C is for Cakes

C is for Cakes

   I’m a baker. No, I’m not bragging because I don’t do anything fancy, but I do bake good cakes. I bake good pies and cookies, too; however, this little piece is about cakes.

            I don’t remember baking much at all before Frank and I married. My mother did the baking. The cakes that I remember from her kitchen are a brown sugar pound cake (I just found a recipe online recently), the lemon pound cake that everyone was baking back in the ‘50s (made from a cake mix with pudding and lemon added, I think), and angel food cake with cherry icing. All were delicious, but I don’t think they took much time. Mother was a busy working lady! I make the angel food cake, too, but I buy a cake from Sam’s and just make the icing. Just as good. I remember that Mother asked for suggestions from Frank for dinner the first time he went home with me from college. He ordered ham, potato salad not mashed up, and a cake not out of the box. I’ll bet Mother had to really think on the dessert order!

            When Frank and I married, I didn’t know much at all about cooking, though I had been in charge of making dinner at home for at least a couple of years before going to college. (I learned to cook over the phone. Mother would tell me what she wanted me to prepare for dinner, and I’d call her at work several times during the process every evening to ask questions. She’d say, “What does it look like?” or “What does it taste like? Does it need salt?” And then she’d give me suggestions. No one ever complained, so I guess I did OK.) Frank, however, knew lots about cooking since he had taken over the kitchen at the age of fifteen or sixteen, when his mother was pregnant with Bob, Frank’s youngest brother. And then, he had been a bachelor for several years after getting out of the Air Force, always cooking for himself. So he taught me lots of things after we married.

            But he didn’t teach me how to bake. I taught myself. Every Saturday, I would bake a cake, usually a chocolate cake with seven-minute icing. There wouldn’t be a crumb left by the next Saturday, when I’d take to the kitchen for baking again. Needless to say, back then, neither of us had to worry about calories. Then I found that he really liked German’s Chocolate Cake. (I just remembered that Mother used to bake this, too, so that’s probably what she prepared for Frank’s first meal) So I bought a block of German’s Chocolate and set about learning to bake one of Frank’s favorites. It’s still the one that he asks for first when I ask him for a suggestion. Here’s the same recipe that I’ve used for more than fifty-seven years:

German’s Sweet Chocolate Cake – adjusted for high altitude

Ingredients

1 pkg. German’s Sweet Chocolate

½ cup water

4 eggs, separated

2 cups flour

¾ tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp. salt

1 cup butter, softened

2 cups minus 4 T sugar

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup plus 3 T buttermilk

Directions

Heat oven to 350°

Cover 3 9” round pans on bottom with wax paper. Grease and flour pans.

Microwave chocolate and water

Beat egg whites; set aside.

Mix flour, baking soda, and salt.

Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Add egg yolks one at a time. Beat well after each.

Blend in melted chocolate and vanilla.

Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk.

Add egg whites. Fold or stir gently.

Divide evenly among pans.

Bake 30 minutes. Check with toothpick. Run spatula around cake. Cool 15 minutes. Turn out on wire racks and cool completely before icing.

Coconut-Pecan Frosting

4 egg yolks

1 can (12 oz.) evaporated milk

1 ½ tsp. vanilla

1 ½ cups sugar

1 ½ sticks butter

2 2/3 cups coconut

1 ½ cups chopped pecans

Beat egg yolks, milk, and vanilla in large pan with whisk. Add sugar and butter; cook on medium heat for 12 minutes or until thickened and golden brown, stirring constantly.

Add coconut

When we moved to Pascagoula, MS, in 1964, after we had graduated from Mississippi College, we became members of First Baptist Church. Sometime during our years there (1964 – 1968), the Women’s Missionary Union published a cookbook. I can assure you that it has a gazillion great recipes in it, but the one that I’ve used the most is a cake recipe. Frank’s not crazy about it, and I’ve made it so many times and eaten so much of it that I’m tired of it. But I bake it every once in a while if I need dessert for lots of folks. Here it is, along with some explanation because I included it in a recipe book that I made for Wendy, Corey, and Irina one Christmas several years ago:

Chocolate Sheet Cake

If you were to look at this recipe in the Pascagoula Cookbook, you’d see it called Chocolate Sheath Cake.  Just like a dress, I guess.  This recipe is very similar to one that my cousin Jo Ann has from her Aunt Avis.  In my cookbook, Elsie Jane McMurray, our preacher’s wife, submitted it.  It’s so good and has fed many a hungry child and adult!

