Whole Wheat Rotini w/ 5 cheeses

I think I must be on a cheese kick. Either that, or I really don't want to waste the $30 in cheese I bought so it goes on everything. :)

Btw, quick side note. Those fresh saver containers that keep food fresher longer, yep, those work wonderfully. Especially w/ month old cheeses... I grated all of my expensive fresh cheeses and mixed them all together in one of those and they've lasted forever so far!

Anyways, I am constantly hearing how great Ina Garten's recipes are. Honestly, I watch her show, it's not like I feel about her like I feel about Semi-Homemade... But I've never really looked at something she's made and gone, OMG I HAVE TO EAT THAT NOW!!! Although I have looked at some stuff and gone, Hmmm.... that'd be good if I took that out, or added this or whatever.

Well, I was on the food network site the other day looking for another recipe for cheese. I found this and saw the bazillion raving reviews and thought, eh, why not?

So I have to say, not bad. I did make a few changes...

Whole Wheat Rotini with 5 cheeses
adapted from Penne with Five Cheeses by Ina Garten

Ingredients

nocoupons

• Sea Salt
  
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup crushed tomatoes in thick tomato puree
• 1/2 cup shredded Gruyere
  
• 1/2 cup shredded Asiago
  
• 1/4 cup shredded Mozzarella
• 1/2 cup shredded Parrano Uniekas Dutch cheese
  
• 2 tablespoons ricotta cheese
• 6 fresh basil leaves, chopped
• 4 smashed cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
  
• 1 pound whole wheat rotini
  
• 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Bring 5 quarts of salted water to a boil in a stockpot.

Combine all the ingredients except the penne and butter in a large mixing bowl. Mix well.

Drop the penne into the boiling water and parboil for 4 minutes (only!!!). Drain well in a colander and add to the ingredients in the mixing bowl, tossing to combine.

Pour the prepared pasta mixture in a 13 X 9 glass or ceramic dish. Dot with the butter and bake until bubbly and brown on top, about 10 minutes.

Most of the sauce automatically dropped to the bottom of the casserole dish. It was very liquidy, not very thick at all. At least, not until it cooked. It had an awesome flavor, especially w/ the addition of the garlic and cayenne pepper. I like a little kick, but the cayenne didn't add any real heat to the dish, which was why I used it. When you dished it into the bowl, it wasn't as liquidy as before, it definitely thickened up enough to not had to worry about watery drops from your fork when you were moving it to your fork. :)

I used a whole wheat pasta here b/c (1) it's better for you, especially since you are using lots of cheese and heavy cream in this!!! and (2) I like the heartier texture and taste when you are eating it. I think it adds something to the pasta. Plus, it's super hard to overcook!!! You definitely have to cook it longer than regular pasta, but that's ok. The original recipe has this parboiling for only 4 minutes and I didn't change that b/c I left the pasta in the oven a bit longer since I put it in one large casserole dish rather than separate ramekins.
The pasta I have been using mostly is Ronzoni b/c it is super hearty and really fresh tasting, despite it being a boxed pasta. And a blend of 7 grains? So good! And it holds up awesomly to reheating the pasta the next day... and the next... and the next... Maybe I wouldn't have had to eat so much if my parents would have tried it! Wimps. I'm actually a little disappointed in my father who eats nearly everything. I told him to try some and it's not like he doesn't like my cooking. I know he does. Oh well...

Review of Luscious Layers and Hoosier Mama Pie Company

I'm not sure how I got the wrong address at first. But I did. I drove our happy butts all the way to the far far north side, damn close to Evanston only to discover the address I found online was wrong. Never use yahoo again.

Anyways, so I googled Hoosier Mama Pie Company on my phone and found out that it wasn't all that far away, so we trekked over to Luscious Layers and then Hoosier Mama Pie Company. Because of the way the pics loaded onto the page, I'm going to start with Hoosier Mama.

There are so many different varieties of pies there and you can get a small pie for $8, like I got, or large pies for $18-$20. There is also chicken pot pie that you can get in small, large, or just a slice of the large. I ended up leaving with 4 small pies, packaged all cute and country like.

This was the box for the chicken pot pie. She wrote out instructions for heating it so I wouldn't forget. :)

This was one awesome chicken pot pie. I had it for dinner that night.

