My heart's In It

 I have a Japanese in-law who keeps gifting me gigantic boxes of cast-off clothes. She's convinced I can turn anything into a quilt. Her confidence is a bit over zealous, though. Nope, flimsy, transparent, polyester dresses or  the like just don't make good quilting material! 

But, I did discover this front and back to something that was never completed inside her most recent box of stuff. It was way too small for me but I wondered if it could be turned into an apron for my granddaughters...      

I stitched together the 2 fabric pieces and gave it armholes, an easy open neckline, and a hem. It was blah looking, though.  The armholes seemed overly large, too.

       I decided to add on a pocket and some tie-strings. The box held some red fabric and I looked through my fabric stash and decided that I might finally be able to use the animal print piece of fabric I'd purchased some years ago.

Voila!

Granddaughter loved the piece so much she wanted to wear it as a dress!

Baking cake!

 Do you know what the most popular cake of the 1970s was in the USA? It just has to have been the Bundt cake, of course! Before that, when I was a kid during the late 1950s and all during the 1960s, my mother would spend ages whipping egg whites for Angel Food cake. Those were ever so difficult as they could collapse just from closing the oven door when peeking on their progress. They needed a special long pronged fork sort of gizmo to gently cut and they needed a special tubed pan to bake and then overturn to cool. I was never fond of Angel's Food cake.

Then, for New Year's Eve to welcome in 1976, my mother clipped a recipe for Sherry Cake and baked it. Oh my, was it wonderful! It was absolutely the best cake my mother ever baked. Browned and shaped to perfection, it was soft, fragrant, and absolutely delicious and she even sent the leftovers back with me to college after winter break. I got the recipe from her and have been baking it just about every holiday season ever since -- or at least since I got my own kitchen and fluted pan. Since I'm in Japan and things like yellow cake mixes, vanilla pudding, and lemon gelatin aren't generally sold here, I have had to get creative some years if I don't have any of those things stocked away in my cupboard from trips home. Somehow I've never had a miss with this recipe even with various changes to the recipe. 


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Sherry Cake:

1 large package yellow cake mix
1 package vanilla pudding or 1 package lemon gelatin
3/4 cup salad oil
3/4 cup sherry
4 eggs
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond flavoring

Mix all ingredients together and beat for 4 minutes. Pour into greased tube of Bundt pan. Bake at 350 F (180 C) for 45 to 50 minutes or until done. Dust with powder sugar.

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The last few winters when I got out my fluted cake pan, I looked at how sad it had become. The non-stick surface certainly didn't look healthy. I'm thinking about that kind of stuff more these days as I frequently cook for my 2 young granddaughters now and I don't want nasty stuff leaching into anything they eat. I covered it with cooking paper when I first noticed how deteriorated it had become. This past year I didn't even let them see the cake I baked for fear they couldn't resist. Post holiday, I usually seem to forget about the worsening condition of the pan as it isn't used often and there's always so much to draw my attention away to more pressing needs. But, I've been on a renewal of kitchen goods craze lately.  Getting a new Bundt pan before the next holiday season was on my to-do list. The age of the internet has certainly changed my ability to shop from Japan, that's for sure! My old pan was something I brought back from a trip to the States decades ago. The fluted cake pan I've been using wasn't actually even an official "Bundt" pan, I now understand, because that's a trademark name. Well, I must have known the finer points on that that at some point in time, or maybe not. I mistakenly thought all pans in that shape are a bundt cake pan. Nope, apparently they are called a fluted cake pan, or something along those lines. But, hey, thanks to Amazon.com and other sources, it's easy enough to just order a new cake pan online so I don't have to wait for a trip home. I spent ages online looking at the various designs and weighed the merits for or against purchasing an actual German bundkuchen or gugelhupf cake pan or the American Bundt pan. Finally, I decided on the original Bundt design made by Nordic Ware. It's nostalgic for me and my memories of home, after all.

Bundt cake mixes were all the rage in my final decade in the States. Apparently, the mixes are no longer sold though. How sad is that?! Now I've learned those mixes were being created between a tie-up with Pillsbury and Nordic Ware, the producer of Bundt cake pans. Both companies are located in Minnesota. Apparently, the Bundt cake is their state cake! Hmmm... I wonder if my state has a designated cake...

Next, to test it out... I looked online and found a recipe for lemon zucchini cake. I had plenty of zucchini as it's finally made its way into something Japanese farmers have figured out how to grow in this climate. I spent ages grating the zucchini and lemon, and juicing a couple of lemons. I followed the recipe religiously and baked according to the directions. The toothpick test came out clean. On to the counter to wait the 10 minutes before releasing it onto a rack to cool down. Next thing I knew the cake had collapsed! Huh?! Well, it was my first time with this recipe so maybe that was supposed to happen. The cake rocketed out of the new pan when it was time to invert it, though. Wow, what an improvement over my old pan! I waited the required time to drizzle the glaze. Next time I think I will need to drizzle any glaze before putting it on the plate, though. 

Finally, time for a coffee break and a sample of the freshly baked cake. Oh, that's one of the joys of a Bundt cake. Yes, you can cut and sample before serving it or carrying it to a potluck! It just looks better displayed cut too! 

Well, I had read that the cake would come out soft but it was ridiculously soft looking. Next, to taste. Bleh!!!! What?! It mainly had a taste of EGGS! What happened to the delicate fragrance and taste of lemon?! Yikes, it seemed under-cooked too! How to save  most of a day's labor, the price of all those ingredients, and the gas to cook it?! Back to the internet for ideas...

From what I read online, turning it into bread pudding wouldn't work as apparently that needs somewhat dried bread to absorb the eggs and milk.  I didn't find a clear answer on what to do. Sometimes a cake can be re-baked for a bit but sometimes it's a candidate for the trash bin. I ended up scraping off the glaze as I worried that would burn. Then, I sliced the whole thing and laid the pieces side-ways onto cooking paper and back in the oven they went. Hey, if it works for biscotti, it might work for a cake too...  I set the temperature for the same as it baked at and checked every 5 to 10 minutes, turned the pieces over and over again until it looked baked through. 

It wasn't as pretty the second time on the plate but fortunately my husband didn't know the headaches I'd had with the cake. He declared it the best one ever so I let him eat and eat to his heart's content. Me, heck, that recipe went in the trash. I'll never make it again! LOL