When I came across the idea to microwave Ivory soap on The Cyber School Mom Diary’s fantastically comprehensive Supermegatotally Thrilladelic Not Bummer Summer list,  I was instantly intrigued.

“What happens when you microwave Ivory soap?” I asked.

“Try it and see!” Chrissi told me. “It doesn’t damage anything and it’s cool.”

I immediately added it to our summer fun list and once Wyatt saw it he was dying to see what happened.

Soap! A microwave! What could be better?

It definitely did not disappoint. PLUS: there’s science!

We started off with a hunk of plain old Ivory soap. We cut a bar of soap in half, but you could cut it into quarters and still get a dramatic effect. You may recall that Ivory soap floats in water. The reason for that is that unlike other soap, it has a a bunch of air whipped into it. This is important because when you microwave it, all those tiny air bubbles expand and make your soap look like this:

How cool is that? It took 90 seconds of microwaving to get the soap to this stage the first time and 30 seconds the second time. After it balloons up, the soap feels simultaneously crunchy and squishy to the touch. It isn’t particularly hot when it comes out, but please use common sense when handling it — steam burns are not fun.

I’d also like to take a moment to note that I’m mortified by how dirty my microwave is in this picture. On the plus side, it is sparkling and shiny now that I’ve cleaned a bunch of fluffy soap out of it.

Anyhoo, the kids were thrilled by this project and have been begging me to do it again since the first exciting result. We’ve placed the fluffy soap next to our bathroom sink and we break little chunks off to use when we wash our hands.

Have you ever microwaved Ivory soap? What else is fun (and safe!) to microwave?

Oh, hello there Stumblers! If you’re visiting Wendolonia for the first you may be interested in checking out some of my other kid-centric posts:

• I pack cute and/or geeky bento box lunches for my kids almost every day
• Homemade Batman cookie cutter
• Easy tie-dye window decorations
• 70′s t-shirt with iron on letters
• Sidewalk paint
• Writing letters

Thanks to Scotch(R) Double Sided Tape for sponsoring my writing about crafts. Add your comment below to be entered for a chance to win free sample rolls to help with your upcoming holiday needs.

Edit: the giveaway is now closed, but the tutorial is still there for your use!

I picked up a bag of whole walnuts at the grocery store last week and as my family cracked nut after nut after nut, I knew I needed to do something with those cute little shells. The boys were enamored with them too and spent a good half hour  putting Lego guys in them and floating them in our bathroom sink. Watching them gave me the idea to make walnut boat ornaments!

Walnut boats are an idea that had been around for a very long time, of course, and I knew there was no reason for me to reinvent the wheel so I looked around online for some ideas to get me started. There are lots of lovely walnut boats out there, but I particularly loved the ones I found here, here and here.

Here are the materials I used to make my boats:

• Festive patterned paper
• Scotch tape
• A glue gun and glue sticks
• Toothpicks
• Glitter
• Walnut shells
• All-purpose glue (not pictured)

Start off by squirting a big blob of hot glue into the bottom of a walnut shell. You don’t have to fill the whole shell up, but I recommend making the pool of glue about 1/4-3/8 inch deep because you’re going to use the glue to hold the toothpick and you’ll want it to be pretty secure.

Center a piece of Scotch tape across the top of the walnut, poke a toothpick into the middle of it and then push the pick down into the hot glue. The tape will hold the toothpick in place until the glue dries. Make sure the toothpick is standing straight up or your boat’s mast will be crooked. You have a little bit of time to fiddle with this before the glue starts setting, but not too long so try to work quickly when you’re doing this part.

Repeat this gluing process with all the walnut shells you’ll be using, then let your walnut armada sit for a bit while the glue sets.

Once the hot glue has set up in the bottom of the boat and the toothpick isn’t moving around any more, gently pull the tape off.

Run a thin line of glue around the top edge of the walnut.

Sprinkle glitter onto the glue. Keep in mind that if the hot glue in the bottom of the boat isn’t completely dry, the glitter will stick to that too.

Tap off the excess glitter and let the boat stand for a few minutes while the glue dries.

Next, trim your paper into smaller pieces to make the sails. The optimal size of the pieces will vary depending on how long your toothpicks are. The ones I used were 2 inches tall and 1 3/4 inches wide. Play around a bit until you find a size you like.