Honestly, I didn't finish it, but I pushed myself to the max. Yes, I saved the leftovers. Are you kidding me? A little less than half was left over! I wasn't tossing that!

Yummy apple pie. Surprisingly no nutmeg in it. I was shocked. And very very pleased. :) I gave this one to dad, but he saved me a quarter of it to try. Yum.

Strawberry rhubarb pie. Delicious. I took this to work and had a quarter of it for lunch, then went home and then polished the rest off for dinner/dessert. So wrong, I know.

My mom's raspberry pie. She complained, of course. Said that she tasted cinnamon and said it was too tart. I'm not sure when my mom is going to realize that fresh raspberries tend to be more tart than sweet. Jam is only sweet as it is b/c of all the added sugar. Woman will never be happy...
But I had a bite, there definitely was something in there that didn't seem like it should be. Dad finished that one too :)

I would go back in a heartbeat. The chicken pot pie was the BEST chicken pot pie ever. The crust was phenomenal, the inside was amazing. I'm not a fan of thick creamy sauces, especially in pot pie. I think it makes the crust soggy and gross. The re-heating time was perfect b/c it didn't overcook the crust or insides, but it made it all bubbly warm. Let me tell you, I would so get a whole pot pie and try to pass it off as my own. It's that good.

Now onto Luscious Layers... The reason why I wanted to go here was b/c I heard they had $1 cupcakes. $1!!!
Amazing, right? I thought Sweet Honeybee's was cheap! Nope, this place definitely tops Sweet Honeybee's in price... But what about taste?
First off, they giver you free samples. They make little itsy bitsy cupcakes you can pop into your mouth to try. I tried a champagne cupcake and a gluten free cherry vanilla. Let me tell you, gluten free is DEFINITELY an acquired taste. I was not thrilled w/ it at all and the owner wasn't insulted, so I didn't feel quite as bad when I made the "ew" face. The champagne was good and I ended up getting that one as well as four others:

Chocolate devil's food with raspberry mousse and chocolate fudge frosting. This one was good. The cake was a bit dry, perhaps b/c I ate it a couple days later. The raspberry mousse definitely tasted like raspberry, so that was a plus. The frosting (like the rest) was hard on the outside, very little soft fudgy inside, so I ended up wiping it off.

Red Velvet with cream cheese buttercream. There was no way this frosting had cream cheese in it. No way. It was hard, had no flavor and was powdery when it crumbled. WAY TOO MUCH POWDERED SUGAR! The cake wasn't too bad, a bit dry, but again, it had been a couple days before I ate it.

The Champagne cupcake w/ strawberry mousse filling. Not a bad cupcake. My #2 fav. The frosting was wiped off like the first too, but the cake actually tasted like champagne. And there wasn't a tone of strawberry mousse to over power the cupcake. Def a yummy one. :)

Save the best for last... This was actually the last cupcake I had and the moistest one, even though a few days past. AND the strawberry buttercream was delicious. I hate buttercream, but this was very yummy. I pinched off some of the harder edges on the frosting, but there was definitely lots of soft frosting underneath the hard edges. The cake was moist and tasted like strawberries in white cake. Yum. Definitely a keeper.

All in all, it was a good trip out. It was worth the driving around and 1/4 tank of gas to get to all the places. If was I fixing for a cupcake, I'd probably headover to Sweet Honeybee's first. I'd pay $0.90 more for a guaranteed better cupcake.

I think I found them!!!

My search for the PERFECT chocolate chip cookie continues...

I was perusing on tastespotting the other day when I saw the first post on a new blog, Pastry Pal. Irina is an experienced pastry chef who started a new blog this month and she started it off w/ a bang. She made chocolate chip cookies. I was drawn to the page b/c the picture looked so yummy, perfect and thick, not flat at all. So I made them last night. My original idea was to divide half the batter and mix in candied bacon (like I did here) and the other half just make plain ol' chocolate chip cookies. Well, I got distracted licking the dough off my fingers and this is what happened to my bacon. It turned into straight up hard candy. Definitely wasn't going to work w/ the cookies. Although I did have a bite. Good, but WAY too hard.

So I made Irina's cookies and they came out a wee bit different. I did everything she did except I used chocolate chips. I don't like semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, so I use milk chocolate for my chips. Well, I thought I had a huge bar of milk chocolate at home, but I think someone ate it... I'm not naming names, but you know who you are!!!

