Fadedwords

Yesterday I baked oreo cake. Thought I’d include the recipe for it and the frosting I use.

Cake:

I prefer Devil’s Food chocolate cake mix. Betty Crockers. Prepare that cake according to box directions. I can do a cake from scratch, but it’s tedious. Betty Crocker has already perfected it, so why mess with it?

While the cake is cooking, make the frosting:

• 1/2 cup of shortening or butter. I used a mixture of both this time… added butter to taste.
• 16 oz. confectioners sugar
• 3 tablespoons of milk
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla

Blend ingreedients. Add the sugar slowly and beat on medium speed after each addition. I recommend tasting after each addition as well. After it’s set just how you want it, crush up some oreo cookies…. about a dozen. Mix the crushed pieces into the frosting with a spoon. Then, spread on to a COOL cake. I recommend cooling the cake about an hour or so before even trying to spread this frosting. With the cookie pieces in the frosting, it’s kind of tricky anyway… so a cool cake helps things go more quickly. You could leave the cookie pieces out and just crumble them on top, but it really doesn’t turn out the same.

I actually doubled the recipe this time, which you might want to do for oreo cake. Although, I did NOT use 32 oz. of confectioners sugar. The frosting just didn’t need that much. Of course, if you like your frosting sicky sweet, by all means add all 32 ounces. If you like a thinner frosting, add more milk. If you like a thicker frosting add more sugar. It all depends on taste.

After the cake was done baking and frosting was prepared, I prepared a pan of lasagna:

• lasagna noodles (I use Barilla no-boil)
• Ricotta cheese
• Sauce (Ragu Classic Rich and Meaty is my favorite)
• 1-2lb Sausage (hot or sweet, I prefer Jimmy Dean hot)
• Mozerella cheese (one package)

Fry up? the sausage and lay it out on a couple of layers of paper towel to absorb the grease.
After all is cooled, combine the sauce and the meat
In a deep 9×13 pan start layering: On the bottom of the pan put a layer just to cover of sauce mixture follow with layer of noodles, layer of sauce layer of ricotta layer of noodles layer of ricotta layer of sauce, etc until you either run out of ingredients or room. End it with a layer of sauce.? On top put a good covering of mozerella cheese.
Pop in 325 oven for about 45 min. to an hour. til top is brown an bubbling. Usually I bake it with foil on top for about 50 minutes, and then do another 15 or so with no foil so the cheese browns up. Cool for about 20 minutes and then serve.

We didn’t eat lasagna yesterday… due to a big breakfast. So it’s in the fridge now waiting to be cooked. We’ll eat it for lunch, or early dinner.

We went to see ‘Saw III’ last night, and I must say it was exceptionally twisted and gory. It was also great fun. If you enjoyed the first two movies, I recommend this one.

NaNoWriMo begins on Wednesday. I started a story months and months ago, and haven’t picked it up since… so I’m going to use that and see what I can make of it. I only have about 3 pages of it, so I feel ok in using it. November is going to be an exceptionally busy month for me, so I’m not precisely sure if I can actually finish this year. I’ll try though. Look for the new novel in the stories section starting November 1.

I go home today, work tomorrow, and then on Tuesday I drive all the way back up to Greensboro for the North Carolina School counselors Association annual fall conference. I’m hoping that I can car pool with? the high school counselor that’s going. With the unexpected $600 heating bill, funds are a little tight right now.