Friday's Favorite...it's a dump

*Updated to add: I originally had this written for last week but opted to post something else that was on my heart. Hope you enjoy it one week later.




Hey there!

Did I get your attention with the title for today? Let me do a little explaining. Oh yeah, in case you are new to Friday's Favorites you can read all about it here.

This week's favorite is a recipe for a dump cake. Why, one might ask, would you post a recipe for a dump cake as a favorite?

One simple answer...it saved me this week. Not saved me as in I was dying, but came to my rescue in a time of need.

Let me backtrack a bit. Friday is the end of the first 6 weeks at my kid's school. One of the kindergarten room mothers thought it would be a great thing to do some kind of teacher appreciation event for all the teachers in the school. (thankfully it's not a huge school) It was decided that the Pre-K and Kindergarten wing of the school would provide for a teacher appreciation dessert on Friday. Since I am room mom for my daughter's kindergarten class, the responsibility to find eager parents who wouldn't mind adding one more thing to their already busy plate, fell on me. I sent out an email talking about the dessert and how our class was asked to provide two fruit desserts and paper plates.

You all know where I am going to go with this one. Within minutes I got a response back from a parent wanting to bring the paper plates. I knew it was coming. Who has not been on the other side where a sign up sheet is going around and you think to yourself, "Man, I hope there's something easy I can sign up for like paper products!"? After the sign up for paper plates I had no takers on the fruit desserts. I resigned myself to the fact that I would bring in a dessert. So I sent out a second email later in the week asking for a fruit bowl. I thought that maybe someone would rather run into the HEB grocery and pick up a pre-made fruit bowl instead of whipping up a fruit dessert and that I might get someone's attention.

I was wrong. As I am writing this, I still have no takers which more than likely means I will run to the grocery and pick up one of those convenient pre-made fruit bowls I promoted earlier.

Just to keep things really interesting, I have had a sick child for the past few days which has confined me to the house and left me with a child who fluctuates between being clingy and wanting to play CandyLand after the medicine he's taking kicks in and he feels good.

So, earlier in the week when it became apparent that I would be making a fruit dessert, but before I had a sick child, I had the clever idea of doing a fruit pizza. Sounds good, right? In theory, yes, but with a sick child, a husband working long hours at the hospital and being stuck at home without any of the ingredients and no time to slice a bunch of fruit for a pizza, let's just say, "It's not going to happen!" Plan B then...a dump cake. It fits all the categories I need...it contains fruit, it's easy and I can take sick child to the grocery and buy the ingredients in no time flat.

However, before I went out and bought the ingredients to make a dump cake I needed to check with my good friend, Yvonne, who is the room mom for her daughter's kindergarten class at our school. See, Yvonne's class was assigned to bring a cake for the dessert and I figured since great minds like ours think alike, I should probably check in with her and make sure she wasn't planning on bringing the same thing. Plus, I wanted to get a little go ahead for coming up with such a brilliantly easy solution to the dessert dilemma. After talking to her and finding out that she also had taken creative liberties with her "cake" assignment , deciding to instead bring a cinnamon struessel bread, I got the thumbs up and "dump away" from her.

That, in a nutshell, is why today's Friday's Favorite is a dump cake. It has 4 ingredients, one of which is 2 sticks of butter and I figure what says "Teachers we love and appreciate you and are not trying to clog your arteries and cause you to have a heart attack" like a cake with two sticks of butter.

There you have it, Dump Cake. Here's the very easy recipe.
Enjoy.

Dump Cake:
1 20oz. can of crushed pineapple (do not drain)
1 21oz. can of prepared more fruit cherry-pie filling
1 box of yellow cake mix
2 sticks of butter

1. Dump the fruit in a bowl and stir.
2. Pour into a greased 9x13 pan.
3. Sprinkle the cake mix over the fruit
4. Melt the two sticks of butter.
5. Drizzle butter over the cake mix.
6. Bake at 350 for 45 min. to an hour (May take more or less depending on your oven)


Take care,
Julie