Red Velvet Cake

My dear old friend and quite new neighbour Sue and her husband Kevin popped by yesterday on their way to the supermarket. They caught me in my most unforgivably ugly pyjamas, with uncombed hair and mascara stains and... even better, they caught my husband in his "renovatin' outfit", which consists of a pair of shorts with one leg actually RIPPED off, his red crocs and a vintage blue and white striped rugby shirt with no cuffs - that is not allowed outside the house. I love Sue, so I let her in...but I swear if it was anyone else standing on my porch I wouldn't have answered the door.

Sue has seen me in pretty much every state, but Kevin has been spared the "Sunday-not-quite-my-best" presentation. Until yesterday, that is. He is practiced in masking his emotions (they are both actors) but I know I caught a slight widening of his eyes before he carefully schooled his expression to friendly indifference. (There is a reason that guy is happily married.)

In any event, thankfully, they were more interested in the renovation than in the state of us, and so Keith gave them the tour and Sue eventually wandered into the kitchen where I was busy kneading bread.

I told her about the recipe box and my ambitious plan to bake and cook and blog my way through my most apprized recipes and to share my failures and successes in (and out) of the kitchen.

Sue is great at honesty. She can get a couple of revelations and a confession out there in the time it takes to walk from one end of the block to the next. I know this, because we've done a lot of walking together.

Yesterday, she got two confessions in before they left (about 10 minutes). Her first confession was that she did not know HOW to knead bread before last week...and she explained to me that Kevin patiently showed her the technique for the very first time on Saturday. Her second confession was that she had no idea what red velvet cake was.

I promised that the next recipe I would pull from the box would be red velvet cake. Now it's time for my confession. I KNOW what a red velvet cake is...I have seen pictures of red velvet cake in cook books and magazines..and I have seen that recipe probably a hundred times in my recipe box...but not only have I never made a red velvet cake, I do not recall ever tasting a red velvet cake.

I also have no idea who contributed this recipe to my collection. The recipe card is yellowed and the handwriting faded blue ink...there is a notation in red in my mother's hand on the back where the frosting recipe is listed. I guess it's okay to use plain white sugar for the frosting. Thanks, Mom. There is a name on the bottom of the card...at least I think it's a name..."Pulliam"

Red Velvet Cake

1 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 heaping tbsps cocoa
2 oz red food colouring
1 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
2 1/2 cups cake flour, sifted
1 1/2 tsp vinegar
1 tsp soda

Cream shortening, sugar and eggs. Make a paste of cocoa and food colour and add to the cream mixture.
Mix salt and vanilla with buttermilk and add alternately with flour.
Mix the soda and the vinegar and fold in to mixture (Basic chemistry: This is going to cause a fun little chemical reaction, best to do it over the bowl.)

Pour into two 8 inch cake pans (greased and floured) I would add some parchment paper on the bottom of this...see below.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 350.

The batter looked pretty cool going into the heart-shaped pans...

also darkened up nicely in the baking process but...when I tried to actually get the cake out of the pan, it stuck. I mean...stuck and came out in bits and crumbled pieces. No photo here...I couldn't bring myself.

Not that I got to this point, but here is the frosting recipe...looks yummy.

Whipped White Frosting

5 tbsps flour
1 cup of milk
1 cup of flour
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup white sugar

Cook the flour and milk until thick and then cool until cold. Cream sugar and butter and add to milk mixture. Beat until it resembles whipped cream and frost cake.

Oh well...better luck next time? It's the thought that counts...right, Sue?

The Recipe Box and Grandma's Buns

My mother taught me many things. She still teaches me today through the strangest of mediums...her recipe box. One of my most cherished possessions, it is a stained, old tin box that I bought for her when I was six or seven..stuffed to capacity with recipe cards and yellowed, folded bits of paper...scraps cut from magazines and the backs of tin cans. On the back of the box, there is a company decal from some place my father worked in the 70's...stuck on with grubby, little fingers and never peeled off. In the bottom of the box, beneath the recipes, there are two bits of paper with novena prayers, offered for a hope I will never know.

It is more than just a tin box. It is history... MY family history...remnants of happy times and holidays...fragments of friendships and church tombolas, pot-luck suppers and Sunday dinners.

Most of the recipes are written in my mothers fine, even hand, some in childish scrawl, many in the hand of those who shared them...each of them tells a story. Each card, a treasure to me.

I think my mother knew that one day, I would learn to love to cook. I'm sure she despaired that I would ever settle down, yet somehow, she knew that the recipe box (and her cherished recipe books) would become a way to communicate with me when she could no longer be here to guide me through life. She scratched little notes of encouragement and wrote a running side-bar of directions - to get me through the recipe with the least likelihood for disaster and to get me through a life without her...also, with the least likelihood for disaster.

In an effort to preserve these treasures and to share the magic of the recipe box with my own children and grandchildren, I'll share the first and most mystical recipe of all. Grandma's Buns.

