Memorial Day Tribute to My Dad - WWII Army Veteran

This post is a bit late but I wanted to share a video tribute that my niece M made for my 88 years young dad. It was taken at the WWII Memoral in Washington, DC. She did a really nice job. The video starts with pictures from when my dad was in the military then it shows some of his medals and awards received during WWII. Finally, it goes to the day that my Dad, his son-in-law S and his grandson-in-law, M along with baby Mason visited the WWII Memorial. The boys all drove down to DC together last fall. It is a touching video so keep some Kleenex nearby when you watch!

The Creative Cook

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYIPEJUT9Uw

Cupcake Cake - 3 Dimensional Cake

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I decided to bake a cake for last Saturday's Spring Fair. They have a cakewalk every year and I wanted to bake something different but not too difficult. I bought a Wilton 3D Dimensions Cupcake Cake Pan. It helped me to creat an unusual cake. I will say that it wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be. Let me first say that I am not trained in any way as a cake decorator. I also think that the end result (see photo) looks a bit more like a mushroom than a cupcake. Oh well. It probably would look better if I had used a stiffer type of frosting. I liked the look with the large sprinkles on it. I think next time I would make sure that I had some chocolate frosting to cover the white frosting that got all over the bottom of the cupcake. I didn't check to see but I'm sure someone took this cake home from the cake walk. I hope they enjoyed it. The cake batter needs to be able to hold up to decorations so I used the recipe recommended by Wilton on their website. Most the other cakes looked store-bought. At least I tried to make something different. I did my best.

Double Chocolate Pound Cake

Tools:
• Dimensions® Large Cupcake Pan
• Cooling Grid

Ingredients:

• 2 teaspoons instant coffee
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, softened
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour or use pan spray with flour to prepare pan. In small bowl, dissolve instant coffee in water; stir in cocoa powder and mix well. Set aside to cool.

Stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; set aside. In large bowl, beat butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar with electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla; mix well. Combine cocoa mixture and sour cream. Add flour mixture alternately with sour cream mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture, beating after each addition until smooth. Fold in chocolate chips. Spoon 4 1/2 cups batter into top of cupcake pan; spoon remaining batter into bottom of pan.

Bake 60-70 minutes or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool cake in pan on wire rack 15 minutes. Turn cake onto wire rack to cool completely. To assemble cupcake ice top of cake's bottom half. Place top half of cake atop iced bottom half. Decorate as desired.
Serves 10-12.

Decorate as you wish but remember what I said about the frosting. I used a cake round that I bought at Walmart and I covered it with foil. I also liked a large box with foil to carry it to the Fair. It worked fine.

The Creative Cook