My sister can be a bit of a riddle. She is an academic and is truly smarter than me but sometimes the movies that she watches surprise me. She loves the Marvel franchise and, apparently, rom coms. When I was visiting her recently last month, we watched I Don’t Know How She Does It one lazy afternoon. There were some food references in the film so I took some mental notes. Plus, I love Sarah Jessica Parker and I’m a huge Sex and the City fan. The cut-away narration by different characters is a bit reminiscent of that old series.

Here’s the premise—“all the trouble started with a bake sale….”

Here’s the food I spotted in the film:

• Cherry pie (premade but smashed and then dusted with powdered sugar)
• Chips Ahoy cookies
• Bagels (instead of kegels)
• Pancakes
• Un-set Jello
• Homemade desserts like cookies and a glazed cake
• Birthday cake (with store bought but made with organic flour)
• Pinata candy
• Birthday party food–veggies, mini pizzas (maybe?), chips, etc.
• Steak dinner with martinis
• Popcorn and wine (while watching His Girl Friday)
• Huge French fry
• Beers at the bowling alley
• Microwave fresh mac ‘n cheese with wine
• Entire Thanksgiving spread 

What I thought…

I was annoyed with the whole working mother comments (especially from a certain mother-in-law) but I think the writers were careful about making the distinction that she’s a mother who has to travel for work. While Kate is a professional woman, she is also depicted as someone who is molded to automatically say “Thank you” and “I’m sorry” all the time.

Christina Hendricks’ character, Allison, looked amazing. I thought she looked better than her Mad Men days.

Greg Kinnear is so cute but his character is annoying. Can he not pull his weight (and make a list)? Can he not be happy that his wife just got a big project too (and honestly probably makes more money than he does)? Sometimes he was as bad as the DOA (designated Office Asshole played by Seth Meyers.)

Jane Curtain snarkily plays the mother-in-law. She’s eager to point out Kate’s flaws. She actually says, “Everybody knew their place….” meaning women used to stay at home and then lays a guilt trip down: “If you had stayed home with Ben, would he be talking now?”

Ironically, this film is set in Boston, too, like last month’s Leap Year.

I thought the film was cute and funny. Ultimately, though, I thought that Kate should have taught her daughter the lesson that women work but they can still love their kids and bake sales really don’t matter.

What to make….

I wanted to do something on the bake sale theme.

If you’ve followed EE long, you know I used to be obsessed with cooking contests. I would spend whole weekends trolling contest sites and dreaming up recipes. I distinctly remember a Made In Oklahoma (MIO) contest where I literally took a premade pie (which was made in Oklahoma, of course), put it in a mixer with some MIO ice cream and served that up some way. Caramel may have been involved, too. Obviously, I didn’t win that contest with this mixed-up mess. I tried to find that recipe but I honestly think it might have been pre-blog days. It was definitely before Google Docs and Sheets so if I did record it, it’s on some forgotten hard drive somewhere. How would one get this dish to a bake sale, though? Probably about as good as getting un-set Jello to one.

Keeping with the bake sale theme, I googled “best treats to take to a bake sale” and found some interesting recipes. I was surprised how many were savory. I totally revamped the Strawberry Pound Cake recipe. The original used jam as well and had a glaze. I decided to streamline it a bit and make mini-cakes (cupcake or muffin sized) for better saleability .

Lemon-Strawberry Mini-Pound Cakes

Based on Strawberry Pound Cake

Ingredients

• 1 oz. freeze dried strawberries
• 3/4 c. butter, melted, room temperature
• 1 c. granulated sugar
• 1/3 c. packed light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs, room temperature
• 3/4 c. sour cream, room temperature
• 2 t. pure vanilla extract
• 2 t.  fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 t. . baking powder
• 1/4 c. confectioners’ sugar, sifted (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat to 350°. Spray muffin tin (regular sized, 12 muffin-size)  with cooking spray. 
2. In a blender, food processor, or spice mill, process strawberries to a fine powder. 
3. Melt butter and set aside to cool a bit.
4. In a large bowl of a stand mixer, cream the sugars and the powdered strawberries with the cooled melted butter and mix  until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing to blend after each addition. Add sour cream, vanilla extract, and lemon juice and mix to combine. Add flour and baking powder and mix just until smooth, being sure to not overmix.
5. Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin tin.
6. Bake mini-cakes for 20-30 minutes. Remove from oven. Let cool 15 minutes, then remove mini-cakes from the muffin tins. Let cool completely.
7. Sprinkle with confectioner’s sugar if desired.

Yield: 12 servings

I would add even more strawberry powder next time.

These are a dense cake so they are great for freezing so you won’t miss another bake sale ever.

I am late in posting this for the April Movies & Munchies but since I am hosting, I made an exception. I’m also using this post as the round-up. Besides, it was just Wendy and me. 🙂

Wendy (A Day in the Life on the Farm) took inspiration from the scene when Kate and Jack are sharing a meal and Kate refers to her family, joking about a huge potato wedge/fry. Wendy stated she bought the biggest Russet she could find. It was so big it fed three in her family.

Thanks for playing, Wendy.

If you would like to participate in the May film, Wendy is hosting the recently released Remarkably Bright Creatures.