So I used chocolate chips b/c hey, they are chocolate CHIP cookies, right?
I think the chocolate chips made the cookies look way flatter than they were. Not that they were that thick, but they definitely could have been thicker.

Fresh from the oven... So wanted to grab one right then...

Plated on my mom's totally retro Corelle dishes.

I only made a few b/c my main goal was to have them for this weekend b/c chocolate chip cookies are my sweetheart's favorite. Normally, I put the remaining batter into a Tupperware container and leave it in the fridge, but Irina's idea or rolling the batter into a log and keeping it in the freezer is a MUCH better idea. I've heard that your cookies don't flatten as much the colder they are when they go in, so maybe that'll help them even more. I definitely think that using a bar and chopping it up is the way to go, especially b/c of how good they look in Irina's blog. :)
I do have two more recipes I want to try, just b/c I am way intrigued by how different they are! So look out for those soon!

Bacon Mac and 8 cheeses

I am a firm believer that bacon belongs in everything it tastes good in. Which to me, can be just about anything. Especially mac and cheese.
My mom, as most of you already know, likes her "fake" foods. She'd rather eat a Sam's club blueberry muffin, stir fry from the frozen foods section and box mac and cheese. I don't mind the Velveeta w/ the cheese sauce, which thankfully is what she gets. But I have to mask it. I will take a portion out of the pot and mix in black pepper and bacon pieces. I am not a fan of the stuff alone.
So I usually make my own... And she definitely doesn't like it. Oh well. She'll never change.
So when my parents were on vacay last week, it was dinner freedom!!!

I saw this episode of Cooking for Real w/ Sunny Anderson on Food Network and she made her Wheely Good Pasta and Cheese. It looked great, so when I went on search for a new mac and cheese recipe, I immediately thought of this.
After work, I went to Whole Foods and picked up a couple more cheeses I didn't have at home already and some bacon.
It was pretty easy to make and took a heck of a lot less time than you'd think.

Bacon Mac and 8 Cheeses
adapted from Wheely Good Pasta and Cheese

1 pound large elbow whole wheat pasta
4 tablespoons of butter
4 tablespoons of flour
4 cups of milk
1/4 cup of shredded Mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup of shredded Cheddar cheese
1/4 cup of shredded Pepper Jack cheese
1/4 cup of shredded Colby Jack cheese
1/4 cup of shredded Muenster cheese
1/4 cup of shredded Asiago cheese
1/4 cup of shredded Gruyère cheese
Freshly ground black pepper
Splash of tabascio sauce
1/4 cup of Italian-style bread crumbs
2 tablespoons of grated Parmesan cheese
5-6 strips of fully cooked bacon

Preheat over to 350 degrees F. When the oven reaches full temperature, cook bacon on a wire rack, which is placed on top of a foiled lined cookie sheet. I cook bacon in the oven b/c then most of the grease settles in the cookie sheet instead of staying soaked into the bacon. It takes about 20 mins to fully cook the bacon, if you want to more crunchy than tender, which is better in this mac and cheese since the sauce will soften the bacon.
I took the opportunity to shred my cheeses while the bacon was cooking. You don't want the bacon to be dripping and still scalding hot when you toss it in the sauce, so you do it enough ahead of time so it has time to cool while you're doing everything else. By the time I was done shredding the cheese, putting a pot of water over the heat and getting my roux started, the bacon was done. I placed the cooked bacon on a plate w/ paper towels to soak up the excess grease.
Meanwhile, I added the butter to a pot and let it melt fully. Once melted, but not browning, I added the flour and whisked them together to form a roux. Sometimes, if the roux isnt thick enough, it's ok to ad a bit more flour untl you get the consistency you are looking for. Better to thicken the roux now than wait until your bechamel hasn't thicken up enough and have to add more flour then.
Once you have your roux, add the milk and whisk together. Let the milk increase in temperature, but don't let it bubble. It will end up burning the bottom of the pot. Whisk occasionally to keep the roux and milk together and keep from having the milk mixture burn at the bottom or sides of the pot.
When the milk is hot enough it should be thick, but not too thick yet. Remember, you still have to add the cheese, which will definitely thicken it up even more. Add you black pepper at this point. Take the pot off the heat and sprinkle in the cheeses, stirring constantly until all the cheese is completely melted. Once the sauce is done, add the bacon and mix.