Poke two holes in your piece of paper with a pin. These holes will be used to thread the paper on the toothpick.  I played around with this a bit and the placement I liked best ended up having one hole centered 1/4 inch down from the top edge and another centered 1/8 inch up from the bottom edge.

Push an extra toothpick through the starter hole and twirl it around a bit to open it up. This will make it easier to thread it onto your mast.

If you like, you can trim the sail into a rough triangle shape. They look nice as squares too. I opted for a mix, but the shape pictured above ended up being my favorite.

Run the sail over something round to give it a bit of curve. I’m using a glue bottle here, but you could use a pen or a pencil or something too.

See? Nice and curvy! You can almost feel the tiny wind in your tiny hair, can’t you?

Thread the sail onto the mast.

Stick the mast through the top of the sail too.

Cut a little flag out of scrap paper to add to the top of the mast. I made mine by folding a piece of paper in half and cutting a triangle. It is about 1/4 inch tall at the fold and about 3/4 inch long after it’s folded.

Add a few drops of glue to the inside of the flag and spread it around with the tip of a toothpick so that the glue covers the paper in a thin layer. If you use too much glue on the flag, it will goosh out when you close it and make a mess on your mast.

Wrap the flag around the top of the toothpick and pinch it closed for a minute while it dries.

Keep going until you have a tiny little Walnut Armada!

I had fun playing with different papers and shapes for the sails  and flags and I even added a little Santa sticker to one. Cute!

Please learn more about Scotch(R) Double Sided Tape and other Scotch(R) Products, and join the conversation on the Scotch(R) Brand Facebook Page and via Twitter. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

About a month ago I posted about the California Raisins Let’s re-Do Lunch Contest. I was so inspired by the contest that I decided to enter it myself and amazingly my entry made it to the semi-finals!

I’ve been enjoying the salad I entered in the contest for the past few weeks so I thought I would share the recipe here. It’s super simple, but very tasty. And aren’t the colors incredibly beautiful? I love that you can combine two humble veggies like carrots and cabbage in a bowl and end up with this psychedelic salad. Groovy man!

Raspberry Carrot Raisin Slaw

Ingredients:

• Half a red cabbage, sliced thin (about 4-5 cups)
• 4 medium carrots, peeled and grated
• 3/4 cup California raisins
• Bottled raspberry vinaigrette to taste
• Toasted walnuts or pecans (optional)

Toss the cabbage, carrot and raisins together in a large bowl. Pour the dressing over the top and toss that in as well. If you are using the nuts, sprinkle them on the top of the salad at the very end.  Serve immediately.

Makes a ton.

The part where I stump for votes

Sooooooo, I really hate stumping for votes, but I’m afraid I’m going to do just that. (If you hate it too, feel free to run along to the store for some carrots and cabbage and ignore the rest of this post.)

The winner of the contest is determined by the number of votes each entry receives. If you are so inclined, I would really appreciate it if you could spare a moment to vote for me. While you’re over there, take a moment to check out the other yummy looking entries and vote for any that look good to you too. My friend Melissa is also in the semi-finals and her Banana Sushi Bento Lunch looks delicious, no?

You can vote for each entry every 24 hours so if you try the salad and like it, maybe you could login and vote for it again in a few days? Thanks so much!

A few people have asked about the labels I used on my Lemon Ginger Marmalade, so I thought I’d share the graphic files I made for people to download and print. I’ve created orange, yellow and green labels to cover the full marmalade spectrum.

If you end up using these labels, I’d love to see what you do with them! Shoot me an email or leave me a comment below so I can send people over to your blog to see the labels in action!

Download:

Orange Labels — Download JPG Download PDF
Lemon Labels — Download JPG Download PDF
Lime Labels — Download JPG Download PDF

To use these labels, you’ll need:

• Self-adhesive paper or regular paper
• Tape or a glue stick (if you use regular paper)
• 2 inch diameter circle punch
• Pen or a software application to write the name of your delicious citrusy stuff
• Cans of preserves to stick the labels on

Here’s what you need to do:

Print the labels onto label paper. You can also use regular paper and glue the labels down, but the self-adhesive paper saves a little time. If you want a really nice, sharp image you can also print the labels onto photo paper (which is what I do).

Your paper punch probably won’t be able to reach the image straight from the printer, so you should cut the paper to get access to the images. With my punch, I need a maximum of 1/8 inch between the edge of the paper and the design.

