Cooking

My mother was a wonderful cook. She was the "meat and potatoes" kind of cook with good down home cooking that would stick to your ribs. She had numerous cookbooks all stuffed with handwritten recipes that she would get from a magazine or newspaper, or from one of her friends. She had a recipe box so full of recipes that it was hard to remove one 3x5 card without taking out a bunch of them at the same time. Everything was under the right category---Breads Desserts Meats. But the most wonderful category of all was the one labeled CAKES!

There were recipes galore under this category---and everyone of them was more delicious than the first. Texas Sheet Cake---Burnt Frosting Cake--Mayonnaise Cake--Fruit Cocktail Cake.Yum. But the one that was made most at our house was a simple little cake called Funny Cake. The name comes from the fact that when you see the list of ingredients, it seems a little funny that this would ever turn into a cake. But it does...oh my it does. Such a rich, chocolaty flavor that is so moist and tasty. We just loved it at our house.

With me moving from flat, sea level Illinois to the mountains of Colorado, some of my baking recipes needed a little tweaking. The mayonnaise cake did fine in the high altitude, as did the Texas sheet cake, but I always had trouble with the Funny cake.

Repeatedly I would try out the recipe and more times that not I would have a flop. But persistence paid off, as did a little research with the local cooking section in the newspaper, and I finally mastered the Funny Cake recipe. Each time I make it, the color is right, the texture is amazing, and it rises to just the right height in the pan. Now,all I have to watch out for is the cocoa that has to get used to the new altitude!