Mounds Cake

I told Megan I would post this. It's truly evil.

It's a chocolate cake with coconut marshmallow frosting and chocolate sauce topping.

Make your favorite chocolate cake.
Top it with the coconut marshmallow frosting.
Smother it with the chocolate sauce.

Here is the recipe for the coconut marshmallow frosting:

1/2 c. sugar
2 Tbsp. water
2 large egg whites
1 jar (7 oz.) marshmallow creme
1 cup coconut
1tsp. coconut flavoring

Place the sugar, water, and egg whites in a medium-size heavy saucepan. Cook over low heat, beating continuously with an electric hand mixer on high speed until soft peaks form, 2-3 minutes. If your hand mixer has a cord, make sure to keep it away from the burner. Remove the pan from the heat. Add the marshmallow creme and beat the mixture with the mixer on high speed until stiff peaks form, 2 minutes more. Fold in the coconut and coconut flavoring. Frost your cake.

If you buy the Walmart brand marshmallow creme, there is another recipe for easy marshmallow creme frosting on the side.

Also, the chocolate topping makes the marshmallow frosting melt off the cake. It still tastes delicious, but it doesn't look fantastic. If anyone comes up with an idea for a better chocolate topping for the cake, let us all know. I know I will be making this again soon, Maggie requests it on a regular basis.

Sandwiches

I recently discovered a great way to cut Anna's sandwiches. She doesn't eat the crusts and when I cut her sandwich into squares. A lot gets missed because it's in the corners. So I've taken to cutting them into four triangles. That way, there is no corner of crust and she eats a lot more of her sandwich.

Spinach Pasta

This one is from the tv show Everyday Italian. I made it a little bit ago but the garlic was SO strong that I almost couldn't eat it. This time, I roasted the garlic first to mellow out the garlicky-ness of it all.

1 lb. whole wheat penne

3 cloves roasted garlic *

2 oz goat cheese

1 oz cream cheese

3/4 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

6 oz spinach

2 Tbsp. Parmesan

Cook the pasta. Meanwhile, in a food processor or blender (I used a blender and had to add a bunch of the pasta water for it to be thin enough for the blender to blend.) mix the garlic, goat cheese, cream cheese, salt, pepper and half of the spinach (this will be bright green, kind of fun). Put the rest of the spinach in a bowl. Drain the cooked pasta and spoon on top of the spinach. Mix in the sauce. At this point, she says to add water from the pasta to moisten. Mine was saucy enough after the water I added to get it to blend. I guess either way, you have to thin it down. I mixed in Parmesan cheese until it looked good or you can just sprinkle it on top.

* Roasted Garlic

Take a bulb of garlic and cut off the top 1/4 inch or so. Drizzle it with olive oil and pepper. Loosely wrap in foil and bake in a 250 degree oven for 50 minutes or until soft. You can also eat it spread on toast, bread or crackers.