By now, your pasta should be in the pot, boiling and almost done, if not already done (depending on when you started boiling the water).

Drain the pasta well, making sure to toss it in the colander w/ cold water to stop the cooking process.

Combine the pasta and sauce together, making sure that all of the pasta is coated in your cheese sauce. Take a 9x13 glass baking dish and spray w/ nonstick spray. Pour the coated pasta into the pan.
Combine the bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese together and sprinkle over the pasta.
It's pretty heavy at this point, so I place the baking dish on a foiled lined cookie sheet, in case the sauce bubbled over.

I baked the mac and cheese for 25 minutes at 350 degrees F.

I let it cool for a bit and then ate. Yummmm......

Hershey's Best Brownies

Chocolate is yummy... I have to say, as much as I love love love fruit desserts, chocolate is that one thing that will always settle me. I don't like munching on chocolate candy though. Too sweet and sugary and it hurts my teeth. But chocolate brownies, cakes, cookies... Yum. I found this recipe in my Cookie Bible when I was trying to figure out what to make for the fourth. I originally planned on making peach pie, but honestly, the idea of making the dough made me change my mind. So I flipped through my book and after 30 min of agonizing over what to make, I picked these. Soooo glad I did!!!! Everyone loved them!

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter
2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 eggs
3/4 cup cocoa
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
couple handfuls of candy-coated, chocolate-covered sunflower seeds (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 13 X 9 inch baking pan.

Melt butter. Stir in sugar and vanilla. Add eggs, on at a time, beating well w/ a spoon or whisk after each addition. Add cocoa; beat until well blended. Add flour, baking powder and salt. Beat well. Pour batter into greased pan. Sprinkle sunflower seeds over the batter, if desired.

Bake for 30-35 mins or until brownies begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Cool completely on a wire rack. Cut into bars. EAT!!!

I love the covered sunflower seeds. They are a great snack. I saw them in someone's brownies before and the very next day, I saw them at Trader Joe's and bought them. Yum! They add a nice little crunch to the brownie and aren't overpowering like putting a cup of nuts into the batter is.
The edges were done more so that the rest of the bars, but they weren't dry. They did come off most of the bars after cutting, but that's okay, no one minded eating them!
The inside was that perfect just past gooey, almost raw feel. They were soooo good! Definitely a recipe I am making again!

Lemon Blueberry Pound Cake

My mother recently bought a few cartons of fresh blueberries and wanted to make a lemon blueberry pound cake. She asked me to find her a recipe to use. I found a bunch of recipes, but this one looked the best. I had to make some alterations b/c I don't like lemon zest and don't have limoncello, but it came out great still.

Ingredients (as I made it)

Cake:
2 ¾ cup of flour
1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder
¼ teaspoon of baking soda
¼ teaspoon of salt
1 cup of unsalted butter, room temperature
1 ¾ cup of sugar
4 eggs
4 tablespoons of lemon juice (I will definitely use more next time)
1 ½ teaspoons of vanilla extract
1 cup of buttermilk (1 cup milk plus 1 Tbsp lemon juice, mix and let stand for 10 min before using)
½ cup sour cream
1 ½ cups of blueberries tossed in 1 tablespoon of flour

Glaze:
1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar
8 teaspoons of lemon juice
Tiny splash of vanilla

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 350. Spray a 12 inch bundt pan. I use the baking spray that has flour in it. Works wonders with bundt pans!
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
3. In another large bowl, beat butter until smooth. Add sugar and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition. Add sour cream, lemon juice and vanilla and beat until combined.
4. Beat in flour in 3 additions, alternating with the buttermilk. Beat for 2 minutes on medium-high. Do not overmix! Fold in blueberries. Spoon into prepared pan.
5. Bake at 350 for 50 – 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack for 20 minutes. Turn out and cool completely.
6. For the glaze, in a small bowl, mix together confectioner’s sugar, lemon juice and vanilla until smooth. Drizzle over the top of the cake and let it roll down the sides.

As you can probably tell, my glaze wasn't all that thick. I don't particularly like thick glazes and I think that not having it so thick was better b/c the glaze absorbed into the cake, making the cake even more moist and more lemony tasting.
Yummy dense moist lemon blueberry pound cake. Mmm.... And to think, my mom said she was just going to buy a lemon box mix cake and dump blueberries in that. Ha

Peach Raspberry Cobbler

I had gone peach picking last Labor Day weekend w/ my friend Kristine and I came home with A LOT of peaches. And lots of little pricklies in my shirt that were scratching at me all day.

