Homemade Clementine Cake

A few months ago Tabari and I saw the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and we both loved the movie and were intrigued by the cake mentioned in the movie a few times. We recently watched the movie again as a family and this time around Tabari made me promise to make the cake. So began my search to find the recipe for the Clementine Cake from the movie. The things we do for our kids, lol. The original recipe is from Nigella Lawson found on the Food Network.

One of things I found so intriguing about this cake is it using the entire Clementine, skin in all! Also instead of using regular flour, you use crushed almonds! Yup another exclamation point is needed for the the above sentence. I took the following pictures on my cell phone, so please forgive the the graininess. 

The recipe from Smitten Kitchen suggests using  5-6 clementines, but my clementines were on the small side and I ended up using 9 clementines. 

The following recipe is adapted from Nigella Lawson.

Homemade Clementine Cake

8-9 small Clementines

6 large eggs 

1 1/4 cups of Sugar

2 13 cups of Almond Flour (I bought Almond flour from Trader Joes)

1 teaspoon of baking powder. 

Place the clementines in a medium size bowl and fill with water, bring the clementines to a boil cover and cook for two hours. Once the clementines are done cooking, let them cool and then slice the clementines in pieces. Next utter the sides of the pan and line a 9 inch spring form pan with parchment paper and turn the oven on to 375 degrees. 

Place the clementines in a food processor or blender and mix until smooth. 

Next blend together the eggs and sugar once blended well add in the almond flour and baking powder. Pour batter into the spring form pan. Check on cake at 30 mins and bake until knife comes out clean. I baked my Clementine Cake for 40 mins. Allow cake to completely cool before removing the cake from the spring form pan. 

I made vanilla butter cream frosting for the cake, but you can easily make a glaze or serve it plain. I liked that the butter cream added a bit of sweetness to the cake. 

The cake tuned out amazing and super moist. It tastes like a light citrus cake and so flavorful. My family loved the cake, it didn't last long in my house! Avery even asked for 'more please' after he had his fist slice lol. Even though boiling the clementines was time consuming, I'll be making this cake again very soon. I think this cake is perfect for a brunch, since its so light yet very filing.  

DIY A Frame Plant Stand

Lately it feels like Spring weekends around our house are projects weekends for our backyard and I'm loving it! Our backyard has undergone a huge transformation and were so looking forward to enjoying it. Soon we'll be adding patio furniture to patio and be able to fully enjoy outdoor living, which is one of my goals to use every inch of our backyard in a purposeful way. Our plan is to have our backyard feel like and extension of our home giving our small home extra living space and since I love having plants indoors I also wanted to have them on our patio displaced in a pretty way. While browsing online for outdoor planter ideas, I saw an A Frame Plant stand from Gardener's Supply Company that looked was both functional and such a pretty way to display plants. The plant stand is $89.95 online and rather than buy it, I thought we should make it! Here's the inspiration. 

I found plans online to build the exact A Frame Plant stand from The Design Confidential. I showed Hasani my ideas and he was on board! On Friday night we stopped in Lowes and picked our supplies. We decided to use Select Pine for the project which was a lot nicer and a little more than using the regular pine. In addition to buying our wood and screws etc. we bought a new tool for the project a Kreg Jig R3 Jr & clamp I've seen many bloggers use a Kreg Jig for various projects and after using it once this project, I can't wait to use on the next one! So even thought it added cost for this project it was totally worth buying. 

The plans for the plant stand was relatively easy, I do wish the pictures on the plans that included measurements was much larger, I found it hard to read. We were amazed how easy creating the pocket holes made joining the pieces of wood together. Another one of my goals this year is to get confidant with using power tools beyond a drill, so far this year I have! Thanks to our recent DIY Counter top project and building our DIY Raised Garden bed, I now feel confident using a miter saw. Measure twice cut once right?  After building the frame, we made the cuts on the 1x3 for the boards to sit on the shelves.

Here's our A Frame Planter before getting stained, oh the pic is crooked not the plant stand! For the stain color we wanted the planter to look grey washed, like we've had it forever.

Here's our finished DIY A Frame Plant Stand. This weekend we'll be buying plants to fill up the shelves. In the meantime I couldn't resist not putting a plant on it, so I grabbed a plant from my bedroom and put it on our plant stand. 

For this project I used the new stains from Rustoleum in Weathered Grey. I applied the stain with a cloth, the grey is almost like paint, but dries light than it goes on, but it almost felt too grey. I decided to lightly go over the Weather Grey with Dark Walnut, which helped tone down its grey shade. 

I also plopped some empty planters on the plant stand, and loved how it looked. 

I loved the look on the galvanized shelves filled with pea gravel from Gardener's Supply Company and decided to order them. I think they'll helping with the drainage from plants. So looking forward to filling our new tiered plant stand up with various plants. Once its updated, I'll share pictures of everything in place. 

What do you think our our new plant stand? Do you have any plans to make something for your patio this Spring?