The Big White Farmhouse

intentional living, little by little

No.573: A Year of Vintage Recipes // Sugar-Top Coffee Cake

When I was a kid, my mom used to bring home from the grocery store one of our favorite treats: Entenmann’s coffee cake!  This recipe from the Farm Journal’s Country Cookbook is my homemade tribute to that happy memory.

Print Recipe

Sugar-Top Coffee Cake

taken from Farm Journal's Country Cookbook
Servings: 6

Ingredients

  • 1 egg
  • ¾ cup sugar
  • 1 tbsp melted butter
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 1½ cup sifted flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • ¼ tsp baking soda
  • ¾ tsp salt
  • Brown Sugar Topping

Instructions

  • Beat the egg until frothy, then beat in sugar and butter. Cream until light and fluffy. Add sour cream and vanilla; blend well.
  • Sift dry ingredients together; add to the sour cream mixture. Blend well.
  • Pour into a greased 8" square pan. Sprinkle with Brown Sugar Topping.
  • Bake at 375° for 25-30 minutes or until cake tests done. Serve warm.

Notes

BROWN SUGAR TOPPING: Mix ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar, 2 tbsp. flour, ½ tsp. cinnamon and 2 tbsp. softened butter until crumbly.
Previous Posts from the Year of Vintage Recipes

No.572: TBR Tuesday // Nine Books From the 1920s I Need to Read

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It’s happening at a snail’s pace, but I’m still working away on my 20th Century in Literature Challenge!  I have barely touched the books written in the 1920s, so I did some research on possible choices.  Here’s what I found:

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1920) // This is Fitzgerald’s first novel and is apparently semi-autobiographical.  I wasn’t a huge fan of The Great Gatsby (super unpopular opinion, I know!!) so I’m curious what I’ll think of this one.

The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer (1921) // How about a little romance?  This is Heyer’s first novel, written when she was a teenager, and is set in 18th century England.  Some readers describe it as very fun and very melodramatic – I’m intrigued!

One of Ours by Willa Cather (1922) // This one won a Pulitzer in 1923 and is both a farming/pioneer story and a World War I story.

Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery (1923) // I love Anne of Green Gables with a special love, but I’ve never read any of Montgomery’s other works!  I can’t wait to meet Emily.

So Big by Edna Ferber (1924) // Another Pulitzer Prize winner!

The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham (1925) // I’m a little nervous about this one.  After a husband discovers his wife’s adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to the heart of a cholera epidemic.  Will there be forgiveness or redemption?  We’ll see.

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (1927) // One more Cather novel on the list!  This one gets really high praise.

The Children by Edith Wharton (1928) // This one is a comical, bittersweet novel “about the misadventures of a bachelor and a band of precocious children.”

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (1929) // Another book I’m nervous to pick up! Some readers say that it’s incredibly depressing and that it deals with a lot of heavy topics.  Others love it all and call it a masterpiece.

No.571: Last Week at the Farmhouse // Keeping Busy

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I’ve been in my head too much lately and all the worries and stressors and to-do lists and contingency plans have been reeking havoc. I feel like I’ve been walking in a fog…there but not there, distracted. I finally had to put my foot down and firmly say, “Self, it’s time to stop thinking and start doing. We have (pardon my ‘French’) shit to do.” So I did.

+ I found two little packs of water beads left over from years ago and surprised the little boys with them one morning.  They were thrilled!

+ In honor of Saint Therese’s feast day, I made sacrifice beads with my daughter.

+ We’ve officially declared that Wednesday afternoons are for baking.  This week, we made thumbprint cookies (using delicious Four Fruits jam!), English muffin bread and a coffee cake.

+ I just started reading Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad and I stopped in my tracks with this paragraph: “Thanks to the smartphone and the web, you are confronted on a daily basis with more information than any previous generation had to deal with!  And it’s not just information; it’s the suffering of the entire planet, in minute detail, served up on your feed daily.” (emphasis mine, p.4)  This put in words something I have felt, but couldn’t describe.  While it’s important to be aware of the suffering of others around the world, is man supposed to shoulder the burden of everyone all the time?  For me, that burden sometimes feels crushing.

Eldredge provides a solution to this that he calls benevolent detachment: “You’ve got to release the world; you’ve got to release people, crises, trauma, intrigue, all of it.  There has to be sometime in your day where you just let it all go.  All the tragedy of the world, the heartbreak, the latest shooting, earthquake – the soul was never meant to endure this.  The soul was never meant to inhabit a world like this.  It’s way too much.  Your soul is finite.  You cannot carry the sorrows of the world.  Only God can do that.  Only he is infinite.  Somewhere, sometime in your day, you’ve just got to release it.  You’ve got to let it go.” (p.24)  Thought provoking.

+ The entire family has been playing Trouble and it’s pretty intense!  We even made a family leaderboard on the chalkboard and sadly, I’m nowhere near the top, ha!  Hoping to win a few this week.

No.570: Living Intentionally in October

Well, September was a bit of a bust.  Some of us were sick at the beginning of the month and I never seemed to regain my momentum!  We didn’t complete most of the list, but some months are like that.  A few highlights from last month: We celebrated the Nativity of Mary with my daughter’s cookie bars.  We also observed the fall Ember Days.  The boys continued cutting firewood and we got a good start on our property fence.  I tidied up the coat closet and pulled out too small or unneeded coats to sell on ebay.  I also wiped down the light switches and knobs, which was perfect timing after being sick!  My biggest project of the month was finally finishing the painting on the little boys’ headboards.  I slowly started rotating the kids’ clothes as the temperature starts to cool.  Here’s what I’ve got for October:

Eating Seasonally 

Bring on all the cozy, comfort foods!  I am excited to start adding soups and stews to our dinner menu this month.  Also in season in October:

  • apples
  • pumpkins
  • sweet potatoes
  • squash
  • cranberries
Celebrating the Liturgical Year

The month of October is dedicated to the Holy Rosary.  In my Saintmaker Planner, it says, “In 1206, Mary appeared to St. Dominic to praise his fight against the Albigensian heretics and to give him the Rosary as a mighty weapon.”  (My post on how we started saying the Rosary as a family is here.)

  • Therese of the Child Jesus (1)
  • Holy Guardian Angels (2)
  • Our Lady of the Rosary (7)
  • Margaret Mary Alacoque (16)
  • Ignatius (17)
  • Isaac Jogues (19)
  • John Paul II (22)
  • John of Capistrano (23)
Homesteading and Self-Sufficiency 
  • Get our propane tank filled.
  • Prepare for the arrival of a new animal on the homestead!
  • Continue work on the property fence.
  • Invest in alternative light sources (candles, lanterns, flashlights).
Homemaking 
  • Clean out and vacuum the car interior.
  • Organize the garage.
  • Wipe out and organize the refrigerator shelves.
100 Little Things Revisited
  • Make a cookie cake. (100LT #7 from Round Seven)
  • Make my own laundry detergent. (100LT #88 from Round Six)
  • Reread To Kill a Mockingbird. (100LT #9 from Round Two)
Family Fun
  • Celebrate two birthdays!
  • Celebrate some silly holidays:
    • Do Something Nice Day (5)
    • National Dessert Day (14)
    • National Pumpkin Cheesecake Day (21)
    • National Tell a Story Day (27)
    • Frankenstein Friday (29)

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