This morning we baked a delicious cake - a kind of cinnamon crumb chocolate chip coffee cake* in a bundt pan, so it looks all fancy. It's my mom's recipe from years ago - and neither of us have made it in ages - but the girls picked it out of the cookbook this morning so we went with it. The house smells great and we're now ahead of the game for Shabbos.
But there was also an afternoon today - a gorgeous day, the kind of day that has you standing at the window, looking out and saying, I must get these kids into a stroller right now so I can go walking. And so we did. Except that really, once you get outside, you realize it's freezing. Not truly freezing, but windy and chilly enough that you're just as happy as the kids to go back inside and hang out in the porch.
Which is what we did.
And then we rummaged through the arts and crafts stuff and made rainbows, because, well, I wish I had a reason, but I don't. My girls just like rainbows.
Grab some colored paper and a scissor and cut the papers into small pieces.
Hand out bottles of glue and large-ish papers. Draw a big rainbow on each paper and let the kids glue one little paper at a time to the rainbow. In theory, it should take quite a while but it only took my girls about twenty minutes, most of that time spent smooshing glue between their hands. You know what? Whatever floats their boat today is fine by me; as long as no one is fighting right now, I am happy.
*Savti's Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
1/2 lb softened margarine (I used 1 cup oil instead and it's totally fine)
2 eggs
1 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup soy milk (I used unsweetened almond milk, and again, totally fine. Rice milk would work too, as would real milk, but I like to keep my baking pareve.)
1 tsp vanilla.
Mix all in a large bowl and set aside while you make the crumb part.
In a small bowl, mix together:
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cinnamon (or more, if you like)
1 cup chocolate chips
Spray a bundt pan with baking spray.
Pour half the batter into the pan, top with 3/4 of the crumb mixture, add the rest of the batter and then top it off by sprinkling the rest of the crumb topping on top.
The recipe that I have from my mom indicates that the cake should be baked for an hour. However, mine was done at 45 minutes. I feel like my oven runs hots, but even accounting for a temperature difference, I feel like 60 minutes would be too long. I would start checking at 40 minutes and go from there. You want a toothpick to come out clean, maybe with some melty chocolate on it.
So all in all, I'd say bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.