Skip to main content

Baby Cake


I made a cake.
Normally, this would not be big news, it would indicate it's a day that ends in a Y.

In this case, it's newsworthy (at least to me) because it's the first thing I have baked on my own since my accident. My arms and wrists are still ridiculously weak.  I wasn't able to get a big mixing bowl out of the cupboard, nor could I ratchet up my KitchenAid mixer, so I had to make the whole thing in a cereal bowl.  I halved the recipe, and struggled on with a wooden spoon.  I baked the cake in 2 mini cake pans I picked up at Sur la Table in SoHo a few years ago.

I used a recipe from an old cottage cookbook I've had for decades. I have left the original (and minimal) instructions below.  In old cookbooks, they tend to assume you already know what you're doing in the kitchen.  If you aren't an experienced baker, a few tips: use room temperature butter; mix baking soda and powder in with flour first; don't over-mix. This makes a thick batter that needs to be smoothed out in the pan. I didn't have any chips, so mine was just a vanilla cake, but I remember making this years ago with butterscotch chips and loving it.  Even without, it was delicious. Give it a try, full-size or halve it and make your own baby cake! (recipe below)



Chippy (or not) Cake

1/2 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon (or more, I love ) vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup sour cream
2 cups flour
2 cups butterscotch or chocolate chips

  1. Cream butter and sugar.  
  2. Add rest of ingredients in order listed.  
  3. Mix well with a spoon.
  4. Pour into greased bundt, angel cake, or 9" square pan
  5. Bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes.
I topped mine with a basic buttercream.  I don't really measure, I just took 1/2 stick of butter, added a splash of milk, some vanilla, and enough icing sugar to get to the consistency I like.  Oh, and some food colouring, obviously.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Writing at Night

This is how I do it.  My brain turns on at the weirdest times. I first saw a pen like this when I was in my 20s, in a TV report about a movie reviewer, who used one to take his notes in a dark theatre.  I searched everywhere, and finally found one.  Before I had it, I tried a few other tactics to help me save for posterity the incredibly deep, meaningful thoughts I felt I was having at night. I tried just writing with a pencil in the dark, but that didn't work out too well.  My writing, on a good day, looks like someone suffering from the DTs sprayed Silly String  on paper during an earthquake.  What I mean to say is, it's really, really bad.  So, the pencil thing was a bust. Next, I bought a mini-tape recorder, but my middle-of-the-night mumbling was almost worse than my writing.  It seemed like my Shakespearean musings would be lost to humanity.  How tragic! The pen. Then, I got my flashlight pen.  It was a revela...
1 comment
Read more

Girls Who Wear Glasses

Image- Pinterest I had braces for 3 years.  That may give you some idea of how out of whack my teeth were as an adolescent.  My dad used to say I could eat corn on the cob through a picket fence.  Even with good insurance, he still referred to my braces as "the trip to Hawaii."  I had them removed just a few weeks into high school.  I was perfect, for about a month. Then, one day in math class, my teacher asked me to do the problem written on the blackboard.  "There's something written on the blackboard?" I said, which was both smart-ass and true.  I couldn't see a damn thing on it.  So, off I went for an eye exam, and, sure enough, I needed glasses.  I was  not  pleased.  Hipsters hadn't yet been spawned by the devil, and the only people who wore glasses were nerds and old people.
2 comments
Read more

Now or Never Books

As I mentioned in a previous post , and as it's the season, I am in a purging and organizing mood.  No, I'm not following Marie Kondo's advice as closely as I should be, mostly because it's SO HARD with books, and I have more books than anything else.  I've gone over and over my bookshelves, but I just can't seem to part with any more titles.  The vast majority of my books do spark joy, even if it's just the memory of having read it; I know I'm supposed to get rid of them anyway.  Not sure I can. I have started making piles that I am calling "now or never" books.  One of the bits of advice in The  Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up  is essentially: if you haven't read it yet, you're never going to.  I just can't face that.  In the pile pictured above are some books that I know will be amazing, but for some reason I haven't found the time. I have to read these in the next, let's say, 2 months, or they get donated.  It...
3 comments
Read more