Pound Cake

Part of being Southern is having a fabulous pound cake recipe.

I've never had one....until tonight. (This morning? It IS early.)

I found the most wonderful recipe for a Coconut Cream Pound Cake. Even the name sounds fantastic!

I seriously drooled when I was mixing this sucker up. If you are a coconut fan, you should totally make this cake.

Coconut Cream Pound Cake

1 cup softened butter
1 8 oz. package of cream cheese, softened
3 cups granulated sugar
6 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 cups flaked coconut

Preheat oven to 325 F. Grease and flour a bundt pan....this is serious here folks, you MUST actually grease and flour the pan. Don't use the spray, it just doesn't work. The cake will crumble rather than come out of the pan. I've had this problem before, can you tell?

In a large bowl, cream together the softened butter and cream cheese until they are well combined. Add the sugar and blend until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, blending well after each addition. It's about at this point where you start drooling. Stir in the vanilla extract.

Add the flour and baking powder, stirring until just combined. Fold in the coconut.

Spoon the batter carefully into the prepared pan. It will be thick! Tap the pan on the counter to remove any hidden air bubbles.

Slide that baby into the oven for 1 hour, 20 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Let the cake rest in the pan for 10 minutes before removing and cooling on a rack.

Sooooooooooooooooooooooo good!

My First Attempt at Soap-making€

One fine day, many years ago, I thought that I would like to learn to make soap. I’m crafty, this is a craft, so why not?

Yes, all soap makers can groan right about here. It gets worse, believe me.

Being a smart girl, I do my research. Oil + water + lye = soap. Being a chemist, I know that lye is sodium hydroxide, NaOH, and just generally nasty stuff. Certainly not something you want to play with unless you take the proper precautions.

I figured I would start simple - castile soap. Olive oil, water, and lye. No additives of any sort…no scent, no colors, no herbs, nothing. Just pure soap.

I get everything all set up and ready to go. Measure the water, measure the lye, dump the lye into the water.

Here’s where it starts to get hilarious actually. When I measured the water, I used fluid ounces. If you’re not a soaper, this means nothing. If you are, you know that this is NOT what you want to do. Basically what I did was measure the volume, not the weight. These can be very different!

But, regardless, from what I remember, the lye water didn’t go too badly. No volcano, and the solution turned clear, with no lye granules on the bottom. Of course, my mind could be remembering incorrectly, because it was quite a while ago!

I started measuring my oil after mixing the lye and water. Again, I used fluid ounces. (Wrong! But I didn’t know any better then.)

Heated it all up, very carefully. Got the oil at about the same temperature as the lye water, then poured the lye solution into the oils. And stirred.

And stirred.

And stirred.

And stirred.

And stirred some more. I stirred that damn thing for hours.

After several hours (and one VERY sore arm!), I still hadn’t reached trace. Of course, I didn’t really know what trace was then either, so I wasn’t sure what it would look like once I got there. Somewhere I had seen that you could put the soap mixture in a low temp oven and get it to trace that way. So I stuck the pot into the oven, with the door propped open slightly.

Yeah, that didn’t work. Somehow, it went from where it was (at an uber-light trace, if I remember right) to this strange solid-ish mass with oils floating on the top. Crap! I pulled it out of the oven and stirred mightily once more.

For the record, that didn’t work either.

Not knowing any better, I mixed it all up, and dumped it into my prepared mold. Wrapped it in the blanket as suggested and cleaned up the kitchen, all the while thinking that maybe this soap thing was harder than it sounded.

The next day, I went to go unmold my soap so I could cut it into bars. What greeted me upon unwrapping the blanket was a strange crystalline growth out of a sea of oil. My best guess is that there wasn’t enough water, enough oil, and way too much lye, so that the lye simply fell out of solution and recrystallized.

Needless to say, I threw that batch away. Not like you can use straight up lye (or other unknown crystalline substances) as a soap without causing yourself some serious harm.

It took me several years to get up my courage to try this craft again….but that’s another story.

