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Saturday, February 27, 2010

Recent, new-to-us discoveries

1. A Depression-era cake recipe

Since Strider was doing a report on the Depression this week, we decided to look up some recipes that were common then. Of course the kids lobbied to try the CRAZY CAKE recipe. Since eggs and butter were quite expensive then, this is a recipe made without them, so I was dubious... but happily surprised! It was quite delicious. And the best part was the process of making it -- very kid-friendly. Here's how it works:

Pour 3 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar, 1 t of salt, 2 t of baking soda and 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder into an ungreased 9 x 13 pan. Yep, just dump it all in. Swirl it around a little with a fork -- yes, a fork! Then, make 3 wells: In one well, pour 3/4 c. vegetable oil, in another well pour 2 tablespoons of white vinegar, and in the third well, pour 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Then, pour 2 cups of cold water all over the whole thing! Then mix, again with the fork. Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

It was so tasty. I didn't get any pictures of the cake.... but here's what remains...

We'll definitely be making that again.

2. The rice-and-cell-phone trick works for other electronics, too!
After Colsen and Rayna dumped our digital kitchen timer in a full sink of water, it was completely blank and headed for the trash. Then I remembered hearing about the tip of putting a wet cell phone into a bag of rice to dry it out. So we tried it... and after a couple of days of just sitting on the counter, the timer came back to life! Yay, rice!



3. Colsen's fashion finding of the week:
Green is the new "in" color for lipwear. He told us this was his "lipstick-chapstick."

So, consider these our Public Service Announcements for this week!

1 comment:

  1. Awesome! I had never heard the rice trick before - almost makes me want to test it out...almost.

    Amy, do we need to have a marker intervention at your house? Seems like your kids and markers are a dangerous combination! :-)

    ReplyDelete