There were so many peaches, I cut up the ripe ones and froze them, then let the rest ripen some more, then froze those. I ended up w/ a crap load of cut up frozen peaches in my freezer. Yum.

So I have used them here and there since, but mostly in smoothies (frozen fruit is best when making smoothies, mmm...) I woke up last Sunday just kinda craving peaches. I knew I have frozen peaches and frozen raspberries, so I decide to make a peach and raspberry cobbler. I've never made cobbler before. I've made fruit pies and fruit crisps. But never cobbler. So I went in search of one on tastespotting, foodgawker, foodnetwork.com, and all recipes. The one I went with was kinda of a jumble of them all...

Cobber topping:
1 cup of flour
1 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup milk

Mix the first four ingredients. Cut in the butter using a fork or pastry blender. Slowly add the milk until the batter looks like this:
Since the peaches and raspberries were frozen, I tossed them into a saucepan to thaw and juice up. The raspberries pretty much liquefied immediately but the peaches took a bit longer. I also put about 1/4 cup of granulated sugar in the pot and 1 Tbsp of cornstarch b/c I knew I would have to thicken it up w/ all the excess water coming from the frozen fruit.
After the peaches and raspberries were mostly cooked, but the peaches weren't entirely tender, I drained a bit of the liquid and put them into a 9X9 pan then dolloped the cobbler topping over it. I then sprinkled some raw sugar on top, just for some crunch.
I baked the cobbler for 30 min at 400 degrees F.

Mmmm..... fruity bubbley goodness.
It was definitely yummy. The cobbler topping had an almost biscuit taste to it, but not the same texture. Very light and fluffy. And very yummy. :)

Another peanut butter and chocolate cheesecake?!?!

Mmm.... this cheesecake was so good, I had to make it again. And I'll make it again... and again... and again.

The only changes I made to this were that I didn't put the extra chocolate shavings b/w the melted peanut butter and the cheesecake. And I also put the hot fudge on top of the cheesecake before baking it this time.
And of course, since I let the cream cheese soften completely before starting, the cheesecake came out smooth and delicious!!!

Actually, the only snafu I had that I was freaking about was that I realized as I was pouring in the cheesecake, I forgot to spray the pan!!! Oops!!! But as you can see, it still came out fine! You can tell it isn't as smooth on the sides as it should be, but hey, no biggie!!! :)

So make it people!!! And eat it!!!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

My manager and I had a discussion a couple weeks ago about these chocolate chip cookies. I've been having troubles w/ my go-to recipe ever since we bought a new oven. For some reason, I have no clue how or why, my cookies have been going flat. Like, so flat, the chocolate chips rise above the actual cookie. It's been depressing b/c they are still soooo good, but just flat. Very sad.
So I've been trying to find a recipe that I love just as much, but are big and fat and yummy. So she mentioned how she saw this chocolate chip cookie recipe on a blog she follows and tried them. First off, the recipe tells you to take 1/4 cup of the dough and cook those for 15-17 min, which is ridiculous to me since my cookies were like a small golf ball and baked for 10 min!!
Also, the ratio of the sugar was dif. And there was a LOT of sugar. The only other little things were that she used one egg and one egg yolk and melted the butter first.
Now I know Nemisah has good taste when it comes to desserts just based on past discussions we've had and treats she's made that I've had. So she sent me the recipe (she couldn't find the blog) and I tried them. Now she raved and raved and raved about them. She took them to her friend's house and he loved them. His wife loved them so much that when he made them she ate way too many and got a stomach ache.
This has got to be a no fail recipe, right?

WRONG!

So ok, they weren't bad but they weren't my chocolate chip cookies. The ones that my mom has been making since I was a little kid. The ones that I can recite to you from memory.
My mom ate them. My dad ate them. My boyfriend inhaled them. Like 10 of them (I used a smaller scoop, not the 1/4 cup). I had 2 before my stomach started hurting really bad...

I'm not the only one who was "meh" about them. Check out Kirbie Cravings for her review. She found them on allrecipes.com which is probably where the girl from the blog Nemisah read found them. It seems that recipe has been on there since 2004? Wow. Great reviews, but yeah. Meh.