Grandma.(Josie Erickson, born 1897, Tooele, Washington) All 5'11 formidable inches of her, was picture perfect grandmother. She almost always wore dresses and like all Ericksons, had blue, blue eyes. She smelled like rose water and she smiled more than laughed, and listened more than talked. I never heard her raise her voice and I only twice saw her cry. She said "warsh" instead of "wash" and "crick" instead of "creek", and Grandma Erickson baked the most amazing buns.

My mother and my father's mother remained very good friends, even after my parents divorced. I spent countless week-ends in my granmother's (also picture perfect) little house in Magrath, Alberta. It was a tiny, two bedroom bungalow with gnarly old trees in front and flower boxes filled with geraniums in front of the kitchen and front-room windows.

Her house always smelled like fresh-baked bread and something savoury...and my mother was on a mission to learn how to bake those buns. I think she must've determined that my grandma was holding out on her, because there are three cards titled, "Grandma's buns" in the recipe box...each a little different from the other.

Like most women of her generation, Grandma probably never had a recipe box. She baked buns and bread for five children in a tiny little two bedroom house on the Southern Alberta prairie. She lived and worked on the farm and she baked her bread in an old, wood stove.. Her recipe consisted of a pinch of this and a dash of that and she improvised when there was an ingredient missing...

I cook in much kinder conditions...but when I make Grandma's Buns something magical happens... I swear it's as if we all make the bread together. Her hands, my mother's hands and my hands all work the dough...kneading in a rhythm as old as man. Everything about Grandma's buns gives my soul comfort. The smooth, warm feel of the dough beneath the heel of my hand, the smell of them baking in the oven, and the Sunday dinner taste of them. I am transported to a time when I was young and safe and nurtured...when I had a mother and a grandmother watching over me and I was safe and loved.

The first ( and probably my favourite) of the recipes is as follows:

Sweet Rolls - Grandma's - 1976 May

Dissolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water with 1 tsp sugar added - Scald 2 cups milk - Add 4 Tbsp shortening to melt - Add sugar (6 Tbsp) and1 tsp salt - Cool to lukewarm - Add 2 well beaten eggs - Add to yeast mixture and mix well - Add 3 to 3 1/2 cups flour and beat well in mixer - Add remaining flour (3 cups) by hand - Put in well greased bowl and allow to rise to double in bulk - Punch down and allow to rise again if you like - Not necessary - Make rolls - Cinnamon rolls.

That's it. Mystical, magic recipe #1.

The 2nd..clearly for when there is no fresh milk handy:

1979 - Grandma's Buns and Cinnamon Rolls

Dissolve 1 Tbsp yeast in 1/2 cup water - Stir to dissolve - 1 Tsp sugar before adding yeast

To 1 1/2 cups of boiling water add 1/4 lb butter or marg - Add 6 Tbsp sugar - 1 tsp salt - When marg melted add 2 well-beaten eggs and 1 small can of evaporated milk. (And yeast) Add 3-4 cups flour - Mix well - Add remaining 2 cups flour - Dough should be sticky still - grease hands with butter or bacon fat to make it easy to handle (knead) - Can add a little more flour - like a cup or two.

And the third...an abbreviated version of the same:

Grandma's Buns

Dissolve yeast - 1/2 cup water - I tsp sugar

1 1/2 boiling water - Add 1/4 lb butter or marg - Add 6 Tbsp sugar - 1 tsp salt - When marg melted add 2 well beaten eggs and 1 small can evap milk. Add 3-4 cups flour. Well mixed - Add remainder (2 cups) flour. dough should be sticky still.

As I said, I use a hybrid version of all three recipes...I usually start with 2 cups of milk and I knead in the last 2 cups of flour until the dough is smooth and elastic (about 10 minutes). I let it rise once, punch it down and let it rise again. Then I make one tray of buns (my favourite are clover leaf) and usually make a tray of cinnamon buns (my brother's and my certainly Keith's favourite iteration of Grandma's buns)

Cinnamon Buns

Make Grandma Erickson's bun recipe and roll dough into a 15"X10" inch rectangle. Spread 1/2 stick of softened butter (4 Tbsp) over dough - not quite to the edge. Mix 1/2 cup brown sugar with 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. Spread evenly over dough. From the long end, roll the dough...pinch the ends in and pinch a seam along the end. Cut into 12 equal pieces and place in a greased 9"X13" pan and let rise again for 40-45 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 and bake until golden brown (20-25 minutes)

Thank heaven...

Thank heaven for little girls...

Mothers and daughters. The steel-hard and achingly soft emotions that flow between a mother and her daughters form the seeds from which all human interactions and relationships grow. At once, the tenderest and strongest of human bonds. Complicated... yet somehow primally organized - we are bound through blood and bone and through the spirits of the grandmothers who have learned and toiled and gone before.


Forever linked. Bonded through time and space and through the ether that separates the living from the dead. We are one and yet separate for eternity - sharing triumph and sorrow alike... even...and most especially, dreams.