Baking tip and recipes!

My baking tip today is that semi-homemade can be just as good as homemade if it is done right! Sometimes there just is not enough time to bake everything from scratch! I love my cakes to taste perfect, but sometimes a box mix can do the trick. There have been a couple of times when I have had to spend a lot of time decorating a cake and just mixing some cake mix together was going to save me a ton of time. If I do use a cake mix I always make a few substitutes. I always use butter instead of the oil, and milk instead of the water. If it is a white cake I will beat the egg whites and fold them in.

Semi-Homemade recipe 1
My Aunt Sarah (I didn't ask permission to give out her recipe, hope I don't get sued!) made this really really yummy cake for Christmas and I think she just followed the directions on the box mix (it was a white cake) and then also added a tub of vanilla frosting to the mix and baked it in a bundt pan. It was so moist and good.

Semi-Homemade recipe 2
This one is my mom's. She has a lot of talents, but she will be the first to say cooking and baking is not one of her passions. She makes three fabulous dinners: her enchilada casserole, sesame chicken (that was always my birthday dinner), and lemon pepper chicken. And she makes one dessert: Butterfinger dessert. It is really simple and I love it! Buy the frozen Sarah Lee pound cake. Get a few packages of the fun sized butterfinger bars. And mom always used cool whip, but I prefer real heavy whipping cream ( a lot more calories though!). You get a 9x13 pan, and line it with sliced up pieces of the pound cake. Then you top that with whipped cream that you sweeten with powdered sugar and vanilla. On top of that you put the butterfingers that you have chopped up into tiny pieces (just put them in a zip-lock bag and mash them up with a rolling pin). And that's it. Easy!

Semi-Homemade recipe 3
This one is mine! This is perfect for a barbecue night. Get the Sarah Lee pound cake (you can do so much with this goodness!!) and slice it up. On one slice spread your favorite fruit flavored cream cheese then cover it up with another slice. Throw it on the grill for just a couple minutes until both sides are browned. Then serve with whipped cream and your favorite fruit.

I plan on baking on Thursday for our Valentine dinner, and Friday for Corny to take a better looking cake to work. Tomorrow we take Stella to the GI doctor. Please pray he finds out what is going on so we can move on from this and she ca finally feel well! I hope everyone has a wonderful rest of the week!