Grandma's Brown Sugar Crunch Cake

I am home in Michigan for the week, helping my parents with their beach-cafe. It also happens to be my Grandma's 87th birthday this week, so to celebrate, we are taking her out for dinner tonight. My grandma loves desserts (it must be a genetic thing) and so I made one of her favorite cakes, the brown sugar crunch cake. It is pretty basic, pretty bad for you, but so worth the indulgence.

I have topped this cake with many types of frosting, but this one is a rum-almond glaze.
Again, I-Phone photos. I regretfully left my camera in Chicago.

Brown Sugar Crunch Cake with an Almond-Rum Glaze

Baking the cakes

The Brown Sugar Crunch layer

Finished!

 Brown Sugar Crunch Cake
1 1/2 Cups Cookie Crumbs (vanilla wafers, graham crackers, anything)
1 1/2 Cups Chopped Nuts
1 Cup Butter
1 Cup packed brown sugar
1 Box Vanilla Cake Mix
1/3 Cup oil
3 eggs
1 1/4 Cup Water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Grease 3 round cake pans.
Melt the butter, and add the cookie crumbs, nuts, brown sugar, and mix well. Distribute evenly into the greased cake pans, pressing the mixture down to fully coat the bottom of the pan.
In a separate bowl, mix the eggs, oil, water, and cake mix and blend for about 2 minutes.
Pour evenly over the brown sugar mixture in the 3 pans. Bake at 350 for about 22 minutes, or until golden and set. Remove from the oven, and let them cool for about 5 minutes.
Flip the cakes onto parchment paper, scraping any brown sugar residue and spreading it on the cake.
Let the cakes cool completely and then frost and assemble them.

Almond-Rum Glaze
3 Cups Powdered Sugar
4 Tablespoons Cream Cheese
2 Tablespoons Butter
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon rum extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Mix all ingredients well, and add milk until glaze is desired consistency. Put a bit of glaze between layers, and the majority of the glaze on top of the cake.

cinnamon swirl french toast.

It is the middle of June, and I have not posted in way too long.
It has been a chaotic summer so far.
In the past four weeks, I have done a wedding in San Francisco, then a wedding in Lake Geneva, WI, then a wedding in LA. In addition, I road tripped across the country with my business partner to move her to Chicago. I also packed up my entire life from the past two years and moved into a new apartment in the city. Amidst the packing, unpacking, painting, decorating, weddings galore, not to mention the relational hellos and good-byes from all these places, cooking has unfortunately taken the back burner.

Cinnamon Swirl French Toast

This morning however, I was forced to slow down with a very-welcomed breakfast with Connor. We made cinnamon swirl french toast, which requires very little work, but creates great results.
We topped ours with bananas. And REAL maple syrup. Yum.

Oh, and sorry about the photos. The IPhone was all I had with me!

Cinnamon Swirl French Toast
4 Slices Cinnamon Bread (Ours was from Great Harvest Bread Company)
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon butter
1 sliced banana
Real maple syrup

Whisk eggs, milk and cinnamon together in a bowl. Dip four slices of bread in mixture. I always let each piece soak for about 30 seconds.
Heat a skillet, and add butter til melted.
Add each piece of bread, and cook about 2 minutes on each side, or until golden brown.
Serve with sliced bananas and syrup.