This is a Pistachio Pudding Cake with Pistachio Frosting

It was supposed to look like this…..

The birthday girl turned 4, picked out her birthday cake, and made her own cake with her Daddy’s help. But she did quite a bit of work. She leveled the flour, poured the vanilla and scraped the bowl. It doesn’t matter what the cake looks like, what matters is that she had a blast making and yes it was DELICIOUS!

This recipe was copied from Crisco.com but we enjoyed it so much I wanted to share it with you here. It makes a denser cake than most, and the icing is quite lite and not too sweet, it’s just right to me. The Pistachio icing is so good, I can’t stop eating it. I had a piece of cake tonight, just so I could have more icing! YuMMM!

Pistachio Pudding Cake with Pistachio Frosting

INGREDIENTS:

• Crisco® Flour No-Stick Spray
• 3/4 cup Crisco® Butter Shortening
• OR 3/4 stick Crisco® Butter Flavor All-Vegetable Shortening Sticks
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 1 (3 3/4 oz.) package pistachio-flavored instant pudding mix
• 2 1/4 cups Pillsbury BEST® All Purpose Flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder

• FROSTING
• 1 (3 3/4 oz.) package pistachio-flavored instant pudding mix
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 (8 oz.) container frozen whipped topping, thawed
• 1/3 cup pistachio nuts, shelled and finely chopped

PREPARATION DIRECTIONS:

1. HEAT oven to 350ºF. Coat two 9-inch round layer pans with flour no-stick cooking spray.

2. COMBINE shortening, sugar, eggs and vanilla in bowl of electric mixer; beat until light and fluffy. Add water, pudding mix, flour and baking powder. Beat at low speed until blended, scraping bowl constantly. Beat at medium speed 2 minutes, scraping bowl occasionally. Pour into prepared pans.

3. BAKE 35 to 45 minutes, or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 5 minutes. Remove from pans. Cool completely.

4. COMBINE pudding mix and milk in medium bowl. Beat at medium speed 1 minute. Fold in whipped topping. Remove 1 cup frosting; combine with chopped pistachio nuts. Spread on bottom layer. Top with other layer. Spread remaining frosting on sides and top of cake. Chill before serving.

Stay tuned for photos of the birthday girl tomorrow on her actual birthday!!!

Miles birth day!

Miles Age 1

Miles Age 2

They just keep growing and changing!

I’ve told my children to stop growing up. I just can’t handle it, not because I’m getting older too but because I love my babies and I want to keep them forever. I want to always be able to hold them and whisper I love you in their ears. Hmm, but I can’t stop them. I just have to watch and enjoy them while I can.

I guess what I can do is share how wonderful her day was.

She made her own birthday cake.

She got to wear a party dress, she said, “it’s like Cinderella”.

She was covered in chocolate at one point. MMM, I think I was taking a nap.

The day would not have been complete without cuddles from mommy.

Nap Time

Play Time

Cake Time

Presents, and she let her brother open one for her. She always takes care of her brother. We had a great day and I’m exhausted. Doing anything now just takes all my energy. So I’m off to bed early, I just wanted to share our happy day with everyone.

Welcome to my blog.

I really wanted to do a video review but things are just not working out for me right now. I’m lucky that I can still blog. On Saturday my laptop crashed. My husband plugged it into the main computer to see if we could get it back up and well that made the main computer crash. Somehow my husband managed to get my computer up but it wasn’t until today he was able to get his computer back up. So video is out for now.

Which is quite sad, so let me tell you what I had planned.

Trisha from the queen of mommy bloggers, oh I mean MomDot is turning 31 years old on May 31st. She decided that having 31 bloggers doing giveaways would be a lot of fun and I agree. Going around to visit other bloggers is a ton of fun (I would be out there with you guys but family is in town, TODAY is my BIRTHDAY!!!, and our computer problems aren’t helping anything).

Day 6 is Momstart (me, did I mention today is my birthday and I’m only 29?)

No really, it should be about Trisha and my sponsor, The Karaoke Channel. Trisha has been nothing but extra wonderful to me and my blog. She accepted me as a member of Bloggers Give and I didn’t want to let her down so I have been working my butt off to get it off the ground with her. It’s been a lot of fun and I’ve learned a lot. And she has helped me reach some of my blogging goals. Now all I need is the confidence to start charging. She has become my friend. I consider her a good friend, even though we’ve never met. Don’t make her mad I think she leaves claw marks when she’s defending a friend. THANK YOU you’re the best. Happy Birthday!

Now for the Giveaway.

The The Karaoke Channel is providing one winner a month’s free subscription and a Karaoke Kit. The set plugs into your computer and becomes a Karaoke Machine. The Kit is 39.95 on Amazon and you can bundle it into your purchase when you purchase a monthly subscription from The Karaoke Channel. There is a free trial and there are free songs, but to get the full feel of it I recommend purchasing the 9.95 plan.

I know it’s really sad that we don’t have any video because a Karaoke set really does need a video seal of approval and I was going to sing “Happy Birthday” to Trisha, Marilyn Monroe style. I had it all planned out…

My Opinion:

We have all test software on our computers, all beta versions and it still managed to work. There were a few kinks, but we’re impressed that it did so well in an unfamiliar setting. You can get an echo, which is a fun effect. You have two microphones so my kids don’t fight, oh wait even when toys are identical they want what the other one has.

Their web interface is a lot better than I expected it to be. We went into the children’s genre and pulled up kids songs to sing and the background had some school kids singing and playing instruments in the background. One of the backgrounds had fish. I really liked how easy it was, you just plug it in. It’s made for the most basic of systems. That was one of our issues, our system was so complex. Once we realized it was a simple set up, it worked fine, the browser issues was for the microphone to work we had to keep an arrow pushed down with the mouse. We feel it was a software issue and not The Karaoke Channel.

50.00 value is yours by visiting The Karaoke Channel and picking out a song. Giveaway Ends May 31st