This Weeks Challenge Is.....

For this weeks Trial & Error Challenge Kat and Nate will have to spice up a common dinner food.

!!!PASTA!!!

Theres no limitations of what can or cant go into the dish but pasta n

eeds to be present. Cant wait to see what dishes come out of this one

Let The Games Begin!! :D

Buttermilk Coffee Cake

This week coffee cake is on the list and I decided to go with some good ole buttermilk coffee cake cause anything buttermilk I think tastes delicious :D

For this recipe I basically had everything I needed to start except for some whole flour, I decided to switch it for whole wheat flour cause its been sitting in our cabinet forever so I thought id try it. I'm new to baking so i'm not sure what this'll do to the taste but I thought I might as well try it.

After grabbing what I needed I started to make the dry part of the coffee cake by mixing the wheat flour, salt, butter,

baking soda/powder and brown sugar... easy enough :]

Then I set aside 1/2 cup of this part for the toppings.

the next part was to add the rest of the ingredients

into the bowl (the eggs and yummy buttermilk) and I mixed those bad boys till it was a nice batter substance.

Then it was time to heat up the oven, put the batter in the pan, sprinkle the toppings and wait for the deliciousness to come out of the oven.

After about 30 minutes I took it out and it looked just right to eat.

I liked this recipe because it was fast, easy to follow, and turned out pretty good.

Although I must say it lacked a bit of sugary taste. That was probably because of the wheat flour >:[ I wont be using that again but it was worth a shot. Also for the next time I make coffee cake i'm going to be adding some more toppings, you could never go wrong with more coffee cake topping! and this one was desperately lacking some. Good stuff though :)

Challenge 1--Coffee Cake--Kat's Side of Things

As I was thinking of how I was going to start this, I came up with this: "Wow! It's already Thursday, it feels like yesterday was only Monday and I was only a day off of posting this. With work, friends, and family though, it has taken me 5 days to get this posted! Not to mention that the next challenge is coming up in only a couple of days...--" and that's where I scratched that. If you haven't figured out why yet, I'll tell you why: it's not Thursday. It's only Wednesday! Here I am so out of it that I've been calling it Thursday all day! I guess that's what happens when you forget you have work the next morning and actually have to get to bed.

Anyways, on to the actual challenge part of my post. I made my coffee cake on Sunday, for Father's Day. Now, my sisters are gluten & dairy free, so I made the coffee cake so they could eat it too. I didn't try to find a fancy gluten, dairy free or anything, I didn't feel like risking picking the wrong one. I just altered my normal coffee cake recipe instead and it actually turned out!

To make sure that the coffee cake would be ready in time for church, I got up at 7:30 to start making it. As soon as I got up, I was rushing to wake up my sister to help me and start making it. I started making it on robot-mode I wasn't quite awake yet. After a little bit though, I got into it and it was really fun. Since I had my sister up (she's young) I had her read my the recipe to help. She was still kinda asleep too, so it worked out perfectly. She loved sprinkling the streusel topping on the coffee cake in the middle and on the top (and eating it to!). 

After the coffee cake was in the oven, I had thought that I would be able to relax, boy was I wrong! I now had only 25 minutes to make coffee, bacon, and egg-hashbrown "popovers".

These egg-hashbrown "popovers" were made in a mini muffin pan and were super easy! I just need to remember to grease the pan next time...it stuck just a little (and by a little, I really mean a lot). I put hashbrowns into the bottom of the pan and poured in a bit of scrambled eggs. I filled the mini muffins up to the top, which created the "popover" effect.

The whole Father's Day breakfast was a hit! It was so much fun and it felt good cooking so much for others. That's one of things that I really enjoy doing, cooking for others. It's the way I show my love. <3

Nate's Idears

Coffee cake rocks and seeing how I normally have cereal or poptarts for breakfast I will be more than happy to get up in the morning to make it. After searching around the house for a cooking book that had various kinds of coffee cake I finally found one. In this book there's ones like fruit, rhubarb-strawberry, blueberry, raspberry, and buttermilk coffee cakes. Seeing as how I love buttermilk I'm picking that one. Dont judge me! >:[

Its gonna be delicious! im just hoping mine looks like the picture XD

Ingredients for this Buttermilk Coffee Cake

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup butter

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 beaten eggs

1 1/3 cups buttermilk

(You could also add 1/2 cup nuts.. But I cut those guys out)

<---- My face just thinking about buttermilk coffee cake

Recipe Ideas

The challenge is coffee cake, now the question is what should I bake? Sounds a little like a stupid question, but it really isn't. There are tons of different coffee cake recipes ranging from the classic streusel coffee cake to fruit coffee cakes.

Despite loving complicated variations and trying new things, I am going to do a classic streusel coffee cake that I grew up with. I have a recipe book that was homemade by my mom that has only a few recipes in it, but coffee cake is one of them. The recipe can be a coffee cake with streusel on top, top and middle, or coffee cake muffins. I don't know about you, but my favorite part of coffee cake is the stressuel so I always end up doubling it.

Some versions of coffee cake that I would love to make someday are:

• Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake
• Cherry Crunch Coffee Cake
• Peach Streusel Coffee Cake
• Sweet Potato Pecan Coffee Cake
• Blueberry Coffee Cake
• Strawberry Jame Crumble Coffee Cake

The one I am making is a classic streusel coffee cake, but I am making it gluten and dairy free. Should be an interesting challenge! I am not using a gluten or dairy free recipe, but adapting the recipe I have right now to it. We'll see how it turns out, I hope it is good considering I am making this for Father's Day!

1...2...3...Go!

This is officially the first weekly challenge post! I (Kat) will be posting a new recipe every week on Saturday that we will have to complete and "turn in" to the blog before the next recipe is posted. The results for either of us will be posted anytime during the week so it'll always be a surprise when someone posts! Also, any number of posts will be posted on the challenge, from planning to buying ingredients and cooking/baking.

This week, because it is the first week, we are going to go with something simple and classic: Coffee Cake.

There are absolutely no restrictions on the type of coffee cake or the ingredients. Any type is welcome and enjoyed! The only thing that we should strive for is for it to taste good, oh and look good wouldn't hurt either.

So...ready, set, go! Let the challenge begin!

It's the Beginning...

Welcome to the start of Trial & Error Challenge! This should really be awesome and a lot of fun. This blog incorporates 2 people, brother and sister, Kat and Nate, the two contestants. Two contestants in what? This is a challenge where both of us will get the same challenge recipe that we have to complete before the week is up.
The recipe can be anything from breakfast to dessert as long as it is creative and interesting! Due to the difficulty in obtaining "special" ingredients, we will try to find recipes with the most accessible and least expensive ingredients.
After we cook/bake the dish, we will post absolutely everything (or anything) about it. Pictures, stories, laughs, failures will all be posted and shared. Maybe we will both get the dish perfect, or the recipe will prove too difficult for either of us! In any case it will be interesting to see how the other does on the dish. Who knows? Maybe our takes on the dish will be completely different! Let's wait and see...
Oh! I forgot to mention that we will be competing in this challenge from different states, sometimes from different ends of the country! So obviously, we will not be together for this challenge. It just adds another element of interesting, right? Well let's hope so!