Posted By Popular Demand: Cake

It is my sister's birthday next week, so while she was visiting this weekend, in between the reveling and the beer-making, and the beer-drinking and the concert-going, I made her a cake.

A few of her favorite foods in life are mayonnaise, chocolate and apparently Bordeaux chocolates from See's Candies..that last one I actually didn't know about when I chose which cake to make her, but this cake sort of managed to hit all those sweet spots.

I remembered that I had read about a World War II era cake that used mayo instead of eggs and shortening because as two of you may recall, and a few more of you may have read.. there was rationing during the war...back when people actually had to sacrifice some of their personal luxury for the benefit of a greater good...but I digress.

Wikipedia tells us "Tires were the first item to be rationed in January 1942 after supplies of natural rubber were interrupted. Soon afterward, passenger automobiles, typewriters, sugar, gasoline, bicycles, footwear, fuel oil, coffee, stoves, meat, lard, shortening and oils, cheese, butter, margarine, processed foods (canned, bottled, and frozen), dried fruits, canned milk, firewood and coal, jams, jellies, and fruit butter were rationed by November 1943."

And since necessity breeds ingenuity, the bakers, really, the women of that generation, found new ways to make their cakes..voila... the delicate deliciousness of this cake was born.

This recipe comes from America's Best Lost Recipes: 121 Heirloom Recipes Too Good to Forget in which I have found several great recipes, for obscure and once well-loved foods like Runsas, which are also called Bierock which my family loved.

World War II Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake (all italics are my own notes)
Ingredients
Cake
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup water



Frosting 
(I doubled the amount of butter, brown sugar and milk, and used 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar to make my frosting, because we always like more frosting. I think if I had used the entire amount of powdered sugar it would have been too stiff.)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup confectioner's sugar

Directions

Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9-inch square baking pan. (Because you make this in a 9x9 pan you can actually use your counter top (toaster) oven to make this cake, thus avoiding heating up the entire kitchen!)

Whisk the flour, cocoa, baking powder and baking soda in a medium bowl.

Stir the mayonnaise, granulated sugar, and vanilla together in a large bowl until smooth. Add the water and stir until combined. Whisk in the flour mixture until incorporated.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan (you can actually let kids lick the spatula here without worry since the eggs in the mayonnaise have already been cooked! A great cake to make with little kids!) and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Cool completely in the pan, at least 45 minutes. (Many people leave this cake in the pan and frost it there. I flipped mine upside-down onto a serving platter before frosting it so it would look more birthday-ish and less Grandma VanZanten Poor-Man's Cake-ish..but let me tell you Grandma VanZanten's cake was AWESOME!)

*****
For the frosting, melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir in the brown sugar and bring to a boil. Boil until the mixture begins to thicken, about 2 minutes, then, off the heat, carefully stir in the milk.

Return to a boil, then remove from the heat to cool until just warm, about 30 minutes.

Stir in the confectioner's sugar and spread the icing evenly over the cake. The cake can be stored at room temperature for up to 3 days. (if it lasts that long!)

Enjoy!

Breakfast Cookies

(this is cross posted at (Never) Too Many Cooks where I had a sneaky little guest post.)

My son eats a lot of food. No really, a lot of food, and since he has a physical disability, he needs quite a bit of help at meal time. Breakfast is always a blur at our house, and in an effort to be most efficient, get out of the house on time, and offer Jake more opportunity for independence, we have tried every cereal on the market. They all end up in little pieces at the bottom of the box, or scattered all over the floor. So we want him to be able to feed himself, and it has to be fast, and his sister has to like it. Frustrated by the $4.00 price tag on 5 ounces of granola nuggets, I decided to try to make cereal cookies. This is my first try. It is basically a takeoff on any oatmeal cookie recipe, with cereal instead of the oatmeal.

I use a professional grade KitchenAid stand mixer and aluminum jelly roll (cookie) pans in a non-convection electric oven.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs (I used large, not extra large)
• 2 sticks of softened butter (I do not ever bake with margarine)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2T vanilla extract
• 1 cup white flour
• 2/3 cup wheat flour
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 15 oz box muesli cereal (I used Safeway brand)
• 1/4-1/2 cup oatmeal (as much as needed to make the batter more on the stiff side.)

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 350F
   
2. Cream butter and sugars
3. Add vanilla
4. Add eggs one at a time, beat until smooth
5. If you are a good person you will sift your flours, baking soda and baking powder. But since you are not a superhuman, just try not to have any hard nuggets of baking soda or baking powder..then with the mixer on a low to medium speed, slowly add the flours, baking soda, and baking powder.
6. Mix in the box of muesli. You could hand mix at this point, but I have a heavy duty stand mixer, so I make it do the work.
7. Add in the oatmeal a little at a time until the cookie dough is more on the stiff side.

I use cookie sheets with parchment paper to cook most all of my baked goods. It allows me to place all of the batter onto the sheets, then I can slip baked goods onto the counter and a new sheet with raw dough onto the sheet and pop it back into the oven faster. No lag time between baking and I don't need to get my hands dirty very 13 minutes.

I tested three different sizes for the cookies. A 1 tablespoon dough ball makes a normal-size cookie, and was more on the soft side. A 1/2 tablespoon dough ball, made a small cookie, and would probably work just fine for most people, but I really wanted them to be "one bite" cookies so there would be less of a chance of my kid taking a bite then dropping the rest. I settled on a fat 1 1/2 tsp. So I just scooped up batter 1 tablespoon at a time and divided it into four little dabs. This made cookies slightly larger than a quarter, which was perfect for my family.

Bake cookies for 13 minutes at 350F, slightly less time if you want them softer; we wanted crisp. This recipe makes uhm, a lot of little cookies; it filled a 10 cup container.

I do not know how long these keep, they were finished within 3 days. Even my husband ate them (note to self: do not tell husband that muesli has dates or he will never eat them again). I have several other types of cereal in the cupboard, so I'm going to keep making different kinds until I can find the tastiest, highest protein, lowest cost, batch of breakfast cookies that my family will still eat. Once I figure out a few that work, my goal is to get a ton of cereal on super sale, then spend a day and make batch after batch of breakfast cookies, and freeze them in 1 gallon zip-top bags. I'm sure they will freeze well, since oatmeal cookies do. Of course the way my family mowed through them, it's possible I won't need to freeze any at all.

Is THAT what sleep looks like?

I went to bed.. got into my bed and turned off the television at 11:15pm last night. I did not get up until 5:30am. That is the most uninterrupted hours of sleep I have had since before I was pregnant with Lucy ('cause once you are preggers you get up to pee 9 times a night!) Of course I did need to gate Jake into a small area of the house downstairs since he has been wandering until midnight the past couple of days, but once I made sure he was safe and happy, I was actually able to fall asleep while he was still awake.

I have only had one cup of coffee today. No "Stay Awake" pills, no RockSt*r drinks, no RedBull.

and I have managed to make 2 different kinds of quiche and a pumpkin pie, all with home made crusts. I have toasted all of the bread for stuffing (chopped and put on trays in the oven) and made some whole cranberry sauce. I also made some pumpkin custard with the left over pumpkin from the can (I did not bake my own pumpkins this year sorry Martha)

And I did the dishes and I washed three loads of laundry (so far).

AND I made my kids nutritious lunch WHICH THEY ATE!

AND I took a twenty minute nap with my little girl while Jake played in his room.

AND I changed 17 thousand crap ass diapers

AND I wiped those two baby nosed about 800 times.

AND, AND , AND I played with my kids!

and it's only 1:48!

I may still be able to shower and pack before Descartes gets home!