Recipe Thursday: Blueberry Muffin Coffee Cake with Lemon-Almond Glaze

Growing up, my dad always made the Duncan Hines blueberry muffins from the box — yum!! A few years ago I found a copycat recipe, which we have loved (see the end of the post)! I usually make six big muffins from the recipe instead of 18-24 smaller ones, so I feel like I’m at a breakfast restaurant! 🙂

Then, recently, I needed to make a dessert for a school function, and I didn’t have any butter. I remembered that the blueberry muffin recipe uses oil instead. I found another recipe for blueberry cake, adjusted the lemon glaze for using bottled instead of fresh lemon juice, and here we go! This is a yummy group-friendly alternative to the already-delicious blueberry muffins!

Enjoy!

Blueberry Muffin Breakfast Cake with Lemon Glaze

Cake: Glaze:

3 cups all-purpose flour 2 cups powdered sugar

1 ½ cups white sugar 2 TBSP lemon juice

1 tsp salt 2 tsp vanilla

4 tsp baking powder ½ tsp almond essence

2/3 cup vegetable oil 1 tsp honey

2 eggs

2/3 cup milk

2 cups sour cream

2 cups blueberries (frozen)

For the cake:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a 9” by 13” baking pan or a 9” by 9” square baking pan with butter and parchment paper. The rectangle pan will make a thinner cake, while the square pan will make a thicker cake. Use the rectangle if you’re making for a large group and want more pieces!
Mix the dry ingredients.
Put 2/3 cup of oil in a 2-cup measuring cup. Add two eggs, then fill the cup with milk until it reaches the whole mixture reaches the 2 cup mark. Whisk.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients.
Add two cups of sour cream to the mixture, mixing well. (You can make your own sour cream if needed by adding two tablespoons of vinegar to two cups of heavy whipping cream. The heavy whipping cream should be chilled. Allow this combination to stand for a few minutes, then mix gently with a fork until the cream stirs up into a sour cream consistency.)
Add two cups of blueberries to the mixture, stirring to just combine.
Pour thick batter into the prepared baking dish, using a rubber spatula to scoop all the batter.
Bake in the pre-heated oven for 55 minutes.

For the glaze:

Combine all ingredients and stir until a smooth, thick mixture forms. You may adjust any ingredient for desired taste and consistency. Pour on cake before cooling, once you remove the cake from the oven. The glaze will harden as the cake cools.
Serve when slightly cooled or after chilled in the fridge, according to your preference! I like it cold, personally!

Thanks to the following two recipes for their inspiration of this combination recipe!

Blueberry muffins

Blueberry cake with lemon glaze

Lemon Blueberry Coffee Cake

An Interview about our work in Madagascar

We sat down with Danny Myers, missions pastor at Southbridge Fellowship Church in Raleigh, NC, back in January. Here’s our conversation where we talk about some of what we’ve learned working in Madagascar. Thanks again to folks like Danny and to Southbridge for all their support to us and others in Madagascar over the years.

The Famine in Madagascar

For those who haven’t yet seen it, David Muir from ABC did a special on the famine in Madagascar. We can personally attest from our own experience the situation in Southern Madagascar has worsened throughout the last ten years. To hear it from the locals, rains were more frequent, dried-up rivers still running, and fields much more productive 20 to 30 years ago. Something has changed. What ABC captured is not just “political.” It also isn’t recent. Obviously it’s getting publicity because of the recent UN summit, but because this situation has been building for a while, the solution will also not be solved by bandaid aide or ideas.

In 2018, we had two days of rain in the South. Two days! Crops have failed year after year when the Malagasy plant their fields after the first rain only for them to burn up in the withering sun with no follow-up rains. COVID-19 just made things worse. The villages we know in the South had already come to depend on the supplemental food handed out by World Food Program, USAid, Red Cross, and many others working in Southern Madagascar. But as soon as COVID-19 hit, those Non-Profits pulled out. Only one or two returned. So, at the same time COVID-19 lockdowns restricted access to shipped-in food, the organizations who have been handing it out haven’t been handing out as much, leaving many, many villages to flounder.

Most people are surviving off of cactus leaves and fruit, like this.

We are not in any way experts in weather or climate change. From what we’ve seen, this is absolutely driven by deforestation and sudden weather changes in the past 10 years. The foreign food aide has helped, but it misses the need for water that only massive infrastructure development could help offset. Unfortunately, the reality of this drastic situation is that any solution will only be a drop in the bucket.

