Frazzled Mama Bakes a Cake!

Look at that cute face!

He literally climbs the walls and the fridge. It's one of his favorite activities.

The cake finally made it into the oven!

I never really understood mommy brain before kids. Now, that I have two kids, it's become clearer by the day. Frazzle is my middle name and nothing goes according to plan these days. I am a planner with a capital P so this can be hard for me.

It was my turn to host the board for my MOMS Club and I had to make dinner for a new mom. Coffee cake seemed like the perfect idea because it would make a great breakfast but could still pass for dessert for the family with the new baby. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well, it did not exactly go according to plan but nothing really does these days.

Last night, I decided to prep the ingredients, my friend Lindsay does this and has told me that it saves so much time. I had scanned the recipe in advance so that I could purchase the ingredients. While, getting everything out, I notice that we are completely out of baking soda. I text Courtney to see if I can borrow some, then I keep going down the recipe looking for the next ingredient - cinnamon. YIKES, I am out of cinnamon too. I quickly text Courtney again to see if she has any cinnamon. She keeps her pantry stocked much better than me and was able to save the day.

By this point, it was after 8:30 and I was ready for bed. I decided to make the crumb mixture which only has a few ingredients. It seemed like a lot of crumb mixture but I did not give it much thought.

I went to bed expecting Henry to wake me up around 6. Naturally, he decides to sleep late on a day that I need him to serve as my alarm clock. I race downstairs after feeding him to work on the cake. My crumb mixture was totally wrong - I had used three cups of sugar instead of one cup plus had added the pecans and coconut to the wrong mixture. Then, I was almost out of sugar so I fished the pecans and coconut out of the crumb mixture to add it to the cake mix. Oh well, I just kept throwing stuff in the bowl and hoping for the best. Blueberry muffins were my back-up plan and I felt sure that I was going to be whipping those up last minute.

Henry enjoyed his view of the show!

Does your kitchen look like this after you finish cooking or baking?

My kitchen was a total disaster at this point. Henry was crawling all over the place and getting into everything. I secured him in the highchair while I tried to finish the cake before Evie woke up.

Evie was so excited to have cake batter to lick first thing in the morning!

Look at that sweet face!

Yum Yum! Evie likes licking the beaters.

She woke up just as I was sliding the cake in the oven. Shockingly, my cake turned out, the recipe must be extremely forgiving because I literally made about twenty mistakes.

Take it from me, if you are a mom with two small children - just buy something from the store. It's much easier! A friend that I used to teach with gave me this recipe and it is one of my favorites. Just make sure you have plenty of cinnamon! Oh, and the cake was so good, that I had to make something else to take the family with the new baby. See what I mean, nothing goes according to plan and that's okay!

                          Jewish Coffee Cake

 Crumb filling:

1 cup sugar

2 T. cinnamon

3 T. chopped pecans

3 T. coconut

Mix and set aside.

Cake:

1 cup butter

2 cups sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

4 eggs

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 pint sour cream

Beat butter to cream well, add sugar and vanilla, add salt and eggs,

beat at high speed. Sift flour with baking soda and add to beaten mixture

alternately with sour cream. (begin and end with flour)

Pour 1/2 batter into greased Bundt pan,

Sprinkle with 1/2 crumb filling over batter.

Add remaining batter and top with remaining crumb filling.

Cut through with knife several times

Bake at 350*  50 minutes or until knife comes out clean. (I usually have to bake longer)