The BEST Caramel EVER

Homemade caramel is a pain in the hiney. You stir and stir and stir and then you stir one time too many and your caramel is overcooked and awful. No more my friend! This weekend I had the most delicious caramel EVER and it was so easy it seemed almost wrong. And now I will share with you my secret.

1. Buy many cans of sweetened condensed milk. Trust me, you will want many!

2. Put said cans into a very large pot.

3. Cover cans with water.

4. Boil cans for 3 hours. (I said easy, not quick.)

5. Fish out can labels (This is the hardest part of the whole process.)

6. Pour out water.

7. Open your cans of loveliness and enjoy!

You can put it on ice cream, apple pie, eggs... Just kidding :) But seriously this is good stuff!

For your viewing pleasure:

The best part (besides the yummy creaminess) is that it is still sealed in its can so it will keep just like sweetened condensed milk! Write Caramel on the can and stick it in your pantry to keep on hand!

My Giant (Almost) Cupcake

You will soon see why I say "almost." It wasn't pretty... but I'm sharing anyway because it was yummy! This is not a cooking blog and I don't plan on making it one. I do like to bake, but I don't do it very much because I hate cleaning up the mess. But here is my completely made-from-scratch giant almost cupcake.




I used one of those giant cupcake pans. I know you know what I'm talking about. Unless you have never watched TV of course... I got the cake recipe here. Yes it makes a difference whether you use cake flour or regular flour. Use the cake flour!!

I got the icing recipe here. I just used regular milk instead of cream though.

I filled the cake with strawberries sprinkled with sugar. It would also be nice to use macerated strawberries. This was a last minute addition so I just sliced them and sprinkled them with sugar. Also, I'm not old enough to cook with wine ;)

Here is the (over) filled cake. I put too much of the strawberries in so when I sat the top on it....

...the walls of the bottom layer gave way. So I just slathered it with the icing and we ate it :)

The cake was moist and delicious in spite of how it looked. I thought the icing was too rich, but I don't like overly sweet things. The strawberries really made the cake though.

***WARNING*** This cake is not for those watching their weight or for those with heart/cholesterol issues. Together, the cake and icing contain an entire POUND of butter!! That's FOUR sticks!!!