People are suffering and dying in Southern Madagascar, and no matter which way you slice it, we have a responsibility as humans, first, and especially as Christians, to do something about it.

Please pray for the Malagasy, especially the Mahafaly and Tandroy tribes that are most heavily affected by the drought and famine. Learn more about what caused this famine and how to help. Pray for the efforts of local, Malagasy churches who are working to get food to their churches in the middle of all this (one trip is scheduled for next week). And let’s ask God what our drop in the bucket should be.

New LMCO Video

Since Christmas will be here before you know it, we have our yearly Lottie Moon update:

The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (LMCO) is the yearly offering that Southern Baptist churches take up every year to support thousands of IMB missionaries (like us).

Thank you to all of you who support us and others like us!

Connecting to churches in America

Our new prayer card photo, complete with new baby, Tyndale Baker.

We’re here in the good ole U.S. of A and connecting with churches throughout the Southeast. Last week we were glad to be able to share what God is doing in Madagascar with First Baptist Fernandina. They asked us some questions about the work in an interview format, our first experience doing that and very cool.

Let us know if you’re interested in having us come visit your church and hear what God is doing in Madagascar! Our calendar is pretty full for the time being. We’re trying to get back to Mada sometime after the New Year, Lord willing and all the processes go smoothly. But feel free to let us know and we can start planning now for the next time we’re on this side of the world.

Friday Family Update – #alwayslate :)

February is off to a great start! We’re still in the midst of hot season here, so trying to beat the heat and continuing to pray for rain for our area.

We’ve started a two-week training this week, welcoming leaders from across the southwest. Pray for this group as they learn and grow and serve!

Chyella is still loving school and loving on her friends there! We’re also enjoying a new children’s book in French each month through a subscription service the school runs. And, Jairus is walking!!! He’s super proud of himself as he wanders around the house! 🙂

Nathan and I are enjoying taking a class this month by Be the Bridge for white people wanting to learn about racial unity work. We’re learning a lot!

We just sent out our monthly update, so email me if you’d like to receive it. I’m attaching it here as well.

bakers-in-madagasacar-january Download

Resource Spotlight: Black History Month

Chyella is still loving her French preschool! And we love it too–we love that she can make friends with children from many different places, and that she can learn a new language too! We also really enjoy doing “worksheeps” together at home on off-days, so this month we’re supplementing with some Black history month resources! If you have ideas or resources, please share as well!

Here are some fun animated Black History Stories as videos for preschool age. They’re from Goose Goose Duck YouTube channel, and it seems they have lots of fun videos I want to check out!

I was also able to download free printable coloring pages highlighting famous African-Americans on ScribbleFun. Looking forward to learning with Chyella many of these historical Americans’ stories this month! There are many other great resources–here’s a link to lots of ideas–but most of these are for older kids than preschool.

Our organization has also created an app to share new initiatives and current stories of what God is doing around the world. This app has been promoted through many of our SBC churches–feel free to download it here. A few months ago, our organization partnered with Barna Research Group to do a study on the Future of Missions. Barna and others then shared much of what was learned through the app. This month, starting February 7th, our organization is highlighting many stories of African-American missionaries who have served around the world and throughout history, including some children’s resources! Check out these stories through the app!

We’re so grateful for these initiatives and look forward to learning a lot this month–both with Chyella and ourselves as adults! At the same time, as a couple, we have also learned a lot this past year about the racism in our history in the SBC, and, honestly, in our own hearts. We absolutely want to celebrate the contributions of African-Americans to our denomination and organization, and any progress we are making toward greater racial equity. But we also want to acknowledge that we still have a long way to go. This Christianity Today article talks about the low numbers of African-American and other minorities serving as missionaries with our organization, compared to the numbers of those minorities in our Southern Baptist churches. This IMB.org article discusses why it matters–the great loss to our organization and its impact around the world without more minority voices and leaders.

For our awareness and learning in this area, two books have also been very helpful in the last year: Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise, and this collection of Southern Baptist pastors and professors writing specifically about the SBC’s history, Removing the Stain of Racism from the Southern Baptist Convention.

We have a lot to learn!

Recipe Thursdays: Homemade Tortillas

Let’s start off the year of recipes with one of our family favorites: homemade tortillas!!

When I was in college (and arrived in Madagascar), I could make a very limited repertoire of meals. Noodles with red sauce (from a jar), scrambled eggs, grilled cheese . . . honestly that was about it.