*Crawling out from under that big rock*

School is kicking my booty! After the next two weeks are over, I should be back to normal though. Whatever normal actually consists of! *ha!*

I've been sneaking in crafting here and there for the past couple of months. It's a hard job, but sometimes you just have to make something pretty!

Tomorrow will bring a nice trip down memory lane. :)

Monday, Monday

I wonder why Mondays are so difficult. It's not as if I have the weekend off - oh no, I work all weekend long. As a restaurant manager, weekends are the busy time! In fact, Mondays are one of the closest things to a 'day off' that I have. No work, only 2 classes. Yet they are difficult for some reason.

Perhaps the Mamas and the Papas had it right.

But with that, I am hoping to have some new and exciting items in my shop by the end of the day today! ☺

Ostara Blessings - Spring is Here!

To those that follow the Earth-based religions, today marks the spring equinox, and one of the eight major celebrations of the year. Today the day and night are of equal length, and the wheel is turning more and more towards the warmth of summer.

The rest of the world knows this as the first 'official' day of Spring!

Hooray for longer days! Hooray for warmer weather! Hooray for green growing things sprouting up everywhere!

Soap!

Last night I realized that I am getting down to the last little bit of my stash of wonderful handmade soaps. I have been known to make my own, but I don't currently have any lye, or the time to make any. So off to Etsy it was, to find a place to buy some wonderful soap.

There are so many choices of great shops and great soaps there! I decided to narrow it down a bit, and research some of the sellers that are part of the pagan or earth-based groups. Every little bit that I am able to support my brothers and sisters of this path, I love to do so!

I ended up purchasing some lovely soaps from SeaSpriteSoaps. I can't wait for them to arrive, as the descriptions all sounded wonderful!

Coming Back Again

Yikes....I've managed to hide away for quite a while again!

I *must* get myself to do this everyday. If anyone has any ideas, send them my way, because apparently I need them!

I will be updating more tomorrow...need to list some things too! ♥

Cuteness Squared

Some days I wonder what I did to make someone up there - whomever you may believe it to be - give me such a precious gift as my son. He is adorable.

And smart as a whip too. No, I'm not just being the typical biased parent. Many people have commented on it.

He is five (almost 6! *gulp*) and reading and writing very well. Pretty much if it isn't nailed down, he is reading it. Actually he reads all that too! Signs on the side of the road, company signs, license plates, sales flyers, you name it, that boy reads it.

Here he is, snoozing away early one morning at Grandma's house. He is so cute! (Ok yes, this time I am biased!)

Chemistry Inspiration

I suppose you can always tell when we've played with the molecular model sets in chemistry class. That's the time when I begin to get the urge to create the molecules out of beads. Something simple might be easy, such as formaldehyde:

Or perhaps diethyl ether:

And perhaps one day work up to something like carvone:

I must figure this out!

Sunday Meditation - Sacred Words

I find mantras soothing and calming. I have a friend who makes malas, which are sort of like Buddhist prayer beads. They have 108 beads, plus a larger 'guru' bead.

Mantras + mala = very relaxing meditation. For this, I used the popular Om Mani Padme Hum mantra, loosely having the meaning of compassion. (There is way more to it than that, but we will go with this definition for today.)

Sit comfortably, in a place that you will not be disturbed. Hold the mala in your hands.

Breathe deeply and clear your mind. Focus on the breath.

When you are ready, find the guru bead with your fingers. Move your fingers to the next bead to the left, and begin chanting the mantra. You may spend as long as you like on a particular bead, saying the whole mantra or simply part of it with each bead. Let your feelings be your guide. Common divisions of the mantra are 18 or 36 times, as these are divisors of the 108 beads.

Visualize your words leaving your body and moving outwards, sharing compassion with all they reach. Do this for each of the recitations of the mantra.

When you are finished, return your fingers to the guru bead and breathe slowly and deeply. Allow yourself to accept any feeling that you receive in return.