I mentioned before that this year, I decided to jump in with both feet and commit to Ali Edwards One Little Word workshop. As Ali says on her site, “a single word can be a powerful thing”. And yes, my word for the year is JOY. There are a million reasons why I think this is the absolute perfect word for me to work with this year, but I think this quote sums it all up quite nicely:
Or, as Danielle LaPorte put it,
“Happiness is like rising bubbles — delightful and inevitably fleeting.
Joy is the oxygen — ever present.”
While the start of a new year is supposed to be filled with the excitement of fresh starts, new challenges, and first steps on the path to being a better person, the first few weeks of this year for me have brought more than a few reminders of how life doesn’t always go quite as we had hoped for or planned.
But rather than focus on the dark clouds in life that are sickness and setbacks, I actively looked for the joy in the situation. For there was joy in snuggling with my little one on the couch while she was home sick from school for two days. And there was joy in making special dinners with the kids as the Husband worked late. And there was even joy in changing up my gym routine when I wasn’t able to meet with the Coach (and for those that know me . . . i do NOT like a change in my gym routine . . . some things are sacred and not to be changed . . . EVER).
As the days of January tick by, I’m also starting to realize that it’s a whole lot easier to find joy in life when you wake up each day full of vitality and refreshed from a good night’s sleep . . . the benefits of a clean diet, no alcohol, and lots of physical activity.
It’s also a whole lot easier to wake up early so I can work on my One Little Word project when I am so rested and full of life!
While the gym is definitely one of my happy places, I am probably happiest in the kitchen. And this weekend, because the majority of my family’s birthdays happen in January, I found myself in the kitchen all day on Sunday baking birthday cakes and making frosting. In all, I made 2 four layer cakes and with two different frostings. The first was a sprinkle cake, for which I am about to share the recipe, and the second was simply the sprinkle cake without the sprinkles. As for the frosting, I made a simple vanilla frosting for the sprinkle cake and a mocha one for the plain vanilla cake. I will freely admit that there is nothing nutritionally redeeming about sprinkles, or their appearance in cake. And while I’m admitting to things, I also used vegetable shortening in my vanilla frosting (yeah, even I was horrified by it) . . .but it made for an excellent frosting that hardened on the outside just that little bit, you know, the way the icing is on a cake from a bakery. And yes, I did have a slice of cake (the mocha one which didn’t have shortening . . . but cake nonetheless). And yes, there was a whole lot of joy in that slice of cake!
Vanilla Sprinkle Cake
Ingredients
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup greek yogurt
1 1/2 cups milk (any kind that you have on hand)
2 tbs vanilla extract
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 1/3 cups flour
1 cup sprinkles (I used the thin round ones, but you could also use the little ones that look like balls – other kinds of sprinkles may bleed too much into the batter)
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 and butter and flour 2 9″ cake pans.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and two sugars. Beat until they are well combined. Add in the eggs and continue to beat until the mixture is light, fluffy, and pale yellow in colour.
- Add in the yogurt and mix again.
- Measure the milk and vanilla into a bowl. Measure the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into another bowl.
- Add half the milk mixture and half of the flour mixture to the bowl and mix until just combined.
- Add in the remaining milk mixture and flour mixture and again, mix until just combined.
- Add in the sprinkles and mix on last time.
- Distribute the batter between the two pans and use a spatula to even out the batter in the pans.
- Bake for 30 minutes and assess how well done the cakes are. At this point, I put the cakes back in for another 10 minutes. I then covered the cakes with tin foil and baked them for another 15 minutes until a cake tester inserted into the middle of the cakes came out clean.
- If you are making these cakes without the sprinkles, baking time may be reduced by about 10-15 minutes.
- I cut each of these cakes in half to make a total of 4 layers!
Simple Vanilla Frosting
Ingredients
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
3-4 cups icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
4 tbsp milk or cream
Directions
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter, shortening and vanilla together until well combined.
- Add in 3 cups of the icing sugar as well as the milk. Mix well. If the icing is not as thick as you’d like it, add in the remaining cup of icing sugar. Depending on how “fluffy” you like your frosting, keep beating it until your desired state of fluffiness is reached.
- If you are making a 4-layer cake as I did, double this recipe.
nancyhotson 
Leave a Reply