Black Cake

Hubby's family hails from Belize and the Bay Islands of Honduras. Lucky for me I love islands and oceans and Carribean food. Granny and Bita have told me about island recipes one being Bun, yes just Bun. It's a bread of sorts, very dense slightly sweet white buns. Tried to make that a couple of years ago, mine was not so good. So this year I have made Black Cake. Essentially it's the island version of fruit cake. I have seen several versions, but here is the recipe I used.  Also a lovely article about Black Cake.

Cakes are currently in the oven - they must bake several hours. The fruit did not "stew" for months in the rum, but it did complete 2 days and looked like this!

Oh yummy smells are coming from the oven. Black Cake doesn't have large chunks of fruit, you grind the fruit and it looks like

The most fun comes when you make the burnt sugar - for once burning something is a good thing. White sugar, a hot pan and a wooden spoon. 



The sugar gets very dark and starts to smoke then you pour in water.

and there you have burnt sugar! Tangy and sweet



The cakes baked up very nice. Not as "Black" as the Black cake I have seen from relatives in Belize, but oh so rum-fruity tasting!

Buh-bye to 2010 and getting our feet wet in fost/adopt world. Hello 2011 and our new forever family - whatever that looks like!

May your reality be bigger and better than you ever dared to dream. I have loved gaining new readers and finding my bloggy people out there on the "interweb."

Peace out . . . . bee

When in Doubt . . .

Bake!

Today I mailed out packages to family containing goodies of distraction. Baking is a wonderful avoidance technique for me, but it is unfortunately weight inducing :o(. So in these times of WTF sharing the calories is the best plan I have.

This year's list of goodies includes: homemade crack.er jacks, cocoa rum balls, almond chocolate toffee,

gingerbread cookies, Grandma's date nut rolls, coconut joys AND I still want to attempt (drum roll please)Pralines!

Of course my kitchen is left looking quite a mess. I don't have a problem with the mess, eventually it will get cleaned up. This year we can't wait for eventually as we have two crazed kittens who love the counter tops and drinking water from everything except their water dish. In addition kittens have an endearing way of making everything a toy . . . right now I can't find the decorating tips from the cookie icing earlier this week. Probably under the couch with the toy mice and several of my earrings.

Ahh kittens.