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I’m almost ashamed to admit that I’ve never made Irish Soda Bread before — because this was one of the easiest things I’ve ever baked. No kneading, no waiting, nothing. Where have you been all my life, Irish Soda Bread?

Though this was a project for this week’s Tuesdays With Dorie, I think it’s going to become a staple at my house.

This week’s recipe is hosted Carla and Cathleen.

Four ingredients and one hour. That’s it.

These days, any recipe that says to just plop the dough into a pie plate to bake is already a winner in my book.

It came out beautifully golden and moist, and reminded me of baking powder biscuits.

The loaf pulled double duty as we snacked on it throughout the afternoon (it was really good with jam), and then I buttered it up and served it with split pea soup for dinner.

I’ve had a hell of a time trying to get this post together, since I made this cake yesterday while the girls were in school so it would be a surprise for today. But today I’m editing pictures and every time I pull the program up, one of them has something urgent to tell me or needs to walk by and see what I’m doing. It’s maddening.

Anyway, I made this as a St. Patrick’s Day surprise for the girls. We actually don’t do much for St. Patrick’s Day but I really wanted to play with food coloring, so yesterday I got to baking.

I was originally going to do Martha Stewart’s rainbow layer cake, but I lazied out at the last minute since I’ve only got two cake pans and I’d have to wash them between bakings. I just didn’t wanna.

So I went with the much easier tie-dye affect. I made a basic white cake batter from my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and separated it out into six bowls, and each bowl got its own color.

I wanted the colors to go in rainbow order once the cake was assembled, so I worked from the “bottom” up, pouring in all the purple first, then the blue on top of that, and the green on top of that. In the second pan I did yellow first, then the orange and then the red on top.

After they were out of the oven and cooled I decided to just go with white cream cheese frosting.

I thought about coloring it too, but I want the inside to be a surprise.

We’re just about four weeks into our EarthTainer tomato project, and if you look at the pictures I took two weeks ago you can see how much they’ve grown since then. They’re going nuts!

They’re nearly a foot tall, and we’re going to have to get the cages up around them this weekend since they’re also spreading out quite a bit, and we don’t want to hurt the branches getting them set up. I also carefully trimmed off the lowest branches earlier this week since they were dropping down onto the container, and this weekend I’m going to tackle the suckers that are sprouting up, too.

The best part:

The Sweet 100s are starting to blossom!