Recently in Grandma Category

Channah asked about my mentioning red velvet cake in my post on biscuits. I have alot to say about red velvet cake so you should go refill your coffee cup and settle the babies in front of the TV for a few minutes.

Back yet?

Ok let's get started.

Any google search will pull up a million red velvet cake recipes which to my belief are NOT red velvet cake recipes! Many foodie scholars tribute the cake creation to the red cake served at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in the 1920's. Some even dispute the date as the 1950's.

It is my belief that somewhere along the way someone confused a traditional southern red cake served only at the Christmas holidays with a red devil's food cake that later circulated through American kitchens. A southern red velvet cake does NOT have cocoa in it.

No one I know raised in the part of the country I come from that have a deep traditional southern heritage makes this cake with cocoa. The red devil's food cake has cocoa -not the red velvet cake!

Chocolate cake icing is made with cocoa. Hot chocolate is made with cocoa!Chocolate run balls are made with cocoa. Red velvet cake is NOT made with cocoa! Can we all say that together because it needs to be shouted and repeated many times until it sinks into the depth of some peoples consciousness.

If you make a 'red velvet cake' with cocoa I am sorry but that is not a traditional southern red velvet cake. It is a faux southern red velvet cake but a real red devil's food cake.

I am sure your cake is very tastey but it is not the cake I and many generations before me grew up eating only at Christmas and at no other time of the year. I still to this day do not cook this cake for any other occassion but Christmas. It is one of a few cakes my children get to eat for breakfast on Christmas eve and morning. It is a cake they dream of having during the holidays. I only serve red velvet cake, orange cake, ambrosia and rum balls at Christmas. My coconut cake is served at Christmas and Easter, sometimes Thanksgiving. It all depends on my mood when it is time to bake.

I am thinking this year I will make the coconut cake for Thanksgiving. Colby, Gracie and I will be the only one who eats it but that's cool my mom is supposed to come up for the holiday and she loves coconut cake. Steven and J. do not eat coconut cake. Want to know why? His mother does not like coconut. She never cooked with it in any way in his childhood and he grew up thinking he did not like it. But you know, so many foods he and J. have done this way only to be surprised (and pleasantly so) to find I have been cooking them and they have been eating them without knowing it and liking them!

He claims to hate sweet potatoes. After eating what he had been served as a child I see why. It made me gag. :-/ However the carrot casserole was the best ever.

My grandmother was not one who shared her recipes outside of the family. Some things she learned to cook on her own. Some things she remembered being taught to her by her mother. Some things she remembered being taught to her by her grandmother -who died after my grandmother had bore three children in the late 1940's. It is a cake her grandmother baked only at Christmas time. It was a special treat and very expensive to make pre-1920. Grandmother's Red Velvet Cake Recipe -do not substitute ingredients or take short cuts because you will get a yucky cake.

 2 2/3 c. self-rising flour

1 1/2 c. sugar

1/2 c. vegetable oil

1 stick butter (real butter)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp distilled white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 eggs

1 c. buttermilk (no substitutees -only real buttermilk)

4 bottles red food coloring

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and flour three 9 inch round pans or line them with waxed or parchment paper. (I often will divide the batter and make 5 - 8 very thin layers. It makes the cake more decadent to me.)

Cream butter and sugar. Add oil and eggs one at a time mixing well after each egg.

Mix together vinegar, buttermilk and then all 4 bottles of the food coloring. Yes, you do need all 4. You want this to be a rich deep Christmas red cake not pinkish or weak red.

Sift together the flour and baking soda. Alternately add the three mixtures a little at the time until all three are combined.

Stir in the vanilla and mix well. Pour into the cake pans. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean - 20 - 25 minutes maybe more depending on your oven.

Let the layers completely cool before you try to frost them.

Cream Cheese Icing

1 package of cream cheese (philiadelphia brand is best) softened at room temp.

1 stick of butter softened at room temp.

1 box confectioners sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 - 1 c. finely chopped pecans

Mix the cream cheese and butter together until it is well combined. Add the confectioners sugar a little at a time to combine it well. Add the vanilla and mix well. Add the chopped nuts and mix until it is creamy as if whipped. Frost each layer.

If you make the several thinner layers you will most likely need to make 2 batches of icing -which I do anyway because I like thick coats of icing.

