Kristina Knight's Moonlight Match Recipe!

I'm really happy to welcome my friend Kristina Knight to Journeys with Jana. Kristi and I are blog sisters over at Word Wranglers (http://wordwranglers.blogspot.com) She's part of a new series called Resort to Romance. Her novella, MOONLIGHT MATCH, releases today. Yay!  Take it away, Kristi!

Hi, readers! I love to bake – even more than I love to cook. Baking fills our home with delicious smells, and the prep time is always filled with the anticipation of how things will taste once they’re all together. Cakes, brownies, pies, cookies. I’ve tried almost everything.

For my new book, Moonlight Match, I wanted to try something different – at least for me! So I scoured recipe books and watched a LOT of The Great British Bake-Off. And then I saw a meme on Facebook that reminded me of a cake I couldn’t get enough of the one time my mom made it. It was soon after a visit to my great-grandmother in North Carolina. It's served at a lot of hog roasts in the south (which a lot of Southerners call 'pig pickins'). The cake was sweet and fluffy and light and one piece was just not enough. That’s when I knew the kind of cake Aster and Ethan would bake for the cake decorating contest on Joy Island. Of course, being a baker, Aster had to start from scratch. Here’s the recipe:

Pig Pickin' Cake

Cake Ingredients:

½ cup butter
1 ½ cups sugar
2 eggs
1 ½ tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
2 ¼ tsp baking powder
A pinch of salt
1 ½ cups 2% milk
11 oz can of mandarin oranges, drained and chopped

Whipped Topping Ingredients:

1 pkg Vanilla Instant pudding
12 oz can of crushed pineapple, mostly drained
9 oz Cool Whip

Whipped topping directions:

In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the vanilla pudding and crushed pineapple. When well blended, add in the Cool Whip, stirring until mixed well.

Baking Directions:

Preheat oven to 325. Mix butter and sugar until fluffy, then add eggs and vanilla. Next, add in the flour a spoonful at a time until it’s mixed in. Add in the baking powder, then the milk and then the Mandarin oranges. Once mixed together, pour batter into three round cake pans and bake for 25 minutes. Remove from oven and then remove from the cake pans and place the cakes on a wire rack to cool. Once cooled, place the first round cake on a cake server and frost. Lay the next round cake, frost and repeat. Once all three layers are together, frost around the outside. Serve. Remember to store the leftovers in the refrigerator.

My family recipe uses a boxed yellow cake mix rather than the from-scratch white cake that Aster baked in the book, and that’s okay. I’ve actually tried both and they’re quite similar. The traditional recipe, from my Aunt Lucy who lived in New Bern, NC:

1 Golden Cake Mix
4 eggs
½ cup oil (or butter)
11 oz Mandarin Oranges, drained and chopped

Mix these ingredients together and follow the baking instructions above. The whipped topping recipe above is my family recipe, as are the baking directions. I hope you love this cake as much as I do!

~~~~

Moonlight Match
Series: Resort to Romance
Author: Kristina Knight

Buy Links:
AMZ – http://www.amzn.com/ B07MVMZWHN
Book Website Link: http://kristinaknightbooks.com/books/moonlight-match/

Blurb: 

Get ready for ten weeks of romance in the Bahamas with a new series brought to you by some of the best authors in the inspirational and sweet romance genres…

Ten delightful - and standalone - novellas linked by one matchmaking week. You’ll want to devour each one!

Moonlight Match

Aster Harrington believes in love but love doesn’t seem to believe in her. She’s hoping Goldie and Ginny, the matchmakers who’ve matched on two generations of Harringtons, can work a little love magic for her…

Some call Ethan Talbot rigid, but he prefers to think of himself as prepared. Unfortunately, when he’s matched with Aster Harrington at Joy Island’s Matchmaking Week, all those carefully prepared plans go out the window. He can get back to finding a suitable wife once he’s home in New York. After all, how much damage can one week in the Bahamas do to his plans?

RESORT TO ROMANCE SERIES

It’s Matchmaking Week at an all-inclusive resort on a private island in the Bahamas. Each guest has been expertly paired and is here to enjoy one full week with their match. While there’s no money-back guarantee on the paid trip, the participants are guaranteed to find love!

A Meddled Match by Jill Kemerer
A Messed-Up Match by Jessica R. Patch
Met Her Match by Susan L. Tuttle
Moonlight Match by Kristina Knight
Unexpected Match by Constance Phillips
Match Me If You Can by Krista Phillips
Mismatched Melody by Jodie Bailey
A Match for Mr. Write by Jennifer Shirk
Rematched by Julie Jarnagin
Match You Like Crazy by Johnnie Alexander

AUTHOR BIO: 

Kristina Knight began her writing career as a radio and television journalist, working for NBC affiliates throughout the midwest as a reporter, anchor, and producer. After covering everything from a serial killer’s capture to the National Finals Rodeo, she decided to leave the TV biz in favor of writing stories she was passionate about.

Today, Kristina is a freelance writer as well as published romance author. She writes about family/parenting, covers entertainment news, and writes content for a small business website in her non-fiction hours. During her fiction time, she writes romances filled with great characters, fun communities, and always with a happily ever after.

In her personal life, Kristina is a wife, mom, and author, living her happily ever after one deadline at a time. A life-long Midwesterner, Kristina has lived in Missouri, Nebraska, and Ohio, where she job-hopped her way through college before eventually landing in the world of journalism. After a ten-year career reporting and producing news for several NBC affiliates, she traded in her journalism cap for yoga pants. She now writes stories that always end in happily ever after.

Kristina writes sassy contemporary romance novels; her books have appeared on Kindle Best Seller Lists. She loves hearing from readers, so feel free to email her!

LINKS:

Author Links:
Website: http://www.kristinaknightauthor.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kristinaknightbooks
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/kristinaknightbooks
Twitter: @AuthorKristina (https://twitter.com/AuthorKristina)
G+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+KristinaKnightAuthor
PIN: http://www.pinterest.com/authorkristina
GR: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5827833.Kristina_Knight

Retailer Links/retailer author profiles:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Kristina-Knight/e/B0081LO6DM/
BB: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/kristina-knight