Fortunately both boys have adjusted well and are doing pretty good in school. This school provides lots of cultural arts / extra curricular activities after school hours which is very convenient for me since I do not have to run around taking them for Piano, Tennis and Chess.
Past two weeks has been extremely busy with Ashish's birthday and my good friend Ammu's birthday. I had a lot of cooking to do and fortunately everything turned out good. I don't really cook a lot everyday but wanted to make something special on these birthdays since both of them are so close to me. I learned to make this wonderful lemon cake from Cathy at home goods blog. I just made a few changes to the original recipe. Here it is:
Cake:
1 -(18 oz) pkg. lemon cake mix or french vanilla cake mix
1- (3.4 oz.) pkg. instant lemon pudding mix or french vanilla pudding mix
1/2 -cup veg. oil
4- eggs
1 -cup lemon/lime soda (Mountain Dew reg., not diet, or Ginger Ale)
1 table spoon Cointreau (optional)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Preheat oven to 325*, grease and flour a 10 inch Bundt pan. Combine cake mix, pudding mix,then stir in oil. Beat in eggs. Then stir in soda. Beat for 2 min. Stir in cointreau if you like orange flavor. Stir the walnuts and pour in Bundt pan. Cook for approx. 45-55 min. Cool completely.
Frosting:
1 - 8 oz. cream cheese (room temp.)
1 1/2- cup confectioner sugar
zest of one lemon
2 -tablespoons lemon juice
Beat together all but 1/2 of the zest to sprinkle on top of the frosting.
Topping:
I personally don't like frosting so I took a can of pineapple chunks with real juice. Poured some juice over the cake, just enough to make it moist. Filled the hole in the cake with frozen mixed berries and pineapple. Left the cake for an hour for all the juice to soak in and violla. It looked as pretty as in the picture, just without all that extra fat :)
