Cakes

My Birthday Cake - Yum! 

Yesterday was my 49th birthday and I celebrated it by having lunch with Governor Mead of Wyoming.  I will disclose it was with 300 other people. Oh well, I'm positive if he would have known it was Melody Day  he would have at least sat at my table. The Gov was at Cam-plex discussing his plans for the Equality State during the Chamber of Commerce's Governor's Luncheon. Makes sense then that he would be there, huh?!

Enough about that I have cake on my mind.  Harley Man made a delicious pasta dish for dinner and brought home a great couple of bottles of vino. Also that beautiful cake for dessert. I'll tell you the story about how the "cakes" nickname started another time. We had a wonderful dinner and evening. Thank you Harley Man. 

Speaking of cakes, I attempted to make the "Coca-Cola" cake a couple of weeks ago. I ran across the recipe on Recipebook....er....I mean Facebook. Not sure why all of the recipes are being posted on fb these days but whatever. It caught my attention as it reminded me of the 70's when I was first aware that Coca-Cola was more than something to wet your whistle. Did I tell you that I pretend I'm on the Food Network when working in the kitchen?  

Started out with butter, unsweetened cocoa powder, Coca-Cola and buttermilk. Who has buttermilk on hand unless you know you need it? Well, not me so I made my own by using vinegar and regular milk. 

After simmering it was added to flour, sugar and the other remaining ingredients. With a lot of love, of course. Can't forget the eggs and vanilla.

Poured the batter in the jelly roll pan and it was ready to get some lovin' from the oven. Except when I tried to put the jelly roll pan in the oven, the door to our vintage 1950's oven wouldn't shut. Apparently back then the pans were shorties. I panicked and came up with a fantastic solution! 

I tied the door to the back burner with a very long dish cloth. It didn't exactly close, but it was close enough. Set the timer for 30 minutes. 

After it cooled I whipped up the frosting and thought it looked pretty good. Even for the oven door not shutting all the way. 

Well, I tried the Coca-Cola cake that reminded me of yesteryear. It certainly didn't taste the same. At all. It was fairly dry. I was so darn mad! I forgot to adjust the baking time for the altitude known as Wyoming. Harley Man came home and was super excited to see that I actually baked something. He was very polite and told me he thought it was good. Against my better judgement he took a good portion of it to work with him the next day.

Lesson learned. Adjust the baking time when you move to Wyoming. 

Grandma Becker's entry for May Day, 1990

"A bit warmer but still very chilly. Gerald left quite early-called from Waverly and got old car fixed again. I cleaned oven, sinks, ironed an hour and worked on skirt hem. Gerald home at 5. Supper at 6. I beat Scrabble and 2 games of rummy! Lame hip. George Carrol and wife came to see Helen."

Happy May Day!!

~It's a great day to be alive-make it a great day~

Melody

xoxo