I think it really just comes down to taste. I prefer a cookie that's more chewy and less sweet, rather than cakey and VERY sweet. I do think that I might try my recipe again, but maybe try it w/ melted butter. Probably not the egg yolk. I have a feeling that is what helped cause the cakeyness.

BTW, Nemisah said that they tasted very much like her batch, so I don't think I made them wrong...

Here is the recipe if you guys still want to try it:

2 c all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 c unsalted butter, melted
1 c packed brown sugar
1/2 c white sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 c semi-sweet choc. chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Sift together flour, baking soda and salt.
In a separate bowl cream together butter, sugars and eggs.
Stir in vanilla.
Add dry ingredients (1/3 of the mixture at a time) to wet ingredients until well blended.
Stir in choc. chips.
Line 17"x11" baking sheet with parchment paper.
Drop 1/4 cup of the dough on lined cookie sheet. 5-6 cookies per sheet.
Bake in 325 degree oven for 15-17 minutes. (I used a small batter scoop instead of a 1/4 cup and they took 15 mins to bake.)
Cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes. Then transfer cookies to cooling rack.

They are super simple to make and it helps that the butter is melted so you don't have to wait for them to get to room temp. So try them and let me know what you think!

Faux Buttermilk Raspberry Cake

First off, there is a cute little froggie underneath my back step. I wasn't quick enough to take a picture, but in honor of the little guy, here is the little guy's relative. Super Frog!

I am a huge fan of tastespotting.com and foodgawker.com. I have a whole folder in my yahoo account that is dedicated to links of recipes I've seen on there and want to try. And there are tons of emails saved, some w/ more than a few links attached.

This recipe I found on one of them... Can't remember which one, but I just bought a bunch of raspberries and had no clue what to do with them. So when I saw this and saw how simple it is, I decided this was gonna be the one. Thankfully, I didn't have to make cookies like I originally planned since my manager said she was going to make them too. So I let her and figured I could make this for my mom. Although, those cookies will be made!!!

Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
2/3 cup sugar plus 1 1/2 tbsp, divided
1/2 stick (4 tbsp) butter, softened
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1/2 cup shaken buttermilk***
1 cup fresh raspberries

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees, spray a 9 inch round baking dish with cooking spray oil.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In a mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla, then beat in egg.
At low speed, mix in the flour mix in three batches, alternating with the buttermilk but ending and beginning with the flour. Basically, add 1/3 of the flour mix, 1/2 of the buttermilk, 1/3 of the flour mix, 1/2 of the buttermilk, then the final 1/3 of the flour mix.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan, and smooth the top. Scatter the raspberries on top or make a design. Sprinkle the 1 1/2 tbsp sugar over the cake before baking.
Bake for 20-25 minutes (I only baked for 20 min and it probably could have been taken out at 18 min, but still fabulous. Serve warm, or room temp. Refridgerate the leftovers because of the milk inside, but pop it in the microwave for 15 seconds to warm it through first.

***I said "faux" in the title b/c I didn't use an actual carton of buttermilk. Since it was such a small amount and I didn't need the rest of what would have been in the carton, I took a 1/2 cup of milk and whisked a 1/2 tbsp of lemon juice (or white vinegar) and let it sit for 10 min. Instant buttermilk!I really should have put more raspberries than this in it :( I wasn't thinking I guess...
They disappeared! It's almost like they aren't in there!If you spray it enough, it will be very easy to get out of the pan. Just flip it upside down onto the palm of your hand then place the cake board on top and flip on its bottom. Doesn't it just kinda look like a yellow cake layer? So much better though...
The raspberries completely sunk to the bottom, I think maybe b/c they weren't completely dry when I put them on on the batter. I tried, but they weren't completely dry and I had to get it in the oven! Still sooooo good though. Even thought the very very top edges look dry, they really weren't bad at all. If I had taken it out two minutes before, it probably wouldn't even have that. And the sugar on top makes a nice little addition to the texture and flavor.
It would also be very tasty with a lemon raspberry glaze, but mom was getting anxious and I had to cut it.
For a lemon raspberry glaze, just mix raspberry syrup and lemon juice and a bit of water, then add powdered sugar until you get the consistency you like. The water coule be optional depending on the tartness you like and obviously, the ratio of lemon to raspberry depends on the flavors you like the most.

Enjoy!