Pear Crumb Coffee Cake

Every time I go to the grocery store with both kids in tow I go through the produce aisle to hopefully spark their interest in trying new things. If it were up to them they would live on blueberries, bananas, and melons. We typically buy a few of something my 4 yr old daughter says she has to have and then they sit and go bad in the fruit basket. So this was one of those occassions where I had 2 very ripe pears sitting in the basket waiting to be tossed and I decided to look up some recipes. Lucky for me I came across this recipe for Pear Crumb Coffee Cake http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,226,153180-234201,00.html because it is a definite keeper! I went by the recipe except I was nearly out of regular all purpose flour so I used cake flour. On the box of cake flour it says for every cup of regular flour a recipe calls for to add in 1 cup + 2 tbsp cake flour. So I made that adjustment. Then for the crumble on top I used the remaining all purpose flour I had left on hand. I'm not sure if the cake flour made it better but it was delicious! The cake was fluffy and moist and the crumble on top was heavenly! Enjoy!

4th of July Trifle

Being in the holiday spirit and my never-ending desire to try new things I saw a Food Network Facebook post on a Red White and Blue Trifle. I didn't exactly love their recipe so I searched on cooks.com to see what I could find and then looked to Pinterest to see what other ideas were out there. I came across this one on Pinterest and thought it would be good with a few modifications. Here is the recipe I based my recipe around: http://heylittlemother.com/2012/05/24/perfect-patriotic-dessert-red-white-and-blue-trifle/

The trifle was a HUGE hit and I will definitely make it again in the future!

What you'll need:

• 1 large tub Cool Whip (refrigerated not frozen)
• 1 8 oz container sour cream
• 1 small package instant cheesecake pudding mix
• 1 small package instant vanilla pudding mix
• 2 cups milk
• 1 can pineapple chunks (that's what I had on hand)
• 1 round angel food cake (I found a round angel food cake near strawberries in HEB but you could improvise and use a loaf cake and make it work the same)
• 1 large container strawberries
• 1 large container blueberries

What you'll do:

• Clean, hull, and slice strawberries (lengthwise to make them pretty like in the photos below)
• Clean blueberries and sift through them to make sure the stems are removed and any yucky ones are taken out.
• In a large bowl whisk together Cool Whip, sour cream, and both pudding mixes. Mixture will be thick.
• Whisk in milk until mixture is smooth.
• Whisk in 1/2 cup pineapple juice from can then strain pineapples of any excess juice and stir into mixture. (If I had a can of diced pineapples I would have used that instead but I only had the big chunks on hand.)
• Take round angel food cake and cut horizontally into 3 rings.
• Line the bottom of the trifle dish with sliced strawberries and then place slices around the bottom sides of the bowl.
• Place top ring of angel food cake in dish. I broke the ring kind of overlapped it a bit to get it to fit without messing up the strawberries around the dish.
• Pour some of the pudding mixture over the cake and around the sides of the dish so you have about 1/2-1 inch of white showing.
• Top the pudding with blueberries. Sprinkle around and then be sure to place all around edge of bowl so you can see them on the outside.
• Now you repeat the layers a second time (strawberries, angel food cake, pudding mixture, blueberries)
• Depending on how deep your dish is you can add more strawberries/blueberries/pudding until you get to the top and the top should be the pudding mixture so you can decorate on top of it as you choose. See pictures below for how I finished it off.
• Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour or more until served.