Patriotic Pineapple Upside Down Flag Cake!

Our "Pineapple Upside-Down Cake" is all dressed up for July 4th!!

This flag cake is the cutest!! It doesn't get much sweeter.

This easy...and I do mean EASY...dessdert will have you ready for Independence Day in a flash!

Be sure to have a platter or large cutting board (9x13 or larger) available for inverting the cake...even a sturdy piece of aluminum foil-covered cardboard or a foil-covered baking sheet would work in a pinch.  This pineapple upside-down flag cake is inverted after baking to reveal a gorgeous and very delicious dessert!

Below I share my recipe for an easy scratch cake...if you want to use a boxed cake mix... you can, just be sure to adjust the baking time ... a well-baked cake will spring back when lightly touched and a toothpick will come out cleanly from the center.

Happy first day of summer!

I hope you'll enjoy this patriotic cake as much as we do!!

Get the recipe:

Lemon Blueberry Pound Cake

Hello friends!!

This is a great little pound cake...loaded with lots of lemon flavor and bursting with blueberries!

I hope you'll give it a try... be sure to note that the bake time is 1 hour and 20-30 minutes total.  This cakes bakes in a cooler 325 degree oven on the middle rack.

Get the recipe:

Fried Chicken Sandwich and Coleslaw

Growing up,

the summer months were always accompanied 

by a few steadfast activities that made summer feel complete…  

If the following few summertime events did not take place,

could we really be sure summer came and went??

1.  Riding our bicycles to and from the city pool with our towels draped around our necks…for what would be an almost daily ritual of sun-soaked afternoons and lots of swimming…. So much swimming.  

2.  Fourth of July with tall stacks of chocolate-iced brownies, grilled hot-dogs, fun with family friends and the evening would not be complete without our parents putting on death-defying homemade fireworks shows… the hose was always nearby.

3. Festivals… in Cincinnati, you are never further than a few blocks in any direction from a Catholic Church  -- every Parrish had a festival…  We were sure to spend a few summer evenings pulling tabs on “bars and bells” cards and playing .25 cent festival games… loading our pockets with tiny whistles, bubbles and penny candy… all in a good night's work of festival gaming...

4. Family picnics in the park…Our family would load up into the car...and we would get a bucket of chicken and a few sides from our favorite local chicken restaurant. We would take our fried chicken and picnic in the park…My brother and I would always gobble up our meal, so we would have plenty of time to run off to play on the swings, or to throw pebbles into the water…  always a special meal...eating in the woods made the food tastier... and somehow more summery.

All my life… my chicken…if it was fried… it came from the store. These chicken restaurants… aren’t these the establishments where the folks have the special secret recipe… right??

I truly never fried chicken at home…I just grew up ordering our fried chicken out…so it just never happened…

Trust me, we had every other kind of chicken dish under the sun...grilled, baked...casseroles... we just never fried it...

Then fast-forward to a year or so ago—and the "chicken sandwich wars" arrived… and our family played along… We sampled them all…I mean, it’s a hard job and we were certainly up to the task…(I do have a personal winner--btw)

After all the chicken sandwich samplings were behind us…  I decided, I would attempt to make my own version of the a fried chicken sandwich…how hard could it be??

Here’s my version of a  “winning” recipe…. She has never won a blue ribbon (yet)…but she’s a first-class chicken sandwich and you don’t have to look very much further than you own pantry to find one.