A Piece of Cake

Yesterday afternoon, I decided that with school back in session and two thirds of the kids out of the house for a good part of the day, I had plenty of time and no excuse not to make a really fun dessert for Family Home Evening.

Normally, I'm the mom who thinks of Family Home Evening dessert about 2 minutes before we actually start Family Home Evening. And we normally start Family Home Evening about 15 minutes past the kid's bed time. Sometimes we play the game, "guess what our lesson is about tonight," where the kids take turns coming up with ideas for topics, games and scripture stories. When I hear something that sounds good, I announce, "that's it!" and begin my improvisational lesson followed by a game of scripture charades.

Eventually, the kids ask, "what's for dessert?"

"What do YOU think we are having for dessert?" I reply, and wait until the kids guess something dessert-like we already have on hand. (Correct! It's cinnamon toast!)

So, yesterday, I thought I would be proactive and make a dessert before we had to resort to games. I also wanted to give the kids a special reward for going without TV during the school week and mostly on the weekend (it's college football season for crying out loud. We have to watch TV on Saturday.) I decided to make Key Lime Cream Cake out of the April 2004 Betty Crocker cook booklet titled "Super Moist Cake Mix Recipes."

I love key lime pie and thought this cake sounded delicious. It said in the instructions that I could use regular limes if Key limes were not available, but I saw a bag of real Key limes at QFC and bought them. They weren't that much more expensive than real limes, and even though I had a bottle of lime juice already in the fridge at home, I knew that real, fresh, Key lime juice would make all the difference in my Key Lime Cream Cake. I did have a small moment of hesitation when I pictured myself zesting and squeezing those tiny little limes (smaller than ping pong balls!) to acquire the 4 teaspoons of zest and over 1/2 cup of juice.

The first step in the Key Lime Cream Cake instructions was to grease the bottom of the 2 round cake pans, THEN line them with waxed paper, THEN grease the waxed paper, THEN flour the greased waxed paper. I thought this might be going a bit over board, but I didn't question the recipe and followed everything exactly.

Each cake layer was baked atop a delicious graham cracker crust, which was made using a whole cube of butter. YUM! Then, I added an additional cube of butter to the cake mix and wondered for a moment just how a cup of butter worked into my supposed routine of healthy eating.

Squeezing the approximately 487 Key limes it took to get 1/2 cup of juice did cause a mild case of tendonitis, but I kept squeezing through the pain, thinking about how delicious the Key Lime Cream Cake was going to be.

And it was delicious! The kids' tastes were not sophisticated enough to appreciate the subtle nuances of the Key lime, and even though they probably would have preferred a scoop of vanilla ice cream instead of the cake, they ate the it and enjoyed it marginally. Success!

All this talk about cake reminds me that it's lunch time and lime juice has so much vitamin C, I'm sure a slice of cake would make a great lunch. Gotta go!
p.s. I am anticipating a request or two for this recipe. I have tried to find it on line so I could simply add a link, but I have not been able to locate the exact recipe. Since it's pretty long, I will include the recipe on a separate blog on another day. Maybe tomorrow, but I'm not making any promises. You will just have to check back every day until you see it. Ciao!