Upside Down German Chocolate Cake

MMMMMMMMMM. Cake. Or, as the Snickers Wolfie Simonsen would say, mmmMMMmmm!, with a cute tilt of the head. Don't believe me? Watch THIS.

My point is - who doesn't like cake? Especially THIS cake!

From scratch. No lie.

This kinda thing isn't a normal occurence in our house. I made this for Brad for Father's Day. It's his favorite, and you couldn't ask, hope or pray for a better Dad than him, so it was well worth the effort!

So one day I was looking at Pinterest, like I do, and saw a scrumptious picture of said cake. I clicked through only to find that whomever had originally pinned the image (not the one above, that's MY cake!) did it from a members only forum. I was devestated. OK, not really, but I commented on the pin and then some helpful soul replied that it was on Allrecipes.com. What's funny is that I was ON Allrecipes.com at that very moment (but wasn't looking for cake).

So here is the recipe! It isn't hard, but does dirty up a lot of dishes. Totally worth it.

German Chocolate Upside Down Cake - or -
Upside Down German Chocolate Cake. Whatever
1 1/4 cups water

1/4 cup butter 

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup flaked coconut

2 cups miniature marshmallows

1 cup chopped walnuts

4 (1 ounce) squares German sweet chocolate

1/2 cup water

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 eggs

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°. (Thanks Pinterest! I just learned how to do that little degree thingy!) 
2. In a sauce pan, combine 1 1/4 cup water and 1/4 cup butter or margarine. Heat until butter melts, then stir in brown sugar and coconut. Pour into ungreased 9x13 inch pan. Sprinkle marshmallows and nuts over top. set aside. 

The top. Or bottom. I guess it depends on your perspective and time of reference.

              

1. For the cake: in a saucepan over low heat, combine chocolate with 1/2 cup water. Heat, stirring, until chocolate is melted. Remove from heat.
2. In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, soda and salt. Add sour cream, 1/2 cup butter or margarine, vanilla and eggs. Add chocolate mixture and beat 3 minutes. Carefully spoon batter over coconut marshmallow mixture in pan. 

Yummy, delicious cake batter...

              

1. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 40 to 50 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Place pan on foil or cookie sheet to guard against spillage. 

I had no spillage to guard against.

I let it cool completely, and then we just cut and flipped it over when it was served. Why risk jacking up an entire cake and all of the effort you put into it, just to have a top that looked better than the picture above? The flavor? Dreamy. Pretty much the best cake I've ever made, or tasted.
              

Oh no he didn't!!!

Oh yes he DID!!!

That's right. I accessorize my hair with my shirt.
Doesn't everyone?

Why? Because that's the crazy stuff you do when you're 13.

The process:

Nice and normal looking children...

Add a Brad and bleach...

I really think Brad enjoyed this!

Rinse, don't repeat...

He looks pretty good as a blonde!
Maybe a bit more smart ass'ish than before.

Make mine blue, please!

Blue hair makes you think you might be related to Gene Simmons.

Damn. I look good.

grrrrr

More soapy goodness!

So, the same day I made the second batch of laundry detergent (October 8th), I decided to also try my hand at home made dishwasher soap. Why not, right?

I had been doing some comparing and research on the different types of recipes, and it seemed the biggest difference between most of them was that if you have hard water, you should add some type of citric acid product. This products varied between Lemon Kool-aid (or a generic version), citric acid from the canning area of the store, or Lemi-Shine.
The Kool-Aid will eventually stain your dishwasher soap cup, so I wasn't going that route. The Citric Acid canning additive sounded expensive (based on others comments) and I read wonderful things about Lemi-Shine, and Baker's down the street carried it. Done deal.

I didn't really follow any ones specific recipe on this one, but based on what I read at several different blogs, decided to go with the following...
Here are the needed ingredients:

I still have a LOT of the Washing Soda left, and the Borax, so the only thing I had to buy was the Lemi-Shine.

Here's the recipe:
1 Cup Borax
1 Cup Washing Soda
1/2 Cup Lemi-Shine
1/4 Cup Salt

Use 1 tablespoon pure load in your soap cup. Add white vinegar as a rinse agent.

Most recommend Kosher salt, but I didn't have any so I used plain old table salt.
This is where it gets REALLY complicated.
Measure and mix all ingredients. See. Wasn't that hard?
I stored this in an old margarine container we used for leftovers. We don't use margarine anymore, so when the kids see me putting soap in the dishwasher, they get a bit teary eyed.
They LOVED margarine.
They're slowly getting used to plain 'ol butter. Whenever they ask for margarine, or complain about butter, I tell them to go eat some plastic as that's pretty much what margarine is.

One of the biggest complaints I read about these (dry) types of dishwasher soaps is that the citric acid will turn everything into a solid rock a couple of days down the road. And sure enough, it's true.
I took the advice of a couple of different people and left the lid off, and stirred it every now and then, breaking it up. It's still hard, but perfectly usable.
It works very well and I seriously doubt I will ever spend the money on the store bought stuff again.

So, in ONE HOUR, I made both dishwasher soap AND laundry detergent, both of which will last for a very long time. I have plenty of all supplies left to make more down the road. The total cost for the Borax, bar of soap, Washing Soda and Lemi-Shine was $11 and some change.
That. is. AWESOME!

While I worked on this, Brad was doing this:

Inside view

Outside view

Looks great, doesn't it??? Then, we went to the Watson's and watched the Husker's pull off the best ever comeback to beat Ohio State - freaking excellent fall Saturday!

Liquid Laundry Detergent - Attempt #2 = SUCCESS!!!

I did it, and I LOVE it!!!
This time I started with this recipe from the blog, "Why Not Sew".  She doesn't use as much water as some others I've seen, but that's OK - it's STILL way cheaper than the store bought stuff, and it works GREAT!!!
Here's the ingredients:

Except that I took this picture after I made the soap, so what you don't see is the missing bar of Ivory soap. My bad.
Also, this makes 2 gallons of detergent. Since my previous detergent bottle isn't that size, I poured the finished recipe into a clean cat litter bucket. (I always saved them and they come in handy all. the. time!)

Here's the recipe and what I did:
1 bar of soap (IMO, the more natural, the better)
1 cup of Borax
1 cup of washing soda
a big pot
empty gallon jug
container to store your soap in

I filled the empty gallon jug full with water, and poured about half of it into a large pot and started warming the water. As it was heating up, I grated the soap bar, and slowly stirred it into the water, stirring frequently. I also measured the Borax and washing soda and set that aside. Once the soap had dissolved, I added a bit more water from the gallon jug, and then slowly added the powder products and kept stirring until it was also dissolved. Remove the pan from heat.
It will look like this:

I poured the remaining water left in the gallon jug into the 5 gallon bucket, filled the gallon bottle one more time with warm water and poured that into the 5 gallon bucket. I then added the soap mixture to the bucket and stirred until it was well mixed.
Immediately I could tell that I had what I wanted. It was a beautiful consistency!
Done!

The recipe I used calls for 1/2 cup of detergent per load. I knew that I didn't want to be slopping detergent everywhere, so I used the recently emptied store bought detergent bottle, and checked to see how much it's little blue cup would hold. Guess what - it is exactly 1/2 a cup!
I did remove the plastic spout thing on the bottle because I found the homemade deteregent does thinken a bit as it sits. When I go to do laundry, I give the bottle of detergent a good shake to even out the consistency.
I'm thrilled with the results. Next time I MAY add some lavander or citrus essential oil, and I may add a bit more water. We'll see.
Happy Laundry!!!