Wow week 10 of Thrifty Thursday already! How fun :) To participate, simply post something thrifty on your blog, then link to this post, and come here and add your Thrifty Thursday post link to the bottom!
The Pantry Challenge
Well I was sitting here thinking of what I did frugal or thrifty this week. I realized that I had gone through my pantry and vowed to use as many things as possible, instead of planning meals around groceries I had to buy. Now don’t get me wrong, I still had to buy things this week, but I feel that I significantly cut my grocery bill by taking an extra ten minutes to dig through the pantry and make sure I made use of some of the things that have been hanging around for a while.
One of those things was a generic box of yellow cake mix. I originally planned to just make some cupcakes with it, but then found that a neighbor had bought a bag of whole almonds instead of walnuts and asked if I wanted them. Yeah! Free almonds, sounds good to me :)
I am a lover of all things almond, especially if you are adding almond extract to the mix, so this recipe seemed right up my alley.
The icing on the cake? I had 4 egg yolks in the refrigerator leftover from some eggs I had to separate for a different recipe! So I was basically able to make this entire recipe from ingredients I already had on hand. Pretty happy with that!
These are kind of plain looking, but there’s nothing plain about the flavor, they really are fabulous! All of my kids and three of their friends have tried them and they all loved them. :) (haha! Three ten year old boys just came upstairs for seconds!)
My recipe notes:
* I used cold butter cut into pieces instead of room temp margarine.
* Used the food processor to chop up the almonds. This recipe used the entire 6 oz bag!
* Used the food processor to to crumble the cake mix and butter.
Almond Cake Bars
1 pkg. yellow pudding cake mix
1/3 c. margarine, softened (I used unsalted butter, and I used cold)
1 c. ground or finely chopped almonds
1 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp. almond extract
4 egg whites
1/2 c. chopped almonds
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13 x 9 inch pan. In large bowl, combine cake mix and margarine at low speed until crumbly. Reserve 1/2 cup crumbs for topping. Press remaining crumbs in bottom of prepared pan. In same large bowl, beat ground almonds, powdered sugar, almond extract and egg whites on highest speed for 4 minutes. Pour evenly over crumbs. Combine 1/2 cup reserved crumbs and chopped almonds; sprinkle over egg white mixture. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool. Cut into bars.
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For Thrifty Thursday:
PLEASE ONLY ADD YOUR LINK IF YOU ARE PARTICIPATING IN THRIFTY THURSDAY. To participate, simply add the link to your thrifty post below and link back to this Thrifty Thursday post from yours. Leave a comment and visit the other TT links to comment on theirs. That’s it! :)
hey, these look really great. glad I found your blog.
I want to join Thrifty Thursdays! I will do so next week. I love your recipe. Can you use just regular yellow cake mix? I would like to make it for my book club tomorrow. How many did it serve?
Hi Justin – glad you found me too, I will check out your blog!
Hi Gabes Girl – Glad you will be joining in for Thrifty Thursday! I am sure you can use regular yellow cake mix. It made a 13×9 pan, so you can cut it into as many bars as you like :)
I love almonds too! What a great treat!
I definitely agree with you – anything almond, especially almond extract, is bound to be delicious.
So glad I found your blog. This is my first time commenting and participating.
Amanda, That almond cake sounds really tasty. What an awesome freebie from your neighbor!
They look great. I have tons of stuff I need to use up in my pantry…great idea..
Mmmm, I love almonds too. I’ll bet I would love this, and they don’t look plain to me. They look scrumptious!
That cake looks great Amanda, especially since I am very hungry at the moment.
Sorry to everyone, I have been overwhelmed with tasks and chores this week (among other things, I got a computer virus that caused me to lose EVERYTHING) and haven’t found time to do a Thrifty Thursday post this week, so next week will be my week 10. I can’t believe we’ve already been doing this 10 weeks. Thanks to Amanda for organizing it. It has been fun and very informative and helpful.
Those bars looks so yummy, it sucks being on a diet lol!
I love almonds too so those bars (love bars,too) are right up my alley!
Yikes, but I probably have cake mixes that have passed their expiration date in my pantry. I need to jump on that.
~ingrid
Those bars looks great. Love almondy stuff! Way to be frugal!
The only thing better than tasty cake bars is thrifty tasty cake bars!
Love almonds so much. And I hope to have aThrifty Thursday post for next week. I actually got a bargain at the store today and will be making lamb stew with my big find.
Amanda these look so good, and I don’t think they look plain at all. Good job using what you already had!
This is a wonderful tip that I also follow ever time I do shopping. I always go through the cupboards and freezer to see what I can utilize in a dish. That way you can save money at the store and not have tons of the same items just sitting around not being used.