This week I am suggesting that a cookbook for parents that is personalized as a keepsake is in order. We are going to publish all our recipes at the Garden School for all the parents. Each page will have a list of ingredients, directions, a picture with a "how to" by a child along with a nutrition corner, a shopping tips place and serving suggestions. We hope you like this. The estimated arrival date is Mother's Day. Not sure of the cost - somewhere around $10.00. The book will be spirally bound.
Today the topic is cake. All that glistens is not cake. Although one of the best treats in the world is Donut Bank cake, cake does not have to be mostly sugar. Cake is a very old treat, and only when sugar became available in Europe in the Fourteenth Century did cake really become what it is today. Cake takes its shape because of the balance of sugar and flour. A cake without sugar is bread.
Today we are lucky because we can actually buy a small mill to mill just about any kind of grain into flour. Yesteryear allowed us the flour we could buy at the store, and that was nearly always limited to wheat - whole or white flours - containing only the limited vitamins and nutrients found in wheat. Today, you can also buy many different flours at both ethnic markets and upscale markets in most areas.
Today, our cake product can contain a healthy list of foods far better than many other foods. This weekend I baked a cake that began with whole wheat and bean flour. This upped the vitamin ante with a nice helping of nutritious beans - fifteen kinds. I used both brown and white sugar, carrots, pineapple, peaches, cherries, coconut, and orange peal. The fruit I ground into pulp with my food processor.
I used butter and canola oil. Both are better for you than either margarine or the kinds of oil and fats that are in cake mixes.
The recipe called for molasses as well which is full of iron, and four eggs. There were nutritious spices in the cake as well like cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. All these fresh spices are really good for hearts, brains and body functions.
The cake is light, delicate and filled with flavors and tastes that are actually good for you. In the frosting, I used powered sugar, butter and ground oranges.
The whole idea behind making a light and delicate cake is not so much the ingredients as the way you add your ingredients. It is necessary, if using butter, to let it become room temperature or put it in the microwave for about 25 seconds. When beating butter and sugar together, the idea is to turn the mixer on high and really beat it. Dropping one egg at a time into the butter and sugar and then add your vanilla.
In a whole other bowl, it's best to whisk all your dry ingredients together and spoon into the beating sugar butter and eggs. Last, it's nice to add your additions one at a time with a spoon.
Bake at 350 degrees in a preheated oven. When your cake is done, it's best to cool it on a rack. If you don't have a rack, jack up one side of the cake pan on a book. Frost when cool.
Here is a no-fail chocolate cake that you can't destroy and kids love:
2 and 1/2 cups flour any kind
1 and 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup cocoa
1 and 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 and 1/4 cup warm water
1 and 1/2 stick butter
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
Beat butter, sugar eggs and vanilla
Whisk all other dry ingredients together
Add water and then the dry ingredients
Beat, beat, beat
Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes
Frost with:
1 stick butter, 1 box powdered sugar, and 1/2 cup cocoa mixed together in a food processor.
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