Mountain Mama… Country Living
Old-Fashioned Pound Cake
3 ½ cups cake flour (sifted)
3 cups sugar
2 sticks butter
1 cup Crisco
1 cup milk
5 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. lemon extract
Blend sugar, butter and Crisco together with mixer. Add flour and milk alternately blending mixture well. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix thoroughly. Add vanilla and lemon extract and mix again.
Grease and flour 9 inch tube pan, add batter and bake at 325 degrees for 1 ½ hours. DO NOT OPEN OVEN.
When I was living in Grundy, we would buy our milk, butter and buttermilk from a friend of ours who had cows. She made absolutely the best butter I’ve ever tasted. When we moved up here to Floyd, the butter they made tasted completely different. They call it “sweet cream butter” here. Well, don’t get me wrong, it’s really good. But just not the taste I’ve been hankering for. So the other day I called Margie, our friend in Grundy that made the butter. The cows here on the farm are Holsteins and don’t produce much cream so it takes a long time to save up. We wanted to make butter for the weekend for Jessica, so I cheated and bought heavy whipping cream from the store. Here is the recipe she gave me.
1. Put equal amounts of cream and buttermilk in a jar. I used 1 pt cream and 1 pint buttermilk.
2. Let jar sit out on counter overnight or until it becomes very thick-I mean really, really thick.
3. Her instructions were then to churn it. As we do not have a churn, I poured the thickened cream into my mixer with the whisk attachment on-You know my beautiful mixer my wonderful hubby surprised me with at Christmas.
4. Llet this mix about 5 min. (I’m not really sure of the time, it could have been less or more.) This is what it will look like when the butter is ready.
6. Then you do what Margie called “gather” the butter. I put it into a container, added a little salt, took a spoon and worked it around and all the excess buttermilk came out. Drain off the buttermilk as you gather the butter.
The finished product. Chill and enjoy!! Of course, I had to sample it before this. I wanted to make sure it was good before serving it to my family. (lol) It tastes just like Margie’s. Yeah!!!! I am so happy. I am making fresh rolls today for the weekend. Won’t they be good with butter spread on them.
Enjoy your day and God bless.
I thought I would share with you all this super easy pie recipe. I don’t know the name of it but years ago when I worked, one of the ladies I worked with used to make this a lot. It uses simple ingredients and takes very little time.
I used 1 store bought graham cracker pie crust. For the filling use, 1 container cool whip, 1 pkg cream cheese-both at room temperature. Add 1 tsp. vanilla and 1/2 cup powdered sugar. Mix with your mixer until well blended. Pour filling into pie crust. Then for the topping I used fresh strawberries and a little strawberry glaze. Set in fridge for a little while to chill, then enjoy. You can make this with blueberries, peaches, almost any type of fruit. If you do not want to use the store bought glaze you can always just add sugar to the fresh fruit and let it make its own glaze. Its all up to your taste.
Well, Julie ended up with strep throat. She started running a fever yesterday. I called the doctor’s office and he called us in a prescription. Needless to say, we will not be going to church today. Just staying home and recuperating.
I hope everyone has a great Sunday and God bless.
I know this picture looks just like the picture of the peanut butter balls but it really is a different picture. These are the Martha Washington Balls. The recipe is:
2 boxes powdered sugar, 1 stick butter softened, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 1 tsp. vanilla. Using mixer, blend ingredients together. Mixture will be stiff. Add 4 cups chopped pecans. Put powdered sugar on hands and roll into small balls. Chill. Dip balls into melted chocolate. Use 4 cups chocolate chips and 1/2 block parafin wax. DELICIOUS!
Temperatures are super cold here. Wind chill is close to zero again with gusts of about 50 mph but we are toasty warm inside with a nice fire going. Hubby was able to get propane for the gas logs Saturday. This really helps keep the house warm. Our little woodstove is a work horse. However it was severely overworked last week trying to do the job all by itself with zero temps. Pray our water doesn’t freeze again.
We are going to get some tires put on the front of the car. Hubby didn’t work today, so he is going with us. I’m glad. Enjoy your day and God bless.
Today is a beautiful day here in Floyd. Lots of snow. It’s really hard to get an accurate measurement here because of the wind but we know we got at least 8-10 inches, drifts are much deeper. The girls have already played in the snow and we have made snow cream. For those of you who do not know what snow cream is, you put snow in a large container, add sugar, vanilla and evaporated milk. Stir it up with a mixer and you have snow cream. Very good! The amount of ingredients vary so just keep tasting until you get it right. This is a favorite of ours whenever we get snow. I think today is a quilting day. You know one of those days where I just snuggle in with a project and enjoy the life the Good Lord has given me. I guess there will be no church tomorrow. I really miss going to church but it just can’t be helped. The roads are too bad to go anywhere. Jess even got snow in N.C. I wish I could see Daniel’s face when he gets to play in it. They do not get snow very often there. So it will be a treat for him. Well, I think I hear my quilt project calling my name. Enjoy your day and God Bless.
Merry Heart Crafts 