Gluten Free Chocolate Cake With Strawberry Frosting

So it's my partners big 30th birthday tomorrow and of course I just had to bake him a cake for the special occasion, after all turning thirty and having a baby due any day now is a big deal. So when I asked him what kind of cake he would like me to make him he said chocolate strawberry cake, kind of an unusual request I thought but I can make it work. Strawberries at the grocery store in February aren't very appealing, so thankfully I had just enough left in the freezer that I got at the farm stand this summer, so I could make the frosting strawberry as requested. The rest was pretty easy whip up and I'm sure it will make the birthday boy, or man, very happy! Here's how I did it:

Ingredients for the chocolate cake: 

- 2 cup organic sugar

- 1 3/4 cup of gluten free King Arthur multi purpose flour mix

- 3/4 cup cocoa powder

- 1 teaspoon salt 

- 1 teaspoon xanthan gum

- 1 teaspoon baking powder 

- 1 teaspoon baking soda

- 2 organic free range eggs

- 1 cup milk 

- 1/2 cup organic canola oil

- 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

- 1 cup boiling water 

Instructions: 

Preheat oven to 350 and grease 2 9 inch cake pans. Add sugar, flour, cocoa, salt, xanthan gum, baking powder and soda to mixing bowl and mix together. Then add the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla extract and mix with the dry ingredients. Then add boiling water and beat until well combined, mixture will be thin. Add batter evenly to both cake pans and bake 30-35 minutes until toothpick comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting. 

Strawberry frosting ingredients:

- 1 cup of organic strawberries

- 2 sticks of butter, softened

- 3 1-2 cup of organic powdered sugar

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions: 

Purée the cup of strawberries in a blender and add it to a sauce pan. Reduce the strawberry purée by half over medium- low heat, it should take about 20 minutes or so. Allow it to cool completely. 

In a stand mixer, beat butter till fluffy and then add a cup of the powdered sugar and beat some more.  Once combined add 2 teaspoons of the purée and the vanilla extract and mix well. Then add 1/2 a cup of powdered sugar to 2 teaspoons of purée at a time until all ingredients are added and well combined. Now use frosting to frost the cake and enjoy a big hunk for all of your efforts!! :)

~Megan~

Immune Boosting Tropical Smoothie

This is one of my favorite smoothie recipes. It's bright and citrus-y and packs a good punch to fight off any invaders of your immune system. It's chuck full of lots of vitamins and minerals and with the addition of coconut oil is also antibacterial and antiviral. The chia seeds add a good amount of protein and the coconut water adds electrolytes to keep you hydrated and its just plain good,  so what's not to love? 

Here's how to make it:

Ingredients: 

- 2 organic bananas 

- 4-5 organic oranges, segmented 

- 3 organic carrots, peeled and cut into chunks

- 1/2 cup or so of frozen organic mango

- 1-1 1/2 cups of frozen pineapple 

- A heaping tablespoon of organic extra virgin coconut oil

- 1-2 tablespoons of chia seeds

- 1/2-1 cup coconut water 

- 4-5 ice cubes 

 

Instructions: 

Add all the ingredients into a high powered blender and blend away until nice and smooth. Poor into your favorite glass and enjoy!! 

~Megan~

5 Tips to Keep your Houseplants Happy and Healthy During Winter

If you are anything like me when winter is at its peak, your looking for ways to get your hands dirty and have some greenery around.  Houseplants are a great way to fill the gardening void but can sometimes prove to be a challenge at keeping happy and healthy during the long cold winter months.  The air is drier, there's less light, and some houseplants can just be miserable and even die  because of it.  If your house is anything like ours and heated with wood heat is can be a challenge getting the right temperatures and humidity levels that a lot of houseplants thrive on and also poses some other challenges as well.  Here are a few tips I've learned over the years to help keep those houseplants, and you, happy and healthy throughout the winter.

1.  Make sure there's an adequate humidity level-  The dry air in winter can really cause havoc to a lot of your houseplants.  Most tropical plants need the humidity levels to be around 70% and the majority of the houseplants are of the tropical variety, with the exception of succulents and cacti which do just fine in dry climates.  You can add moisture through the air by running humidifiers, simmering water on your wood stove, and by making sure that it doesn't get too hot in your home by trying to regulate your heat source, which is not the easiest thing to do with wood heat but worth an attempt. Also letting your house get a few degrees cooler at night will really benefit your houseplants as well when transpiration rates would naturally slowdown.

2.  Increase watering-  With winter drying everything out and the artificial heat, it is really important to keep an eye on the soil moisture level of your houseplants as well.  I tend to increase my watering of my tropical houseplants from once a week in the summer months to twice a week during the winter.  When temperatures are high and there is low humidity plants transpire at a much higher rate and therefor the require much more water to continue to stay healthy in that environment. Just go around and stick your finger in the soil to see weather or not they need an extra drink, if it still feels moist skip it.