Turn your paper punch so that the hole is facing up. This will allow you to see the image through the punch hole and you’ll know exactly where to punch. The punch I use is the X-Large Fiskars Circle Punch which I like because it’s squeeze handle is easy to use and it gives you a little more fine-grained control.

Slide the paper into the punch and center the citrus slice inside the circle.

The images are slightly larger than 2 inches to give you a bit of a buffer, so after you punch there will be a little bit of the image left behind.

Write the name of your preserves on the labels. I’ve never actually made key lime marmalade, but doesn’t that sound good? Maybe some nice person reading this post will send me a recipe so I can make some. (hint! hint!)

Peel off the adhesive backing.

Fetch one of your jars of preserves. These labels will fit perfectly on a normal sized lid, but they work OK on wide-mouthed lids as well. My jar is empty because I didn’t have any filled jars and I needed something to use as an example. You will want to put these on jars that have already been processed, of course. I don’t think they’ll hold up through a hot water bath!

Center your label on the jar and stick it down.

Voila! You have cute and clearly labeled marmalade now!

Want to make it fancier? Add the name of your preserves before you print the sheet. Open the file in your favorite graphics program. I’m used Photoshop Elements. Type the text you want to appear, centering it over one of the labels. I like the look of a more modern, sans serif type face with these labels. I’m using Avenir here but other nice choices might be: Arial, Helvetica or Trebuchet.

Add the text to all of the graphics, print, cut out, and apply to your preserves. Ooooooh, fancy!

Please feel free to download these labels for your personal projects. Everything on Wendolonia is made available under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial license.

Edited to add this: Coincidentally, my friend Shae posted about her technique for making canning labels at almost exactly the same time that I put this post up! If you aren’t so into the computer thing, I recommend you check out her crafty technique using ink and rubber stamps.

Check out some creative uses of these labels:

• Lina at Fancy Frugal Life used these labels for a lemonade stand — probably the cutest lemonade stand I’ve ever seen!

Are you ready? Because it’s time for Marmalade: Part Deux: The Easier Version!

Just a few days after my last marmalade endeavor, our neighbors gifted us with a big bag of lemons from their tree. We are so lucky to live in the area we do, because there are fruit trees everywhere. We don’t have any in our yard, but in the yards surrounding ours there are 6 different types of fruit growing: lemons, kiwis, pears, plums, apples and apricots! And that’s not even counting what we have access to via our friends and family. I have a feeling this bounty will be fueling my new-found obsession with canning for quite a while to come.

But anyway, back to the lemons. I had 20 lemons sitting on my counter for a week or so, staring at me.

Taunting me.

Challenging me to find a marmalade recipe that would be fun to make.

It wasn’t long before I cracked and broke out my nemesis, the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. Last time it did me wrong, but this time I was determined to find a way for us to work together and maybe…possibly…even become friends. After carefully reading through a few recipes, I settled on one for lemon ginger marmalade that went so far as to use the word “easy” in it’s title. Happily, this time the authors were telling the truth. The recipe was pretty quick (for a marmalade recipe at least) and didn’t make me screw around with lots of unnecessary steps. Start to finish, the whole process took less than 2 hours!

I decided to get all my ingredients ready before I did any cooking. I didn’t know exactly how much ginger I needed to yield a cup after it was grated, so I just started peeling and hoped for the best. It turned out that I peeled too much to start. I ended up using two of the big chunks and two of the smaller ones you see pictured here.

I was going for easy, so I grated the ginger in the food processor. I liked how the blade looked with all the hairy fibers on it after I ran the ginger through, so I took a picture:

Here are my lemons. The pale yellow ones are from the neighbor’s tree, the orange-y one is a Meyer lemon that was close to going bad.

Next, I used a vegetable peeler to take the yellow zest off the lemons. Don’t be fooled by the knife in this picture! I used a peeler! it was much, much easier than a knife would be.

Once all the lemons were peeled, there were a few with too much white stuff on them still. I just scraped that off with a knife.

Then I sliced the peels into thin slivers. I made them as thin as I possibly could get them.

I forgot to take a picture of this next part, but the next step was to segment the lemons. First, I cut the white pith from lemons, exposing the juicy parts of the segments. Then, working over a large bowl to catch juice, I cut the lemon segments from the membrane. As I completed each lemon, I squeezed the membrane to remove as much juice as possible, collecting it in the bowl. Some of the lemon seeds went in the bowl when I did this, so I just fished those out and discarded them along with the membrane.

