birthday Bot Cake

(chocolate cake with cookies and cream filling)
For the cake we used Hershey's Black Magic Cake. It is our most used chocolate cake.
 For the filling...
1/4 cup flour
1 cup milk
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 package of chocolate  cream sandwich cookies
Cook flour and milk together in small saucepan until thick and bubbly. Cool. In separate bowl cream shortening and butter. Beat in sugar. Beat in flour mixture and vanilla. Stir in cookies.   
 The filling for this cake can be used to make a wonderful chocolate filling, an amazing mint, coffee, caramel or peanut butter filling. Just omit cookies and add flavoring of choice.