Alaskan Food Stuff

So being a food focused blog, I decided to make a specific post for food related things which I experienced in Alaska. The first photoset is just some random food which I ate:


This next photoset is restaurant-y stuff from Alaska:




This final set is an actual recipe! It uses a...wait for it, wait for it...Rachael Ray recipe! I find her TV personality extremely irritating but don't mind her all that much because I think she does encourage and draw people into the kitchen who wouldn't otherwise attempt to cook. Anyhow, my mom is a cherry freak and she wanted cherry cake.



INGREDIENTS:

4.5 cups flour (Weight measurements would be nice.)
1.5 cups firmly packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter, melted
1 large egg
.5 cup buttermilk
.5 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
two 10-ounce bags frozen cherries, thawed and drained (I see no reason why you can't use other types of frozen fruit.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Grease a 9x13 inch baking dish. In a bowl, combine 3 cups flour, the brown sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Mix in all but 2 tablespoons of butter until large crumbs form; set aside. In a small bowl, whisk together the remaining 2 tablespoons butter, the egg and the buttermilk.

In another bowl, stir together the remaining 1.5 cups of flour, the granulated sugar, baking powder and the remaining .5 teaspoon salt. Add the egg mixture and stir to form a thick, smooth batter. (This is where I ran into trouble. The egg mixture was totally insufficient to produce a smooth batter. I ended with a sticky mess so I kept adding buttermilk until a batter texture formed...I think I ended up quadrupling the initial quantity of buttermilk.)
Fold about a third of the reserved crumb mixture into the batter; spread evenly into the prepared baking dish.

Scatter the cherries over the batter; sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture on top. Bake the cake until golden brown, 35 to 40 minutes (Mine took closer to 1.25 hours..the home oven runs cold, I guess. And I used the toothpick to see of the cake was done...stick a toothpick into the cake...if the toothpick comes out clean, it's done.). Transfer to a rack to cool for about 20 minutes before serving.

A very, very solid cake. It was actually really tasty. Maybe a tad bit overly sweet and buttery but it was very well received by my mom and dad.

Time- about 1.5 hours...most of it baking time.
Cost-I dunno...my dad paid for the ingredients