Then I started heating the jars and the lids. I didn’t take a picture of that either. If you don’t already know the basics of canning, you can read about how to prep the jars here.

OK, now it’s time to cook! Combine the lemon peel, 2 1/2 cups water and a half teaspoon of baking soda in a pan and bring it to a boil. Let it boil for five minutes. Turn off the heat. Measure out one cup of lemon segments and juice and add it to the pot along with one cup of grated ginger, and a 1.75 ounce box of pectin. I’m not positive, but I think the pectin is what makes this recipe easy. I will now express my feelings for pectin:

Dear Pectin,

I love you very much! I will always be grateful to you because now that I’ve found you I don’t have to stand in front of the stove for two hours stirring a pot of molten sugar and citrus juice. You are my #1 most favorite gelling agent!

Love always,
Wendy

Stir the mixture until the pectin dissolves completely. Bring it to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly.

Add the sugar all at once and bring the mixture to a boil again, stirring constantly the whole time. Once it reaches a full, rolling boil, let it cook for one more minute still stirring the heck out of it.

Now you’re ready to fill the jars. See the recipe down below for those instructions. I let mine sit over night and this is what it looked like in the morning when I held it up in front of the window.

I was worried that the color would be so-so, but it came out a beautiful yellow color with flecks of darker yellow peel and ginger suspended inside.

And here it is with a label on it:

This time I made the label look like a slice of lemon. I like it a lot and I think I’m going to be using this art for my marmalade labels going forward. I’ve made this template available for download (along with orange and lime labels) so you can use it too.

Here’s the full recipe. If you’re not familiar with canning, you should read up on the basics in order to make sure you’re doing it safely. The Ball canning site has great instructions. Don’t be scared though! So far, I’ve found the actual canning to be the easiest part of the whole marmalade making process.

Easy Lemon Ginger Marmalade

Ingredients

• 6 small lemons
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 1/2 cups water
• 1 cup coarsely grated gingerroot (about 12 oz.)
• 1 (1.75 ounce) package regular powdered fruit pectin
• 6 1/2 cups sugar

Directions

1. Prepare canner, jars, and lids.
2. Using a vegetable peeler, remove the zest (the yellow part of the peel) from the lemons in strips. Cut strips into thin slices.
3. Using a sharp knife, cut the white pith from lemons, exposing the juicy parts of the segments. Working over a large bowl to catch juice, cut the lemon segments from membrane. Place segments in bowl and squeeze membrane to remove as much juice as possible, collecting in bowl. Fish out any seeds that fell into the bowl and discard them along with the membrane.
4. Peel and grate the ginger if you haven’t done so already.
5. In a large deep stainless steel saucepan, combine lemon peel, baking soda, and water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and boil gently for 5 minutes until peel is softened. Remove from heat and set aside.
6. Measure 1 cup lemon segments and juice. Add to the pan with the lemon peel along with the ginger. Whisk in pectin until dissolved.
7. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring constantly. Add sugar all at once and return to a full rolling boil, stirring constantly. Boil hard, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Remove from heat and skim off foam.
8. Ladle hot marmalade into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust head space if necessary by adding hot marmalade. Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.
9. Place jars in canner, ensuring they are covered by at least an inch of water. Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes. Remove lid from the pot. Let the jars sit in the pot for 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool, decorate the jars so they’re super-cute and give them away to deserving friends and family members.

One of my goals for this year was to learn to make marmalade or pickles. My Grandma Ruby was a canner and I have fond memories of going into the pantry in her basement and looking at the walls lined with jars of tomatoes, corn, dilly beans and lots and lots of pickles.

Her pickles were so good! I loved them piled on hamburgers and chopped up and mixed into tuna salad. And of course I liked to eat them straight too. One of the great regrets of my life is that I never got a canning lesson from my Grandma before she died.

But I digress. Today’s story is about marmalade.

My brother-in-law gave me a huge bag of oranges from his tree when we were over visiting about a week ago. I decided that I wanted to make marmalade from them but I wanted to jazz the recipe up a little, so I bought a bag of blood oranges too when I was at Trader Joes. My friend Shae had pointed me to the basic marmalade recipe in the Ball Blue Book of Preserving as a good beginner recipe. But when I went to the bookstore to get it, I accidentally bought Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving instead.You’d think that a book called the Complete Book of Home Preserving would have a basic marmalade recipe in it, wouldn’t you? Well, guess what? It doesn’t! So instead I chose the blood orange marmalade recipe because I had some blood oranges to use and it looked like a pretty basic recipe.

