Sweet Potato Cinnamon Roll Cake

Lexi, age 11, drew the responsibility for making the dessert for our Family Potluck Extravaganza meal. We had sweet potatoes that needed to be used up. I've made sweet potato muffins and bread before and loved them, so I was excited to try them in cake.  It really doesn't taste like sweet potatoes so even if you don't like them you should give this a try anyway. I personally love sweet potatoes. I don't even need to put any sugar or butter, or heaven forbid, marshmallows on them to enjoy them! But maybe I'm weird that way! I think next time though I will wait for the cake to cool and then apply a regular frosting to it instead of using the glaze. I've left the recipe here with the glaze option, but I felt like it made the cake a little soggy. It still tastes really good, but I think I would like it better with regular frosting.

Cake
Ingredients:
3 cups flour
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
4 tsp baking powder
2 cups cooked sweet potatoes
11/2 cups milk
2 eggs, beaten
2 tsps vanilla
1/2 cup butter, melted

Topping:
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 TBSP flour
1/2 TBSP cinnamon
Butterscotch or chocolate chips
 
Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar
5 TBSP milk
1 tsp vanilla


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 13x9 inch baking pan.

In a large bowl combine flour,sugar,salt, and baking powder.  Stir with a fork to combine.  In another large bowl beat sweet potatoes and milk until smooth (we used a food processor which worked really well.)  Add beaten eggs, and vanilla, beat until combined.  Slowly add flour to sweet potato mixture, mixing until just incorporated.  Slowly stir the melted butter into the batter until well combined.  Pour batter into prepared pan.  Make topping.

Topping directions:
Mix all the topping ingredients together until well combined.  Drop evenly over the batter.  Scatter butterscotch or chocolate chips on top. Bake cake for 30- 35 minutes.   After cake is baked, cool slightly while making the glaze.

Glaze directions:
Combine glaze ingredients mix until smooth.  Glaze cake while still warm.

Original recipe can be found Here.

Strawberry Fluff Fruit Salad

Technically, this recipe was supposed to be Orange Fluff Salad, but we didn't have Orange jello. Since the criteria for our Family Potluck Dinner Extravaganza was to use ingredients we had on hand, we swapped it out for Strawberry.  Garrett, age 7, also insisted that we add mandarin oranges and marshmallows even though it wasn't called for in the original recipe. Since he was the chef on duty (and because his request wasn't too outrageous!) we decided to let our inner rebels run wild! This salad was really delicious and easy. It does require prepping a few hours ahead so it has enough time to chill.

Ingredients:

• 20 oz can of crushed pineapple
• small box of orange Jello
• 8 oz of cream cheese
• 8 oz of whipped topping
• 2 small cans mandarin oranges (optional)
• mini marshmallows (optional)

 Add entire can of pineapple (undrained) to a sauce pan and bring to a boil.  Add orange jello and stir well.  Boil about 2 minutes. Cube cream cheese and add that to jello mixture.  Stir until most of cream cheese is melted.  Pour into a large flat dish and put in the freezer or refrigerator.  Once your mixture starts to congeal, remove and stir in the 8 oz package of whipped topping.  Put your dish in the refrigerator to set up for at least 3 hours before serving.

Pasta Salad

My son, Zac, age 9, is a pasta fanatic. Whenever I ask what we should have for dinner he ALWAYS asks for pasta. He doesn't care if it's spaghetti, or baked ziti, or stuffed manicotti as long as it's pasta! So for his part in our dinner it seemed appropriate that he should draw the Pasta Salad. Now, granted, this isn't exactly a "new" recipe, per our criteria in the previous post about our family potluck dinner experience, but it has been a really long time since I'd made it, so I decided it would count. There's not really a set recipe for this one. Just cook the pasta you want, add any vegetables, cheese, pre-cooked/cured meats (salami, pepperoni, ham etc.) Liberally coat with Italian dressing and salt and pepper to taste. We used the ingredients listed below, but you could alter it to what you like.

