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February 2013
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Archive for February 2013

Have you ever Made Frosting with Flour?

Posted on February 13, 2013 by Renee Spindle

I realized this week that I have neglected to post any recipes recently. This is probably due to the party planning time, and actual parties in session over the past few weekends. There is a recipe I have been meaning to share with everyone for a while now. My Mom has a time-honored recipe for the best tasting frosting ever.

In our house this recipe is called “The Flour Frosting” recipe, and it goes something like this:

Ingredients:

1 Cup Milk
1/4 Cup Flour
1/2 lb Margarine or Butter, softened
1 Cup Sugar
2 Tsp. Vanilla

Directions

Mix the milk and flour together in a small saucepan on the stove. Cook on medium heat stirring constantly until thickened. Cool this mixture completely in the fridge.
Beat the sugar and margarine together until creamy. This is a critical step, the butter and sugar must be smooth and creamy in order for the frosting texture to be smooth and creamy. There can be nothing grainy going on with the butter and sugar. If this happens the frosting will look separated, and not taste very creamy.
Add the cooled flour mixture to the butter and sugar, along with the vanilla.
Beat until fluffy, and frost your cake!

This frosting is very creamy and extremely delicious, just a little warning. It is not really the variety of frosting that you can do a lot of serious Wilton style decorating with. But you will not be disappointed in the flavor and pure yummyness that this frosting delivers.

These are my brothers’ birthday cakes from his last two birthdays, both covered with flour frosting. This frosting is his favorite and he always requests it for his cakes. It is one of my all time favorites too.

Yesterday I found a recipe similar to my Mom’s on the Tasty Kitchen. This recipe is called, That’s the Best Frosting I’ve Ever Had. This is quite similar to my Mom’s recipe, and goes into some additional detail on the mixing directions.

If you are making your someone special a delicious Valentine’s Day treat, try this recipe out. If you have some cupcakes or a cake to bake this week, try this recipe out. If you have some graham crackers lying around, and some of this frosting leftover you can put them together for a delicious treat. You will not be disappointed. Happy baking everyone.

3 comments Posted in Baking, Family, Food, Recipes

I am the Family CFO.

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Renee Spindle

It’s the beginning of a New Year, and it’s a good time to get the paperwork in order around here. New Year, clean file cabinets, that’s my motto right now. One of my main job titles here at home is Family CFO. I take care of all of the family finances. There is no way I would want my Travel Guy to have this task on his shoulders. He has enough to worry about going from city to city, and staying on task with his job.

Here’s what I have been working on since the New Year started. I have a fairly decent filing system for all of the paperwork. Designated by income info, banking info, auto info, mortgage and house info, utility info, and medical info. These are my major filing groups. I still have a fair amount of papers to file every month, but more and more have gone paperless over the last two years. Since January, I have been going through my files and archiving any papers over a year old. I like to keep the last year’s paperwork in my current files just in case I have to refer back to any numbers. This is especially the case with any medical bills.

All of my bills are paid online through my bank’s bill pay feature. Most of the bills are scheduled to be paid automatically, so they are just set on auto-pilot. I do make a point to go in and review the payments at the beginning of the month, just to be sure everything is in order. This is a handy way to pay the bills, and allows me to have the bills and the receipts for the payments right at my fingertips on the banking bill pay site.

One other tool that I like to use for organizing the paperwork is Microsoft One Note. You can print any bills or receipts that you want to organize directly to One Note. In One Note you are able to create notebooks, and then organize the “paperwork” in each of the notebooks for any future reference. For example, you can have a notebook for medical receipts, major purchases, paid receipts for any bills that you want to get your hands on quickly. It’s a great tool, and similar to Evernote.

One last item that takes time in the finance part of my world is keeping Travel Man all put together with his expenses. Once a month or more, depending on the current travel frequency, I go through and audit his expense reports against our credit card statement. Some months when the trips are back to back it becomes important to be sure we are getting reimbursed for all the travel expenses owed back from the company. This is a quick task for me to take care of to be sure there is nothing missed. Of course coming from a bookkeeping background does help a little in this department too.

Oh, and I do have to mention that Travel Man and I do discuss our finances on a regular basis. The finance meetings happen most often via email or a Skype call. But we stay on track together, and try not to have any big hiccups. Like I have said before, it’s a bit of a crazy existence, but right now it’s what works for us.