The recipe started off by having me score the oranges and take the peel off in big chunks.

Next, I was instructed to cover the peels with cold water and boil them. Twice.

Then, I was told to cool the orange peels until they were easy to handle, scrape all the white pith off and then slice the remaining orange part of the peel into paper thin strips.

This process took forever.

Most recipes just have you peel off the orange part of the peel with a vegetable peeler and slice those pieces up. I have no idea why this recipe had me do it this way but once I’d started this recipe I was too chicken to modify it because this was my first time canning anything. The process of scoring the oranges, peeling them, boiling them twice, scraping them and cutting them took three hours.

Three hours!

Around hour two, I started to suspect that the cookbook authors were screwing with me.

The recipe also told me to segment the oranges. I was part way through the second of the eight oranges when I knew for sure that the cookbook authors had it out for me. I gave up on the segmenting at that point and just chopped the crap out of the oranges. I pulled the biggest chunks of pith out and called it good.

Next I boiled the pulp and the peel for a half hour. Then the cookbook authors struck again: They told me to divide the mixture between two sauce pans, bring each to a boil and then slowly pour the sugar into each pan, stirring both pans constantly.

Picture that for a moment, if you will: a woman standing in front of the stove with a spoon in each hand stirring two pots of molten sugar for a half hour straight. Did I mention that I was also supposed to be preparing the jars and the lids while I did this?I opted to put all of the mixture in one pot.

And then I started stirring. And stirring. And stirring. I stirred that pot of marmalade for two hours! I knew it would take a little longer than the half hour the cookbook authors claimed because I was doing it all in one pot, but I didn’t know it would take four times as long to reach the gel stage. Sheesh! By the time I poured the marmalade into the jars and processed them, I was beat, but hearing the little ping! ping! ping! as my jars sealed was an awesome sound.

And my marmalade was darn good!

My six half-pint jars of marmalade that took seven hours to make.

After all that work, I decided I needed to dress them up a little, so I made a cute little label and put a ribbon around the rim.

Pretty cute, huh? I named the marmalade Little Bird Marmalade after my niece (whose dad gave me the oranges).

We’ve been having a lot of rainy weather around here and the kids have been stuck inside for over a week now. The other day, the five-year-old and I stumbled upon an easy activity that kept him busy for over an hour. OVER AN HOUR, PEOPLE! If you’re the parent of a five-year-old, you know how awesome that is.

We ended up making these things that I am calling: Tie Dye Window Decorations.

I’m pretty good at naming things, don’t you think? Also, I know it’s starting to look like we’re a bunch of hippies, but we really aren’t. It’s just that tie dye crafts are easy and fun and they give you pretty results with a fun surprise factor at the end.

All right, so here’s what you need to make these totally easy Tie Dye Window Decorations:

• A cheap-o kids water color set
• Paper towels

I bet you have those in your house right now! Sweet.

Start off by filling each of the water color thingies up to the top with water.

I found an easy way to do this is to fill up a big glass of water and then transfer the water to the paints by doing that thing where you put your finger over the end of the straw to trap the water inside and then let it go over the paints to get it out. Wyatt liked this part almost as much as the actual dyeing. You can also just fill them up at the sink, but you’ll be running back and forth a lot more often if you do it that way.

Stir the paints up to get more of the color in the water.

Now, take a big paper towel and cut it into quarters. You’ll want your pieces of paper towel to be about 6 inches square. If they’re bigger, they’re harder for little hands to handle and the paint doesn’t saturate as easily.

Fold your square of paper towel in half.

Then fold it in half again.

And then fold it in half on the diagonal, kind of like how you’d fold paper to cut a paper snowflake:

You can just leave your towel as is, or if you want it to be more of a circle, cut the end off the towel like so:

Instead of folding the towel on the diagonal, you can also fold it in half again so it’s a rectangle shape which will make the end design different, but equally attractive.

OK, so now that the paper towel is all folded, you get to start the fun part — the dyeing! Dip different parts of the paper towel bundle into the paints and let it absorb the color. The corners are the easiest.