Ingredients:

1 16oz pkg. rotini or bowtie pasta
1 carrot, diced
5 green onions, sliced
2 celery stalks, sliced
2 tomatoes, diced
broccoli, chopped
1 can olives, sliced
1 can corn
1 cucumber, diced
cheese, cubed
Italian dressing
Salt and Pepper to taste
2 Tbsp. Parmesan Cheese (optional)*

Cook pasta in salted water. Rinse with cold water to cool. Stir in vegetables, olives, and parmesan cheese. Add Italian dressing and salt and pepper to taste.

*I don't like the parmesan cheese in this salad. I think it makes it tastes "gritty." 

Meatloaf

Every Sunday I try to spend One on One time with each of my four children doing a project/game/activity of their choice. We now have a rotation for who's turn it is to cook that week. They all seem to want to do a cooking project, so we had to figure out a way that seems fair.  Some hair-brained, crazy person (me) came up with the idea that we should do a Sunday where each kid helped make a different item for our dinner. We also decided they had to be new recipes, using ingredients I already had on hand (because I didn't want to go shopping!) and there were a few ingredients (sweet pototoes, cream cheese) that needed to be included because they needed to be used up. It was trickier to meet all this criteria than I thought!. Thank goodness for Pinterest! I spent 4 hours from start to finish, including cleanup, and was ready to pull my hair out by the end. But the kids loved it, and are begging to do it again sometime soon! We had drawn names to see who would do each recipe. Drake, age 7, drew the main dish, Meatloaf. Which is hilarious since he is the only one who would be truly disgusted by having to mash the ingredients together with his hands. This is based off of the Pioneer Woman's recipe, with a few changes. This meatloaf turned out incredibly moist and delicious. We will definitely be making this again soon!

Ingredients: 

Loaf:
1 cup Whole Milk 
6 slices White Bread 
2 pounds Ground Beef 
1 cup (heaping) Freshly Grated Parmesan Cheese 
2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon Seasoned Salt 
3/4 teaspoons Salt 
Freshly Ground Black Pepper 
1/3 cup Minced Flat-leaf Parsley 
1 medium onion, diced 
4 whole Eggs, Beaten 
1 cup real bacon bits

Sauce: 
1-1/2 cup Ketchup 
1/3 cup Brown Sugar 
1 teaspoon Dry Mustard 
Tabasco To Taste

Put the 6 slices of white bread in a bowl and pour the milk over them. Let soak.

In another bowl combine ground beef with the remaining loaf ingredients. Add soaked bread to this meat mixture and mix together well using your nicely washed, clean hands. Divide evenly into two loaf pans. Make sauce and use ~1/3 of sauce to coat the tops of the loaves. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes. At this point I carely poured off some of the oil.* Then apply the rest of the sauce to the loaves and bake for 15 more minutes. Serve with mashed potatoes and gravy and a vegetable and you're all set!

*The original recipe calls for using a roasting pan, but I don't have one so we improvised. We also didn't wrap the loaves in bacon strips as called for in the recipe. Instead, we incorporated the bacon bits into the meat mixture because that is what we had on hand. 

Boston Cream Poke Cake

I made this cake with my son, Garrett, last week. He loved poking the holes in the cake. I loved the combination of pudding and chocolate frosting! This is a very easy cake and a nice upgrade to your basic box mix cake, without adding a lot of difficulty or time.


Ingredients:
1 yellow cake mix
ingredients to make cake as directed
2 boxes banana pudding (3.4 oz)*
4 cups milk
1 container chocolate frosting

Directions:
Make the cake following the directions on the box. This should consist of adding the correct amounts of water, eggs, and oil. Bake as directed on the box. While it's still warm poke holes all over the cake, about one inch apart, using the handle end of a wooden spoon or similar item.  Make pudding using the four cups of milk and pour over the cake. Press pudding down into the holes as best as you can. Ours didn't really go down too far into the cake, but that was okay too. I kind of liked just having the pudding sitting on top. You still get the same flavor, but not a mushy cake. It's makes it less of a "poke" cake though. Put cake in the fridge and cool completely (about 2 hours) before covering with the tub of chocolate frosting.

This is a cake that needs to be refrigerated.

* The original recipe called for vanilla pudding, but I had, and prefer, banana pudding so we used that instead.