Being Healthy After the Holidays?

Usually, you don't see fruits on dessert unless it's a dessert that's dedicated to just fruit. Here, I made a cake that combines both sweetness and things that go into a normal cake, and some strawberries on top to make it healthier than it would be otherwise because I remember all of the sweets and desserts we had at our own Christmas and New Year's party. So, this cake is better in the healthy department than others. 

Ingredients:

2 cups biscuit/baking mix 

2 tablespoons sugar 

2/3 cup milk 

1 egg, beaten

2/3 cup jellied cranberry sauce (I substituted this for frozen strawberries. If you are using frozen strawberries, I highly suggest leaving them out to defrost before starting your recipe so you're not just waiting around for them to defrost)

Topping (Optional)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (I didn't include the walnuts because I didn't have any)

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (make sure you read the directions right because when I the recipe, I read it wrong and put in half a cup of both, which I then had to throw out and restart) 

Glaze (Optional)

1 cup confectioners' sugar

2 tablespoons milk

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. 

Honestly, I did this recipe because I knew it wasn't going to take long so this is a good recipe if you don't want to spend a ton of time in the kitchen. Beginning the recipe, I combined the biscuit mix, sugar, milk and egg. (Taste of Home's 2000 Quick Cooking Annual Recipes). 

After that, I greased, with pan, a square baking dish. The book recommends an 8 inch baking dish but I didn't measure mine to make sure. (Taste of Home's 2000 Quick Cooking Annual Recipes). While the batter was in the dish, I cut strawberries in half, and then in half again. I put all the cut up strawberries on top of the batter, making sure I covered it all. (Taste of Home's 2000 Quick Cooking Annual Recipes).

I put the dish into the oven at 400 degrees (Make sure you preheat) so that it could cook for 18-23 minutes. (Taste of Home's 2000 Quick Cooking Annual Recipes). Right before I put that in the oven, I decided to work on the topping. After realizing that we had no walnuts, I decided to just skip out on the walnuts and just mix together the cinnamon and the brown sugar. Make sure that if you're brown sugar has clumped together in little balls, that you get rid of the little balls because it doesn't look good on the top of the cake.

everything right before going in the oven

 I think my cake spent around 25-30 minutes in the oven. To make sure it was done, I inserted a toothpick into the middle of it and if it came off clean, I would take out the dish. (Taste of Home's 2000 Quick Cooking Annual Recipes). Also, quick note, make sure you don't stick your toothpick into a strawberry or else, it'll come out all red which would make you think that it's not done when it really could be. 

If you were to make the glaze (which I didn't), you would combine, in a small bowl, all of the glaze ingredients. After you did that, you would drizzle it over the coffee cake. Then you would be finished! but if you skipped over the glaze like I did, you're finished right when you take it out of the oven! 

Question: Do you like fruit atop of your desserts? Do you prefer your cakes to have fruit on top of it or not? 

Citation: (Taste of Home's 2000 Quick Cooking Annual Recipes: Every Single Rapid Recipe from the past Year. Greendale, WI: Reiman Publications, 1999. Print.)