You can fold it in half again to get the colors into the middle sections. You can also dab paint on with the paint brush.

Keep dipping and dabbing until the paper towel bundle has as much paint on it as you’d like.

Then unfold to see your beautiful creation in all its glory!

Lay towels flat to dry (we used a cookie cooling rack) and then hang them in a sunny window to catch the light!

The first thing I want to say about this cake is that it is INSANE. It is just completely Batman CRAZY.

Let’s start with the name: Better-Than-Sex Cake.

Right there — don’t you want to be friends with the woman who invented this cake? You know she’s fun at a party, right? (And you know that it had to be a woman who first made this. No man would ever give a cake that name. They just wouldn’t.)

Next, there’s the cake itself. You start with a chocolate cake which is bound to be pretty good. But that’s not good enough. No — you have to make it sweeter and gooier. And then after making it pretty dang sweet and gooey, you have to make it even more sweet and more gooey. And then — what the heck — let’s throw some whipped cream on top, just for kicks!

The upshot here is that you use a cake as a sponge to absorb caramel.

Completely ridiculous.

We didn’t have this cake for years and years when I was growing up. I think it only made an appearance for a few years when I was in my pre-teens (we didn’t call it “tweens” back then) but it really made an impact in my memories — for fairly obvious reasons, I suppose. My mom told me she got the recipe from a woman at work (she was an elementary school teacher at the time) and the other lady got it from her church cookbook. Hee!

Now, let’s get to it:

You’re going to need a box of German chocolate cake mix, eggs and oil to make the cake, a can of sweetened condensed milk, a jar of Mrs. Richardson’s butterscotch caramel sauce and a tub of Cool Whip. This is a Weight Watchers recipe. (Kidding!)

Make your cake according to the package directions.

Stir it up real good.

Bake it in a 9 x 13 pan.

As soon as it comes out — while it’s still warm — poke it all over with the handle of a wooden spoon or some other pokey thing.

Next pour an entire can of sweetened condensed milk over the top of the cake, letting it drip down into the holes you poked. This will make the cake gooey to the core.

Then the recipe says to pour 3/4 of the jar of caramel sauce over it. Seriously? Is the thinking here that the whole jar would make it too sweet? You could dump a half a bag of sugar on this thing at this point and it wouldn’t taste any sweeter. What harm is 3 oz. of caramel going to do? I went ahead and put it all on.

Gently spread the condensed milk and the caramel sauce around the top of the cake with your spoon, pushing the goo down into all those holes you poked.

Tuck it in around the edges so those get gooey too.

Then dump the thawed container of Cool Whip on and spread that around. The Cool Whip is important because it balances the flavor of the cake out.

Slice and enjoy!

The Verdict:

• Zach didn’t care for it at all, which is pretty much what I expected. He’s not big on desserts in general so I wasn’t too surprised.
• I also gave some to my neighbor and her niece and told them to be brutally honest. They said that they liked it, but who knows if that was true or if they were just being polite. They did love the name of the cake though and we all had a good laugh about it.
• After Wyatt ate his piece he told me he thought it was good but, “It wasn’t that sweet, Mom.” ?!?!?! “The only part that was sweet was the orange stuff,” he said. Oh yeah — you must mean the caramel that’s infused every crumb of the cake. Yeah, aside from that it’s pretty mellow.
• I thought it was pretty darn tasty but man was it sweeeeeeeeet! I thought my teeth were going to jump out of my mouth in protest and run to the nearest dental office seeking amnesty. This is a cake a twelve year old is going to like much more than someone in her late 30′s will, that’s for sure. The flavor of the cake settled a bit after a night in the fridge and it didn’t seem quite as overwhelming, so that was good.

My final say is this: This cake is pretty good, but it’s not something I’ll be making regularly. It’s kind of fun for the kitsch value and it’s fun to tell people the name, but honestly after all my years living in a health-conscious area and attempting to eat a healthy diet it’s not going to be very appealing to my friends and familiy and I feel too guilty eating it myself. So this one might be better off staying in my memory.

And to answer your final question: No, it’s not.

Better Than Sex Cake

1 box German Chocolate cake mix (and the ingredients to prepare it — probably eggs and oil)

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 jar of Mrs. Richard’s butterscotch caramel ice cream topping

8 oz. tub Cool Whip

Bake the German chocolate cake in a 9×13 inch pan according to the package directions. As soon as it is out of the oven, poke holes in the top with the end of a wooden spoon. Pour one can of sweetened condensed milk over the top. The pour ¾ (or one) jar of Mrs. Richard’s butterscotch ice cream topping over the top. Cool. Spread cake with 8 oz. cool whip. Refrigerate.