Thankfully, some sweet American ladies living in Madagascar started teaching me how to cook. One was Kristi, and this is her tortilla recipe.

Homemade Tortillas

all-purpose flour – 2 cups

oil – ¼ cup

salt – 1 tsp

warm water – 2/3 cup (as needed)

Mix flour, salt, and oil in a large bowl with a fork. Add water slowly, stirring with a fork, then with one hand. Water should be warm—not hot or cold. When the dough is ready, it will pull together away from the sides into a ball. Be careful not to add too much water. Do not overmix.

Once dough is in one ball, divide into smaller, golf-ball-sized balls. Begin heating a non-stick pan on the stove. Roll out each ball (or use a tortilla press!). Cook tortillas one by one in the hot pan, flipping, until small brown spots appear on each side. Tortillas are especially good / ready / right if they blow up with big bubbles. Serve warm.

This quickly became one of my weekly staples. When Nathan and I got married after we moved back to the USA, I tried to switch to store-bought tortillas. Nathan came home from work one night, and I had fixed tacos and heated tortillas from the grocery store. When he saw them, Nathan’s face fell. He asked me, “You just didn’t have time to make the homemade ones?” I explained that the ones from the store are a lot easier. “But I’m sure it’s cheaper to make them yourself,” he suggested.

I laughed–“Not really! This pack of 30 is about three dollars!” But Nathan was just so sad about it–and let’s face it, the homemade ones are delicious!–so I always made our own after that 😉 And then my sister-in-law blessed me with an electric tortilla press . . . definitely made the process faster and cleaner!

Enjoy this recipe y’all! Fix ground beef or chicken with your favorite spices, chop up some fresh veggies for salsa and guacamole, grate some cheese, and put out a large container of sour cream . . . yum! Have fun!

Friday Family Update (a little late, as usual ;)

Tessa here, with a quick monthly family update. At the bottom is our downloadable monthly update I sent out January 1–please let me know if you’d like to receive that by email! Let us know ways we can be praying for you!

We’re praying for our home country in this time of upheaval and uncertainty. As American Christians and especially as American missionaries, we know we personally have much to learn and repent of. We’re praying all who are believers are looking to Jesus to guide us in love and repentance as well. We’re realizing–though we should know this, but maybe haven’t lived it out–that repentance is really a daily part of the life of the Christian.

For us personally, over the last year the uncertainty of COVID, the murders of George Floyd and others, the subsequent protests over the summer, and the protest at the Capitol this week, have been very eye-opening to sin alive and well in our own hearts. It’s at that point–the clear look at our sin–that we most need Jesus to transform us. Praying we look to Him–not within ourselves for justification or hope or help–so He can make us more like Him. We’re always open to talking if anyone wants to share or ask us anything or for prayer.

We’re all doing well as a family. The kids are loving having each other to play with, and Chyella is definitely still a huge fan of French school. She’s learning a lot of French–still not speaking a ton, but growing! Jairus is crawling at record speed and still cruising . . . we know that walking milestone is right around the corner!

We celebrated our seventh marriage anniversary in December, along with Jairus’ first birthday! We also loved celebrating Christmas and New Years’ at our local Toliara church. Online visits with family are always a huge lift during the holidays–we know many of you may have celebrated with family that way too this year! We also enjoyed some beach time to celebrate the holiday season!

We as a couple have both enjoyed some focused reading and writing time, and also are thankful for some time this month to think through goals with the local believers here. We feel a little silly setting annual goals when last year turned all of everyone’s plans on their heads! Still, the time to hear the local leaders’ priorities and pray about how we can help is very encouraging to us.

We think we’re about halfway through hot season right now, so hanging in there. We’re also praying hard for rain for the south of Madagascar, as the people here need it for a harvest. Please join us in praying for this big need!

Love you all!

december-family-update Download

Recipe Thursdays: Christmas Morning Cinnamon Rolls

Christmas morning is fast approaching!!

I’ve posted this recipe before, but in honor of Christmas I’ve got to post it again! Cinnamon rolls are a critical part of my Christmas morning memories and tradition. I searched for several years of Nathan’s and my marriage for the perfect cinnamon roll recipe for us to use overseas, from scratch (I grew up on the pop-can ones!).

But, I’ve always been so intimidated by trying to use yeast! When I read in this recipe that the author also found yeast intimidating, I knew it was at least worth a try. And it worked!! Now I’m a loyal fan!