Baking is More Creative Than I Thought!

I had been looking forward to moving on to the delicious coffee cakes in Martha's book.  Personally, I enjoy eating these types of cakes much more than those with layers of icing and cream.  Anyways, one of the things I love about cooking is that you can really be creative with ingredients and changes of technique because it is not based on chemisty as baking is. 

Well, I got my chance to show my "creativity" when I went to purchase frozen sour cherries for the Cherry Streusel Coffee Cake.  No frozen cherries.  No bottled cherries. Only disgusting gloopy canned cherry pie filling.  While I was in the frozen fruit section I saw a bag of organic mixed berries that included cherries, so I thought why not?  I know what you are thinking...
really?  Not a big leap from frozen cherries to frozen berries!  But for me, with my FOB this was a big leap forward.   Now don't get me wrong, I won't be throwing things in the mixing bowl without measuring or deciding mashed potatoes would be a fine substitute for bananas in banana bread, but I realize that even with baking, it is okay to "make do".

Here are the pictures from this delicious cake.  My colleagues very much enjoyed it!

As mentioned, we will be making a pilgrimage to the Motherland this weekend, so no new baked goods.  There are a couple of pound cakes left in the chapter and then I move on to cookies!  Got milk?