If you grew up in the late 70′s or early 80′s chances are pretty good that you had a baseball shirt at some point in time. And if you had a baseball shirt, you most likely ironed something onto it. Maybe you had a picture of a kid with braces that said “The tin grin is in!” or maybe you had your name or perhaps you were one of the lucky kids who had both — one on the front and one on the back? My baseball shirt was white with pink sleeves and my mom and dad carefully ironed a unicorn picture to the front and my name on the back in sparkly Cooper Black font. I can assure you I was hot stuff in that shirt!

I bought Wyatt a baseball shirt a couple of weeks ago and since then it has been calling out for some fuzzy iron-on letters.

This should be a quick and easy project. Shall we begin?

Start off by ironing the shirt. By looking at these photos after the fact, you’ll note that there is some kind of stain down the front of it. Please ignore that going forward.

Pull the letters off the sheet. I used flocked letters because they’re fluffy and wonderful. Not quite as wonderful as sparkly letters, but these run a close second.

Scatter the letters all over the shirt willy nilly.

Ha ha! Just kidding. Did you know I use rulers in practically every craft project I do? I do! I’m a Virgo.

Start off by centering the ruler on the shirt. Then pick the middle letter in the name you’re adding  and put that on the mid-point of the ruler.

Add the rest of the letters on either side, spacing them out as evenly as you can.

Put the ruler over the bottom of the letters about a quarter inch to hold them in place and then press with the iron for a few seconds.When you lift up the iron, you may notice the T’s are stuck to the iron. If that happens, it means that you put the T’s on upside down like I did.

When you pull them off the iron, they’ll be all melty and stuck to themselves like this. You won’t be able to pull them apart to fix them either. Check the package to see if there are any more T’s. Since there won’t be any others, it would be OK to say something like, “Oh, crap-a-doodle-doo!” at this point.

Take a look at the shirt and see if you can get by with just the letters that stuck to the shirt. Consider creating a new nickname for your son, such as “Wya”.

Your next step in this quick and simple craft project will be to drive back to the craft store for another package of iron-on letters.

When you get back home put your new T’s on the shirt. Check, double-check and triple-check to be sure that you haven’t put them on upside down again.

Press the letters with an iron.

When you lift the iron, notice that there is some kind of sticky brown goo all over the letters you just drove all the way to the frakkin’ craft store to get. Say a naughty word and look at the iron to see what the heck is all over the lang dang heat element. You should notice some brown goo in the exact same shape as the T’s you ironed the wrong side of earlier. Curse your own carelessness and shake your fist at the stupid shirt with the stupid brown letters on it.

Try wiping the goo off with a wet washcloth. When that doesn’t work, get out a butter knife and scrape the brown goo off. This will work! Wipe the brown stuff off the iron and re-press to make sure the letters are properly adhered.

Enjoy your fancy new shirt and the Bad News Bear who will wear it.

(Incidentally, Wyatt loves his new shirt, despite the poses he struck in these photos. When your name is Wyatt you don’t get to pull personalized license plates or mugs off the rack in the gift shop at Disneyland, so having something with his name on it finally is pretty cool.)

When I was a little girl, my Grandma Paddy made a pistachio pudding cake for almost every family gathering. It had green fluffy icing and it always sat at the right hand end of the buffet, just past all three kinds of potatoes (my family likes potatoes) and the dinner rolls. I started thinking about that pistachio cake a few months ago and I realized that I haven’t tasted it in at least 20 years. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even encountered it in all that time.

When I asked my parents to send me the recipe for this cake, my mom had a hard time finding it. She knew exactly which recipe I was talking about and she even remembered most of the ingredients, but she had to flip through her recipe box several times before she located the card the recipe was printed on. She was looking for something labeled “Pistachio Pudding Cake” but when she finally found it, it was labeled “Watergate Cake with Cover Up Icing”. Ha!

Though I was highly amused by the name, I was also a little baffled. What in the world do pistachios have to do with Watergate? Internet research leads me to believe that the cake got it’s name because Jell-O pistachio pudding was first produced around the time of the Watergate scandal. Hmmmm….interesting!

