This is what birthday cakes look like at our house: no artfully composed designs of chocolate curls or Wilton roses.  No perfectly constructed characters and scenes; just globs and globs of frosting, sprinkles, colored sugars, and more frosting and sprinkles and sugar, until Mommy has to step in and stop the madness.

Yes, when your birthday is celebrated at the chaos house your cake will be constructed with all the love and excess embodied by boundlessly energetic children.  How can you say no to little hands and little faces who want only to bestow their wishes of love and fun onto the birthday boy or girl?  I mean who is the cake really for anyway? Any kid can see this cake, dripping in colors and sparkles, screams FUN TO BE HAD.  What adult gets that kind of real joy out of a beautifully crafted cake scene?  Besides, I think cake greatness should focus on taste not necessarily appearance.  Luckily, this yellow cake delivers in that regard.

I have been trying different yellow cake recipes over the last year because I think yellow cake paired with fudgy chocolate frosting is the quintessential combination for kids and parties.  Most of the recipes I tried suffer from the same problems: too dry, too dense, not sweet enough.  I have finally found one I really thought was moist and fluffy and tasted great.  I love food loves writing and I am so glad she posted this cake recipe from The Washington Post.  I did have a little trouble with my cakes sticking in the pans so I would use parchment paper cut-out next time-not that I care much about broken of hole-ly cakes, I just spackle them with more frosting.

Click here for the recipe »

It is officially spring.  It may not feel like it depending on where you live but in Texas it is already warmer and wetter.  Here, the best part of spring is ushered in in pastels and sparkles in the form of brightly colored eggs full of glittery confetti.  It is supposed to be good luck to have a confetti filled egg cracked over your head but I think it’s a trick to keep any party poopers from complaining about all of the fun.  In all their messy, colorful madness, confetti eggs are such a merry way to celebrate.  The kids love being given the freedom to perform the the forbidden: cracking eggs on people (especially adults). In place of the yolk-surprise!-piles of fluttering, shiny confetti are loosed into the air instead.

Confetti Eggs are decorated in much the same way as Easter eggs.  Instead of hard boiling the eggs before dying, confetti eggs are hollowed out then dyed.  Use a sharp knife or skewer to break a smallish hole in the top of the egg, then poke one tiny hole in the opposite end.  Blow through the tiny hole, allowing the egg yolk and white to fall through the larger hole into a bowl.  Wash your empty egg shells in warm soapy water then decorate.

You know you don’t need to buy an Easter egg decorating kit to dye eggs, right?

Click here for the recipe »

I am sorry that I disappeared for a bit last week.  Sometimes we have a string of meh meals and all of a sudden I have nothing to tell you about.  Since I like to think of my little recipe collection as a bunch of tried and true family favorites, I really don’t feel like droning on and on about a dish that was just so-so or one where I am unsure of some of the details.  I would like to think that you appreciate me not wasting your time with such posts.  I try to maintain a steady every-other-day posting schedule but sometimes life gets in the way or recipes don’t work out.  Like the above chicken and mushroom casserole.  It was ok, but I probably won’t make it again and the cost analysis was so-so and honestly the dish itself left me feeling uninspired.  It is Spring Break and I am taking the opportunity to spend some time with my kids, clean-out my house and my mind, and hopefully be re-inspired.  Be back next week, I hope you all have a nice break as well!

I really like burgers for dinner: they are such as easy, fun, and satisfying meal.  So I was hoping I could fit them into the budget now that we are being conscious of how much our meals are per serving.  I have been in the mood for sliders lately so I picked up some dinner rolls and ground beef and my favorite sweet potato fries.  There is no recipe here, I formed 2 pounds of ground beef into 16 mini patties and cooked them on the stove-top.  We set out the toppings and made the fries and dinner was ready.

Cost Analysis:

• 16 dinner rolls: $4.98
• 2 lb grass fed beef: $9.99
• 4 slices American cheese: $1.25
• frozen sweet potato fries: $3.39
• Total cost for 6 servings: $19.61 or $3.27 per serving

And whoa was it expensive once I ran the numbers.  I did learn a few things though.  First, the pre-cut julienned sweet potato fries and pre-made dinner rolls were the budget busters.  Homemade dinner rolls and whole, fresh sweet potatoes would have actually brought this meal down into the recession category.  Second, for $20 I treated a family of six to sliders and fries in about 15 minutes.  So, really, we did better than if we had hit a drive thru both nutritionally and budget-wise.  Sometimes it is worth a little extra to have a quick meal ready when your fingers start to reach for the car keys.  Of course if I had extra dinner rolls stashed away in the freezer or the inclination to chop up a sweet potato, I would be ahead of the game with this meal.