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Vanilla Train Cake Recipe

Claudia and Ed visited the Cleve' on Saturday. We tried to go out to eat at Melt, a gourmet grilled cheese establishment, but with an hour and a half wait, we opted to eat at Aladdin's.

In the afternoon, we went to the Science Museum. We tried to go to an IMAX movie with Nora, but since we traumatized her during our first outing to the IMAX movie, she was having none of it. The first IMAX movie we tried to take her to was one about prehistoric sea creatures. She likes dinosaurs, so we thought it would be a good fit. Nope, she hated it. On Saturday, we went see an IMAX movie about the Grand Canyon. As soon as we walked into the theatre, she was scared and wanted to leave. Poor Richard didn't get to see the movie.

Nora and Grandma Claudia spent the evening making Vanilla Train Cake. Grandma bought Nora a train cake pan for Christmas. The cake was delicious and Claudia and Ed wanted the recipe, so I thought I would post it here for you all to enjoy.

INGREDIENTS

2 1/4 C all-purpose flour

1 3/4 C sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. kosher salt

2 sticks of butter, melted

1 C sour cream

4 eggs

1 Tbs. Vanilla extract

Have all ingredients at room temperature

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour cake pan (I think a 13 X 9 pan would be great)

Sift the flour, sugar baking powder, baking soda and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer. In a separate bowl, whisk together the melted butter, sour cream, eggs and vanilla until combined. Fit the mixer with the flat beater. Add the butter mixture to the flour mixture and beat on the lowest speed until the dry ingredients are moistened, 15 to 20 seconds. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Increase the speed to medium and beat for 30 seconds.

It recommends baking for 18-22 minutes when you are using the train cupcakes. But, that is only half of the batter. I think that if you use a 13 X 9 pan and all the batter, it would be more like 35-40 minutes, but that is simply a guess. Just bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Enjoy! It really was a delicious and easy cake!

We love Karl!!!!!!11!!!!1

my only picture of karl on my work computer.

A QUARTER OF A CENTURY!

Poor Karl had to spend his whole birthday re-tiling the bathroom :(

Earlier in the week his Falling Water Lego's arrived and he had lots of fun putting it together.

I got a 10 minute demonstration this morning of how it comes apart to show the different rooms. AWESOME!

We did of course have donuts for breakfast, and now we're going to see Sherlock Holmes.

Feels like we're really getting old now that he's 25... all the kids on the Real World are younger than that. It's sad to know your Real World Eligible days are over...

But all in all it was a Happy Birthday Day here in Bloomington: that working shower is just around the corner!

Hard Luck!

My goodness you Gimbels are good-looking. That's definitely the main reason why I married in... good looking babies. Anyway, Jay and Josh (Edward's friends) found some Grandpa Ed L. stuff online and I thought it was pretty interesting. I have to say I'm pretty fascinated with his WWII experience. I, however, don't know how entirely accurate this bio is since it stated that Edward Lester was born in London. (I thought he was born in Chicago). Anyway, I've attached some links if any of you are interested.

Hi-res: https://www.box.net/shared/inizntv54i

Super-duper-hi-res: https://www.box.net/shared/inizntv54i