2 cups sugar                                                1/2 cup buttermilk

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour                    2 eggs, beaten

2 sticks butter                                              1 tsp. baking soda

4 tablespoons cocoa                                    1 tsp. cinnamon

1 cup water                                                 1 tsp. vanilla

Sift together sugar and flour.  Mix in saucepan the butter, cocoa, and water.  Bring to boil; pour over sugar and flour and mix well.  Add remaining ingredients.  Mix well and pour in well-greased 11 x 16 inch pan.  Bake at 350º for 20 minutes.

Icing:  Mix and bring to a boil:

1 stick butter                                                6 tablespoons buttermilk

4 tablespoons cocoa                                    Dash of salt

Remove from heat and add 1 box of sifted Confectioner’s Sugar, 1 teaspoonful vanilla, 1 cup chopped pecans.  Beat until smooth.  Poke holes with toothpick in hot cake.  Pour hot icing over cake.  Cool and cut into squares.

And there’s one more cake that I make frequently. I think it’s the one that the most people like . . . and Frank does, too. What’s not to like about carrot cake, huh? Especially with a big dollop of vanilla ice cream alongside the piece. I must tell you something funny, something that I didn’t include in my comments before the recipe (this recipe, too, was in the cookbook that I made for my girls). Every time I took this cake to school for my teacher friends, Mary DeCosta, our drama teacher, would tell her eating buddies that she needed to hurry back to our work area to get her piece of carrot cake. She swore that it gave her an orgasm! But that was just dramatic Mary, I imagine. Here ‘tis:

Carrot Cake

Martha Smith, one of my teacher friends at Woodham (she taught Latin, Russian, English, and occasionally one of the social studies classes . . . Wow!), used to make this cake and bring it to us at school.  Actually, she got two cakes from the recipe by baking four layers.  I usually make just one big cake.

2 cups sugar                                                2 teaspoons baking soda                                   

4 eggs                                                          1 teaspoon salt                                   

1 1/2 cups salad oil                                     2 tablespoons vanilla                       

3 teaspoons cinnamon                                2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

                                                                   3 cups grated carrots

Mix together sugar, eggs, oil, and vanilla.  Sift together cinnamon, soda, salt, and flour, and add to sugar mixture.  Mix well.  Add grated carrots.

Bake in 3 layers for 30 minutes at 325°. (You can use either 8” or 9” pans, but I like 8” better.) The best way to bake in round cake pans is to grease and flour the bottom and sides; then cut a piece of wax paper the size of the bottom of the pan.  Place waxed paper in pan.  Makes it so much easier to get cake out.  Let layers cool on racks.

Icing:

1 stick butter, softened                        1 box sifted Confectioners’ Sugar

1 8 oz. cream cheese, softened            1/2 cup chopped pecans

Mix together, and spread on cake.  Here’s a hint about putting icing on a cake. Cut four strips of waxed paper, and make a big outer square on the cake plate. Place the first layer on the cake plate.  Put some icing on the top, spread, and spread down sides.  Repeat for the second layer, still spreading down the sides.  Finish the same way.  Pull out the strips of waxed paper, and you have no icing all over the plate.  Hope this makes sense.

Recently, I used a different recipe. It had crushed pineapple, dried cranberries, and toasted pecans in the batter, with a few cranberries and toasted pecans on the top. I really liked it, but Frank said that my old recipe was better. I’m glad because it’s much easier to make!

So that’s my cake history. I have other recipes that I made occasionally, but these three are the ones that go over better with everyone. All of them need that scoop or two of vanilla ice cream!