Pound Cakes and Spicy Spaghetti!

I made my first pound cake the other day!

We went over to our neighbors for dessert and they had suggested pound cake so pound cake it was.

Did you know they call it that because there is a pound of butter in it?!?!?

It makes sense but I didn't realize that.

I searched for a recipe with my trusty friend google and ended up finding 

"The Perfect Pound Cake" recipe from Pioneer Woman.

I love the Pioneer Woman show and I've used her recipes before so I thought perfect!!

Plus..this recipe only called for 3 sticks of butter... 

Not even a full pound. Win win!

Away I went with the mixer!

After the hour of baking it says it should be golden brown and not jiggly.

I probably spent the next 5 min or so shaking it to see if it was jiggly but then realizing my eyes can't move that fast so maybe I'm just not seeing it jiggle but it actually is

2 more minutes in the oven ( that's always my go to with anything.. Dessert, chicken, fish)

And another 2 minutes because I still could t tell if it was still jiggly after that

I finally called it good and inverted it so that it could fall out naturally like stated in the recipe..

A couple hours went by and it still hadn't fallen out.

Finally I took the knife to it and carefully scraped the edges...

After prying, shaking and hitting the pan upside down, it finally broke in half and came out.. 

The top still intact to the pan

{Lesson learned: you must spray a TON of cooking spray in the pan before you bake}

The good news is that it was still edible and didn't taste half bad!

.....

In other cooking news

Brian made the best pasta last night

I'm talking restaurant status

We picked our first vegetable that was ready... An orange pepper.. 

A HOT one...not an orange bell pepper

We also picked chives, basil, and a few onions that weren't ready to be picked but we thought, what the heck lets use them anyway!

He decided to take the dinner reigns last night...

The Ingredients

1 diced chicken Italian sausage

1/2 diced zucchini

1 diced orange pepper (if your willing to take a risk)

4-5 basil leaves

A small handful of chives

1 garlic clove

3 small unripe onions (or 1/3 cup diced onion)

3/4 cup tomato sauce (not marinara or spaghetti sauce)

Whole wheat spaghetti

.....

Sauté the first 7 ingredients while boiling water for pasta.

Get the pasta cooking away

Mix the tomato sauce in with the sauté and let heat up and simmer a bit

Mix together with cooked spaghetti and top with parmesan cheese 

.....

Our mouths were on fire!!! We realized that pepper we planted was hotter than anticipated. 

But it was oh so good!!

...

We are headed on vacation tomorrow with Brian's family for a week.

 I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will hopefully be able to post next week.