Grandpa's Home Cooking

Yellow Cake & Mom's Caramel Icing

My great grandmother and my mother were wonderful bakers. Lately I've been remembering the wonderful cakes that my great grandmother made. I quickly decided I wanted to make a good yellow cake from scratch and ice it with Mom's caramel icing. This is by far my favorite icing. I found an interesting cake recipe and got busy.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups King Arthur cake flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 cup butter
• 1 & 1/2 cups sugar
• 8 egg yolks
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup of whole milk

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two, 8 inch cake pans. In a medium size bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set the bowl of dry ingredients aside. 

Use your mixing bowl to cream together the butter and sugar well. Then beat in all of the egg yolks, 1 yolk at a time. Stir in the vanilla extract. Mix in the dry ingredients and milk alternately in small amounts until all of the dry ingredients and milk are mixed into the batter.

Pour the cake batter into greased  and floured cake pans and bake the cakes in a preheated 350 degree oven for 24 to 30 minutes. Be very careful not to over bake this cake. When the cakes are golden brown, insert a tooth pick in the center of the cakes and if the toothpick comes out clean the cakes are done. 

In my gas oven, the cakes are done in 24 minutes.  When done, use hot pads to pull each of the cake pans out of the oven and set them on a rack or the top of the stove to cool. In 15 minutes lay a plate on top of one of the cake pans and flip the dish over. The cake should drop easily from the pan onto the plate. Turn the other cake out on a cooling rack. Let both the cakes cool completely before trying to ice them.

Now mix up your icing and when the cakes are cool, ice the top and side of of one cake. Then carefully move the other cake on top of the first layer and complete the icing to the top and sides of the cake. 

Mom's Caramel Icing

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of pure butter
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed (I had dark brown)
• 1/4 cup whole milk
• 1 and 3/4 to 2 cups confectioner's sugar

Instructions:

Melt butter in a sauce pan. Add brown sugar; boil over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Add milk; stir until mixture comes to a boil. Remove the pan from the heat; cool. Slowly add confectioner's sugar, beating well with a spoon after each addition, until thick enough to spread.

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

I got very hungry for one of Mom's Pineapple Upside Down Cakes. So I rounded up my daughter and said, "Let's make one of Grandma's Pineapple Upside Down Cakes." Marta was all for it. She said, "Which recipe do we want to use?" I replied, "Let's start with the easy one." Mom had 3 recipes for Pineapple Upside Down Cake.

I got out my cast iron skillet, put it on the stove top, and started gathering ingredients. Mom's original recipe was for a from scratch cake. The second was a variation of the first recipe. And the last recipe uses a Duncan Hines Butter Golden cake mix.

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
• 1 stick of butter (you'll need another stick for the cake mix)
• 1, 20 oz can of Dole pineapple slices in pineapple juice
• Jar Maraschino cherries
• Duncan Hines Butter Golden Cake Mix
• Iron skillet (or a Pyrex dish)
• Cake platter
• Container of Cool Whip

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Mix the cake up using the ingredients and instructions called for on the back of the cake mix box--EXCEPT--substitute pineapple juice instead of using water. You'll find the can of pineapple slices packed in juice will contain enough juice to more than satisfy the liquid requirement for the cake mix.

Set the cast iron skillet on a burner turned to medium. Melt the stick of butter and stir in the cup of brown sugar. Place pineapple slices around the skillet and one in the center so that the entire skillet contains a single layer of pineapple. Place a Marachino cherry in the center of each pineapple slice.

(If you use a Pyrex dish instead of an iron skillet, melt the butter in the dish in your oven, stir in the brown sugar, and follow the same instructions for adding the pineapple and cherries.) 

Pour the cake mix batter on top of the pineapple rings in the skillet (or dish).

Put the iron skillet (or dish) in the oven and bake the cake until it is done.

If you're using an iron skillet, the cake will be baked in about 30-35 minutes.

The baking time will vary if you bake the cake in a Pyrex dish. Dish sizes and baking times are shown on the back of the cake mix box.

The cake is done when you insert a tooth pick, pull the toothpick out, and the toothpick comes out clean.

Let the cake cool for 5-10 minutes on the top of your range. Put a cake platter on the skillet/dish and holding both the cake skillet/dish and platter together firmly, carefully flip the containers so that the cake will fall perfectly onto the platter.

Serve the cake warm with Cool Whip cream.

 

Mom's Starlight Mint Surprise Cookies

This was the cookie of all cookies for me at Christmas when I was just a lad. Then all of the sudden, Ebenezer apparently quit making the mints and I have not had one of Mom’s Rockwood Starlight Mint Surprise Cookies since. What made the Rockwood mint so special? It had a vibrant mint taste and it was coated with dark chocolate. When you wrapped Mom’s dough around those cookies and bake them, you were treated to a multitude of flavors.

Since you can no longer buy the Rockwood chocolate mint, you can try any chocolate mint you like. The one that has worked best for me is Ghirardelli mint.  This comes in a scored bar and can be broken into squares.  Just wrap some dough around the mint and bake a pan full. Here are the instructions followed by an Internet posting about the history of the Rockwood family.

Mom’s Starlight Mint Surprise Cookies

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees

Sift and set aside:                             

• 3 cups sifted flour
• 1 tsp soda
• ½ teaspoon salt

In a large mixing bowl use your mixer to cream:

• 1 cup shortening (with at least half being butter)

Then mix sugars together and add gradually to the shortening:            

• 1 cup sugar
•  ½ cup brown sugar (firmly packed)

Mix the shortening and sugars thoroughly.

Now add in:                           

• 2 eggs, unbeaten
• 1 Tablespoon water
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Now beat well into the mix of shortening and sugars

Beat well well into the mix of shortening and sugars.

Now gradually blend in the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Cover, and chill the dough at least 2 hours.

Then enclose each chocolate wafer in about 1 Tablespoon of chilled dough.

Place the cookies on a greased baking sheet about 2” apart.

Top each cookie with a black walnut half.

Bake the cookies at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes

Mom's Luscious Apricot Squares

 

Mom made her luscious apricot squares every Christmas. She put them up in cookie tins and then put this tin along with her many Christmas cookie tins on the dining room sideboard for family and guests to help themselves as they wished. She baked as often as she needed to keep the tins full and the family happy.

Ingredients:

• 2/3rds Cup *California Dried  Apricots
• 1/2 Cup soft butter
• 1/4th Cup sugar
• 1-1/3 Cup sifted flour
• 1/4th teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 Cup brown sugar, packed tight
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 Cup chopped walnuts
• Confectioner's sugar

* California dried apricots are smaller than Turkish/Middle East dried apricots but they have a sweeter and much better flavor. You'll need to go to a chain supermarket like Kroger or Harris Teeter. You'll find them in the dried fruit section. They'll likely have two rows of the Middle East apricots and one thin row of the California. (You won't find them at Whole Foods.)

Instructions:

1. Rinse apricots. Cover them with water in a small saucepan and boil for 10 minutes. They should still be whole, but soft. Don't overcook the fruit. Cool and chop. 

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8 X 8 X 2 inch pan.

3. Mix butter, sugar, and 1 Cup of flour until crumbly. Press into pan and bake for 25 minutes.

4. Sift 1/3 Cup flour, baking powder, and salt. Gradually beat brown sugar into eggs. Mix in flour mixture, then vanilla, chopped walnuts, and chopped apricots.

5. Spread over baked layer. Bake 30 minutes or until done. Cool into pan and then cut into 32 bars. Roll the bars in confectioner's sugar.

Eat one and you may not be able to stop!