This cake is fine on the countertop for a day or two. After that time refrigerate. It never lasts long enough around our house to need refrigerating.

Let me remind you to not substitute ingredients. When you see red food coloring in your grocery store go ahead and start collecting it. It will begin to disappear fast at the holidays and the day you decide to make the cake is the day you won't find the first bottle left on the store shelf.

What do you only cook at Christmas?

I was mowing the orchard this morning. The sun was warm, the air cool, birds flying about, chirping and singing. The constant hum of the engine and the steady drone of the PTO turning the mower blades is, in a fashion, lulling. I do some of my very best thinking while driving in endless circles around our little farm. One thought led to another and another. I was thinking about yesterday. About Mother's Day. About my momma. About my Grandma. Grandma passed away a few months before we bought this house and farm. I miss her. I kept thinking how I would have liked showing her my house and gardens and flowers. She would have loved it. And when she left she would have gone home to South Carolina with little cups of dirt filled with snips of this and that and the other. Little clippings and sprouts and seeds she would have put into the dirt and watched grow. I know her's would grow better than mine even though she would do nothing different than I have. She had a green thumb, could grow anything. She would take her finger and poke a hole in the soil, plop something in and it would grow. It didn't matter much what it was. It would grown. Seeds from an orange she bought at the grocery store. A pinch of something she felched from the airport. A little rooting she had put in water until she could see long dangling white hairs. Everything grew as if SHE was the sun and the water and the earth. My Grandmother taught herself everything she knew. She gave me the foundation for most of the things I have taught myself. How to sew, cook, garden, etc. She is also the reason I do many of things I do. If that makes sense. Bleach, no matter the brand name is refer to as 'clo-white'. Doing laundry is 'washing clothes' even when it isn't clothes, it could be sheets or curtains or rugs, and putting them on 'the line', the clothesline. I suppose if you ask my momma and her sisters they very much do the same things. However, my momma is the only one of her sisters who can cook like Grandma. My Aunt Sue inherited my grandmother's penchant for gaudy jewelry. My Aunt Sherry got her looks, although she is much taller than her mother. My Aunt Rachel got her sense of adventure. I think we all got our sense of propriety from Grandma. You won't find any of Mary's children looking any less than, as Preacher Bill would say, 'spit-shined'. When you leave the house you look put together. Hair 'fixed', neat clothes, good shoes. You look presentable. All of us have raised our children the same way. No miniskirts and belly-shirts around these parts! No child related to her would dare look like they came from the Gypsy Camp! I was thinking about how my Grandma's house looks, big and white sitting on a city block behind the elementary school. Hanging baskets on the front porch, rows of potted plants every where. Yards trimmed neat, sidewalk edged, leaves raked, everything tidy and in it's place, that is the way Grandma did it. She and I used to talk about having a big old house in the country, although she had a big old house in the city. We talked about flowers and bushes and the artichokes her momma grew. Me and Grandma talked about anything and everything, within propriety that is. I would call and ask how to cook something and she would tell me, never using measurements! Cooking was done by instinct. At first I was sad. My grandma won't ever see my white old house in the country. She won't see all my flowers or the hanging baskets on my front porch. She won't see how my Colby and Gracie look all 'spit shined' when we leave the house. She won't see how J. is adapting rather well to propriety standards and has begun to learn to sew. She won't see my husband dutifully help me trim bushes without stepping on the vinca. She won't promise to come to Washington D.C. and give him a 'what for' if he doesn't treat me well. Which he does, Grandma! He does! I was mowing the orchard this morning. The sun was warm, the air cool, birds flying about, chirping and singing. And I began to cry. While I was crying and missing my Grandma, the wind rose and blew all around me. The tears of sadness fell away and became tears of joy. My Grandma may never see everything I want to show her but then she doesn't have to. She is here. She is here. With me. She is in the baskets hanging on my front porch. She is in the flowers blooming around my yard. She is in the neat and tidy way I keep the front entrance. She is in the artichoke seeds we will plant. She is in the 'clo-white' when I 'wash clothes' and 'put them on the line'. She is in the spit-shined and polished look of my children when they leave the house. She is in every pot and pan that bubbles on the stove. She is here. I won't ever let her leave. When my children grow up and have homes of their own, I know she will go with them, too.