In any case, here’s how you make this delectable treat (and yes, I’m channeling my inner Pioneer Woman for this post):

Gather the ingredients for the cake: a box of instant pistachio pudding mix, oil, eggs, a box of yellow cake mix and club soda. This is an all natural cake, folks. Martha would be proud!

Stir together the pudding and cake mixes. Then beat the eggs slightly and measure out a cup of oil and a cup of soda water. I mixed them together in one measuring cup and it looked really cool and bubbly. You should try it just because it’s kind of fun.

Dump the wet stuff into the bowl with the dry stuff. It will get all foamy and what not.

Mix it all together really well. It will turn this pretty green color. Pour the batter into a greased and floured 9 x 13 inch cake pan and bake for around 45-50 minutes or until the cake is done. I baked mine for 40 minutes and it got a little too brown around the edges, but my oven runs hot.

OK — you busted me! I totally burned the cake! If you burn your cake too, you’ll need to cut the black parts off the bottom and the edges like I did. If you aren’t an incompetent baker and your cake comes out OK, you can skip this step.

Once you cut off all the gross, tough, burned parts, your cake will be nice and tender. I thought it would still be green after baking, but it came out more of a yellow color. I’m wondering if my Grandma put green food coloring in hers because I remember it being green, but I could be wrong about that.

While the cake cools, make the frosting.

For the frosting, you’ll need a cup and a half of milk, another box of instant pistachio pudding mix and two packets of Dream Whip.

About that Dream Whip….  I’m sure I must have encountered it at some point in my life, but I had no idea what it was when I set off to the store to get ingredients. I found it near the pudding, way up on the top shelf.  It turns out it’s a powdered mix that you combine with milk to make ‘whipped cream”. The recipe my mom sent me said that I needed two “pkg” Dream Whip, which I interpreted as “packages” so I bought two boxes. When I opened the first box though, I found four packets of mix inside. A quick trip to Google confirmed my suspicions that I only needed two packets of the mix, not two boxes.

I forgot to take a picture of the frosting as I was making it, but it’s pretty simple. Combine the two packets of Dream Whip with 1 1/2 cup cold milk until it thickens up a bit. I did this with my stand mixer but even so it took a little longer than I thought it would. Once the mixture starts to thicken, add in the box of pudding. The frosting will turn a phenomenal pale green color at this point.

When your cake has cooled completely, cover it up (har! har!) with the frosting. Wyatt helped with this step.

Here is the finished cake! This picture does not do the green of the frosting justice. It’s much brighter in real life.

Wyatt was ready to start eating the cake right them.

So how was it?

Wyatt declared it was “so yummy, Mom!”

I gave Zach a slice with his lunch while he was doing some heads down programming and ducked out so I wouldn’t break his train of thought. When I asked him later how he thought it was he said he thought it tasted just like any other sheet cake. He didn’t even realize there was any pistachio flavor in it! When he had another slice later in the evening he said he could taste a little bit of pistachio flavor but when I asked him what his verdict was, he wrinkled up his nose and said, “eh.” A ringing endorsement, to be sure.

And as for me, I thought it was pretty good. It wasn’t my favorite cake when I was a kid, so I wasn’t sure how well I’d like it as an adult but it’s definitely a flavor that appeals more to an adult palette. And in a different way, that first bite was pretty incredible. It was like I was back at my Grandma’s house, sitting at the big table with my aunts and uncles around me talking and laughing and giving each other crap. It felt like I was running around with my cousins. It felt pretty nice.

Watergate Cake with Cover Up Icing

1 4oz. pkg instant pistachio pudding
1 pkg yellow cake mix
1 c. canola oil
1 c. club soda
3 eggs
½ c. chopped nuts (optional)

Mix the cake mix and pudding together in a large bowl. Beat the eggs slightly. Add eggs, oil, and club soda to cake mix. Mix well.  Pour into greased and floured 9 x 13 pan. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until done. Cool and cover with frosting.

Cover Up Frosting

2 packets Dream Whip (there are 4 packets in a box)
1 ½ c. cold milk
1 4oz. pkg instant pistachio pudding

Mix Dream Whip and milk. Beat until thick. Add pudding mix. Spread over cooled cake. Sprinkle with chopped nuts if desired.

This post kicks off an occasional series of posts I’m planning to do where I revisit the cakes my family ate when I was growing up.