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!

B is for Books

B is for Books

            I’m not addicted to alcohol or drugs or chocolate, but I am addicted to reading. And since I have that addiction, I have far too many books. I must confess that I hardly ever hesitate to buy an interesting book that a friend recommends or that I see on Goodreads or that pops up in my email, causing my credit card to almost always never get below $700. Don’t get me wrong. Not all of that debt is because of my carelessly purchasing books. Much of it is for Christmas “giffs” for family.

            I almost always have three or four books going at the same time: one for reading in bed, one for reading when the TV is on, and a couple of more that are started but read only occasionally. Needless to say, it takes me longer to read these than the others.

           

            I belong to an online book club – the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club – and Anne Bogel, the creator of the book club, suggests a gazillion books every week, with one book, plus the “flight” books (books that are related to the theme of the month’s selection), “assigned” every month. At the end of the month, we have a webinar on the month’s selection, sometimes with the author joining in on the webinar. Usually the webinar lasts for an hour, but sometimes our chatty leader goes over. I have no idea how I found this online club, but I’m happy that I did.

            Just this morning (May 14, 2019) we had a webinar in which Anne talked about the books that she has put on the Summer Reading Guide . . . thirty books that she suggests that we read. She’ll send the list to us via email, but I took down the titles of about ten of them and immediately added them to my Goodreads “Want to Read” list. I think I have thirty or so books on that list. My problem is that I don’t have the funds to order or even to buy at Book Mountain, my favorite used bookstore. It seems as though a book from Amazon comes almost every day, adding to my credit card total. As I said earlier, I’m addicted to reading!

            I have no idea how many books Frank and I have. Maybe I’ll count someday, but not right now. In my office, I have them sort of divided into categories: old books from teaching and sales repping, books on writing, books that friends and relatives have written, those on grief (mainly about losing children, of course), those that I’ve read this year (nineteen as of today) and in years past, books that I want to read. In our bedroom and in the guest room, I have bookshelves with the volumes divided by authors. We love to read authors who have written lots of books, trying to read all of them . . . authors like David Baldacci, Lee Child, Vince Sparks, Harlen Coben, Mary Higgins Clark, Ken Follett, and many more. Both Frank and I are readers, and the good thing is that we usually like the same books.

            Before I close on BOOKS, I’ll have to tell you a secret. I read so many books and my poor old brain is getting so old that I can rarely tell you much about books after about a week. Isn’t that sad? I’m really thankful that I finally learned how to use Goodreads because now I can keep up with what I’ve read and remember a little bit about the books because I write a blurb about them when I finish.

So here are my bookcases. Not a very neat librarian, I'm afraid! But you can see how much I love books. And so does Frank!

This is what I WISH my library looked like:

A is for Address

A is for Address

            I know I’m strange, but I have lived in only six cities (some were towns or villages) that I remember in my almost 79 years: Mobile, AL; New Orleans, LA; Pensacola, FL; Clinton, MS; Pascagoula, MS; and Cerrillos, NM. And I remember the address in each place.

We moved from Baton Rouge, LA, which I don’t remember, to Mobile, AL, when I was three years old. The apartment neighborhood where we lived is still there, now a neighborhood where almost all of the tenants are black people. It was practically new when we moved in at 401 Crenshaw Street, Apartment A.

Even though I was very young, I remember several things about this apartment. The thing I remember best was what I said to a new neighbor and what happened later. I was on my tricycle on the porch when the new neighbor spoke to me. I told her (the mother, I presume) that my mother had told me not to talk to them until she got to know them. The little boy in the family, Leroy Willingham, later became my best friend.

What I remember about Leroy is that I’d let him break my toys if he’d stay a bit longer to play. When my mother found out that I was doing that, she was furious. I don’t remember exactly what she did to stop that silly activity, but she probably let Leroy have it! He was my first boyfriend.

I also remember a closet shaped like a cornucopia, where I kept my toys. Maybe it was built for a shelter of some sort, but for the Cheatham family, it was for toy storage. I also remember eating almost a whole stick of butter that my mother had put on the table because we were having company for dinner. This was somewhat of a disaster because during WWII, butter was rationed, and Mother had bought all that she could for a while.

When I was a child, I was what we in the South call sickly. I have specific memories of two of my sick spells. When I was four years old, I had scarlet fever. Today, scarlet fever is cured with antibiotics, and children stay out of school only a few days while they get over being contagious. Back in 1944, children were quarantined for a couple of weeks. That’s what happened to me. What a long time for a child to be in bed! I don’t know where I was exposed to the disease but maybe at church since my mother and I went every Sunday. The disease is spread through coughing and sneezing, and I’m sure that there was much of both in the Primary Department at West End Baptist Church.

My dad caused the second sick spell that I remember, or so he thought. One day, after we had had a hard rain in Mobile, I went outside to play. The lovely mud puddle in the street in front of our house was too much for a four-year-old to resist even though her mother had specifically told her not to wade in the water. When Mother looked out and saw what I was doing, she ran out, jerked me out of the puddle, and said, “Just wait till your daddy gets home! He’s going to spank you!”

I have no idea why she threatened me with Daddy, the kindest, least violent man in the whole world. He had never spanked me before, and I hoped he wouldn’t begin something new now; however, when Mother told him what she had promised, he had to spank me . . . probably not very hard, but since my daddy was doing the spanking, it broke my heart.

That night, I became sick in the night, and Daddy swore that spanking me made me sick and vowed never to raise a hand against me again. He kept his word, and I was relieved. Mother never made such a promise, and the narrow black belt or a strong switch was always handy for her!

I really intended to write about each of the places that I’ve lived, but I’ve spent far too  much time on Mobile. Since I said that I remember all of the addresses, I’ll give them here just so that I won’t be telling a big fat fib.

New Orleans – 8326 Palmetto St.

Pensacola – 2305 W. Cervantes St., 610 “Q” Street, 24 Janet St. (with my parents)

Clinton – Main St. and a PO Box when I was in college

Pascagoula – 2306 Saratoga Dr.

Pensacola --  613 Detroit Blvd. (after Frank and I married)

Cerrillos – 279 Gold Mine Rd./PO Box 555

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I took this photo in 2008. This is the right apartment house, but it’s been remodeled a bit. I didn’t see the screened in porch, and we certainly didn’t have these trees. I wanted to go to the door to ask to see our apartment, but I wasn’t that brave.