Cranberry Coffee Cake

This is delicious and great for the Holidays. One of our neighbors made it for us a few years ago and now it is one of our favorites. It is really moist and the funny part is...we don't even like cranberries! But we love this so try it and see what you think. Please visit Beauty and Bedlam for more Tasty Tuesday recipes and thanks for stopping by our blog!

Cranberry Coffee Cake

INGREDIENTS • 1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened • 1/2 cup sugar • 2 eggs • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract • 2 cups all-purpose flour • 2 teaspoons baking powder • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon • 1/4 teaspoon salt • 1/8 teaspoon allspice • 2 medium ripe bananas, mashed • 1 cup whole berry cranberry sauce (We added a small amount of mik to the batter because it seemed a little bit dry and it turned out perfect!) • TOPPING: • 1/2 cup packed brown sugar • 1/2 cup chopped pecans • 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour • 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted

DIRECTIONS 1. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine the dry ingredients; add to the creamed mixture alternately with bananas. Spread into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking pan. Top with cranberry sauce. (Sometimes we use a large square pan for a thicker cake) 2. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, pecans (optional...we didn't) and flour; stir in butter. Sprinkle over cranberries. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack. Enjoy!!! Ciao...Taylor & Jordan

Red Velvet Cake Balls...

In August, we were in the Keys for our mom's birthday. It was so much fun and for her birthday, we went to dinner and bought a cake to have later. The cake was great but we usually give my mom a homemade cake, not a store bought one. So a few weeks after we got home, we made these red velvet cake balls to surprise her. You can find the recipe on Bakerella which is an AMAZING site for unbelievable baking recipes. Okay, we decided to do this at the last minute so we had to do things differently from the recipe. We made a red velvet cake from scratch and since we had no baking chocolate in the house, we melted chocolate chips. It wasnt what the recipe called for but it's all we had. They were soooooo good! Even our dad, who doesn't eat a ton of chocolate loved them. They were gone so fast...almost by breakfast the next day! Next time we make them and we are planning to for Christmas, we'll use white chocolate too. We'll drizzle a few lines of white chocolate over the dark chocolate and we'll totally cover some of the cake balls in only white chocolate. These are one of the best tasting things we've made in a long time! Ciao! Taylor & Jordie