Lemon Marscapone Berry Cake

This cake is SO easy!

I bought the vanilla bean cake mix from Trader Joes.  It's not that I am opposed to making a cake from scratch, and I often do, but this cake mix does not taste like it is from a box, and it served my purposes.  I baked it in 10 inch round pans... about 10 oz of mix in each pan for about 17 minutes.

The fillings are as follows:

Marscapone Whipped Cream

Whip together the following ingredients until the texture has changed to a firm whipped cream:

1 container marscapone

1 cup cream

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1/2 vanilla bean scrapings

Lemon Posset

Bring to a simmer:

1 cup cream

1/3 cup sugar

Allow to come to room temperature.

Mix in:

1/4 cup lemon juice (I prefer meyer when I can get it)

Allow to cool in the refrigerator for at least two hours.

Place one layer of cake on the serving plate.

Put all of marscapone cream on the cake; even it out and then put the next layer of cake on top.  spread 2/3 of the lemon posset on the cake, add the next layer of cake.  Cover the cake with the last of the possett and with thinly sliced strawberries and another berry of choice.  For this cake I used blackberries for the color contrast and because they are in season.

Serve and enjoy!

Southern Style Chicken and Dumplings

Comfort food.  Recipes-- yes I do use recipes sometimes.  Family.  Easy.  Homemade.

How to describe chicken and dumplings?  Well, delicious for one.

So here I am posting again, this time an old family recipe from my aunt, born and raised in Arkansas, that I just have to share with you.  In our recipe box, I have this recipe, worn, typed on a typewriter (who even uses those anymore???), and clearly loved.

Now I must give you a disclaimer: if you are looking for biscuit style dumplings, this post isn't for you.  But if you are looking for melt in your mouth, soaked up the chicken broth, down home drop in the soup dumplings, then you can't go wrong.

So, here goes: