66. Bake a cake from scratch

Sooooooooooo, I baked a cake from SCRATCH!! I can't believe it but I totally did. Thank you to Jill for the moral support and guidance through this new cullinary experience. I am not a baker! Baking allows no room to improvise or to decide I want a little more of this or a little less of that...so you have to get it just right and that quite honestly is just stressful. Anyway, so Jill picked this recipe out of my Cooking Light cookbook (not sure why it qualified for Cooking Light, but whatever!) It was a chocolate sheet cake with chocolate icing...and even the ICING was home made. Amazing. I took the cake to the lake for Labor Day and it was well received though it WAS competing with Julia Mae's cake which was also quite tasty! Chocolatey but not too rich! Anyway, I totally appreciate people who can bake without thinking about it and who enjoy it and can even make recipes thier own...and if you are interested I have posted the recipe I used below. If you make it, please share how it turned out!

RECIPE:

CAKE

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/2 cup boiling water

2 cups sifted cake flour**

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup vegetable shortening

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

1 cup low fat buttermilk (oooops, I used full fat!)

Cooking Spray

Frosting:

3 cups sifted powdered sugar

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa

1/4 cup low fat milk

2 tsp butter softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. To prepare cake: combine 1/2 cup cocoa and water in a small bowl, cool. Combine flour, baking soda and salt, stirring well with a whisk. Place sugar, shortening and 2 teaspoons vanilla in a large bowl, beat with a mixer at a medium speed until well blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in cocoa mixture. Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternatively to sugar mixture starting and ending with flour mixture and beating well after each addition.

3. Pour batter into a 13 x 9 inch baking pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350 for 28 minutes or until cake spring back when lighting touched. Cool in pan 10 minutes on a wire rack.

4. To prepare frosting, combine powdered sugar and 1/3 cup cocoa in a medium bowl, stirring well with a whisk. Add milk, butter and 1 tsp vanilla, sitre with a whisk until smooth. Spread frosting over cake.

** cake flour is a fine textured wheat flour that usually makes cake more tender. it must be sifted BEFORE measuring. If you don't have cake flour, you can substitute 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of all purpose flour for 1 cup of cake flour.

#49 Help a Stranger in Need

So, I fly a lot for work. I got on the plan to go to Wisconsin and while walking to my own seat, I notice a young woman sitting in her own seat. I won't go into detail about why it was that I notice her, sufficed to say that she just seemed out of place. Anyway, so when the flight landed in Milwaukee I was as usual trying to get off the plane as quickly as possible. Well, this young woman was standing in the aisle trying to get her bag down and was holding another bag in her arms. So I offered to help her get the additional bag. It was really heavy and awkward and she couldn't carry both so I helped her get off the plane with both her bags. I was going to just leave her with her things at the end of the jet way but she looked horrified. She was disoriented and could not answer any question I was asking her. I cannot even imagine how this poor girl got herself on the plane in Atlanta with all this stuff. Anyway, I found an agent and got her a wheel chair and someone to help her. I am pretty sure she was just fine...she seemed to calm down a little. I just said a little prayer for her and went on to my meetings. That's it. I helped my stranger...I am sure it won't be my last time.