3.  Dust your Houseplants-  Wood heat, along with other heat sources, can really cause an abundance of dust floating around and it tends to accumulate on the leaves of your houseplants essentially strangling them.  Plants breath through the stomata in their leaves and stems and when a thick layer of dust is blocking them from opening and making gas and moisture transfers the plants really begin to suffer.  Houseplants aren't exposed to rain like they are in nature to remove the buildup so it is our job to keep them clean.  I really like being hands on with my plants so I usually will wet down a rag with water and hand wipe the leaves and steams to clean off the dust, dirt and cobweb buildup, but you could easily put them in your sink or shower and spray them down as well. Although something seems so impersonal about it and you can't guaranty that you've gotten it all off that way either, just my opinion, many people use this method to save time and energy. I suggest doing this at least twice a year if not more.

4.  Spray down houseplants to remove salt build up-  hosing out the soil near the end of winter is also a great thing to do to keep your houseplants in optimal health.  Many of us have treated water in one sense or another, like water softeners, or chlorine treated tap water and the salts from these treatments tend to build up in the soil over time causing toxicity, so it is imperative to really hose out any of the buildup in the soil.  In the summer months I water our house plants with collected rain water from our rain barrels but have to water the houseplants with our treated well water in the winter, so usually sometime in March I take our 30 something houseplants into the shower one by one and give them a thorough soaking and let them sit in there to drain before putting them back to their respected homes.  Sometimes I even wait till spring to do this so that I can use the rain water but really as long as you're really rinsing out the buildup it shouldn't make a difference. If you always use treated water on your houseplants you may want to consider doing this twice a year.

5.  Add lighting if needed-  The shorter days of winter can make some of your more high light house plants unhappy and they may benefit from some artificial lighting to supplement, especially in the really dark months of winter.  I know the houseplants that we have on our balcony by our staircase just doesn't get as much sunlight as in the summer months and our plants tend to suffer there because of it, so we have gotten a couple plant lights to shine on them during those times.  Or if you know that about a certain spot you may want to consider moving higher light plants closer to a window during the winter months or choose plants that can handle low light locations for those spots that get darker in the winter months.

There you have it, with these few tips you should have all the tools you need to keep your houseplants happy, healthy and radiant even in the long months of winter, while also curing your gardening itch until spring comes around.  If you have any comments or tips to add feel free to add them, we'd all appreciate it. Thanks!

~Megan~

DIY Nusery Art Projects

It was really important to me to have a creative and unique space for my baby girl to call home, so for me that meant making it my own, myself.  I'm a big advocate of skipping the big box stores in loo of doing it yourself.  I understand that not everyone is super crafty or has the time to make things themselves.  I get it, modern day life is chaotic, but honestly these projects don't really require a ton of time to invest into them and are really easy to make, plus you can customize it to your own personality and it's a pretty inexpensive way to decorate your nursery.  I know I posted the DIY butterfly mobile tutorial the other day but here are a few more DIY projects for you to try out.

 

There you can see the mobile that I posted the other day and the embroidery hoop art that I did as well.  Both are pretty easy to make and customize you can use any color fabric, paper, paint, and shapes.  Here is another DIY project that I did for the nusery too.

What better way to teach your little one the alphabet than putting it up on their wall?  For this project I went to my local craft supply store and got letters in all different sizes and from different collections of alphabet styles to create a uniquely shaped alphabet. Then I painted, modge podged scrapbook paper and glued beads and glitter to the letters making everyone different.  I painted the Z in zebra stripes, the G in gold glitter, the Y yellow and painted the P purple and put polka dots on  it to go with the theme.  Not all of them fit the B is for blue or V is for violet but a lot of them do.  I think that this is a great way to decorate a nursery wall that is not only totally cute and customize-able but also educational as well.

Here's another way to jazz up your nursery or any wall in your home really.  Get some cute printed fabrics and some cheap embroidery hoops and BAM you've got some custom wall art!  By far this was the easiest of all the projects and took the least amount of time to make, and I'm even thinking of adding a few more smaller ones too.  Ok so here's how you do it and what you need:

Supplies for Embroidery Hoop Art:

• Printed fabric of your choice
• Embroidery hoops of varying sizes
• Good fabric scissors
• Hot glue gun

 This could not be easier, choose your fabric and hoop size and cut out fabric to fit the hoop, like so:

Then you could iron the fabric but honestly there's no need to because the fabric is going to be pulled really tight in the hoop eliminating any wrinkles and I really never iron anything, ever, so why add another step.  Center the fabric to the top of the hoop where it will end up being hung from and add the outer hoop and tighten so that the fabric is nice and taught.

Next trim off excess fabric and cut slits every inch or so around the hoop to reduce bulk when hot gluing.  Then just hot glue the left over fabric to the back of the hoop all the way around to create a seamless look.

And that's all there is to it!  So simple yet so cute and they literally took tops 10 minutes to make.  You just follow the same steps for them all using differing fabric and once they're all done hung 'em up with a small nail right where the hoop comes together.  If you want you could also paint the wooden hoops different colors or buy the plastic ones that are already different colors or just leave them as is like I did.  The beauty to these projects is that you can really make them your own and totally personalize your space.  Well hope you enjoyed these fun and easy projects. Take care!

~Megan~