My DH and youngest DD both have April Birthdays, so that means Mama has to bake birthday cakes.
When I was younger, for my birthdays, my mother always baked a simple chocolate cake for me, made from scratch with the bitter, hard baking chocolate. It was frosted with my favorite “Poor Man’s” frosting – a mixture of flour, milk, and cooked in a double boiler. I still have the recipe. Does anyone make that anymore? My mom didn’t work outside the home and was super at baking and taught me.
What I try to do now, is to replicate the texture of scratch cakes. I have many versions of Anne Bryn’s The Cake Mix Doctor cookbooks, where she writes on how to tweak a box mix for terrific results.
Recently, while cooling my heals in the checkout line at the grocery store, I found Betty Crocker’s Super Moist Cakes Spring 2008 No. 243 ed. I’ve collected enough recipe books over the years to start a small bookstore, and with the internet, Paula Deen and Martha have nothing over me ~ but this book caught my eye and it looked really easy ~ cake mix, canned frosting, a little of this, little of that. So I bought it.
To celebrate Earth Day at my cubicle job, we had a baking contest. I made the “Grasshopper Fudge Cake” from the cookbook ~ and won 1st Place!
When Charming Son-In-Law’s parents came down from Vermont, I made the “Key Lime Poke Cake“. Awsome!
Besides following the recipes in the booklet ~ I also adapted them by doing whatever the Cake Mix Doctor said to improve the texture of the basic cake and try to make it “taste like from scratch.”
Know what my oldest DD said? She likes it “un-doctored” ~ just the plain, old box cake mix texture, you know – full of air?
I must have failed miserably teaching her “Mom 101 ~ How to Bake from Scratch.”
Here we go….when I was in Junior High (now called ‘Middle School’ for all you young gals), we HAD to take “Home Economics ~ Home Ec” where we learned to cook, sew, and a host of many other Domestic Diva duties. Why don’t they require kids to take that in school anymore?
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It is ashame that those kind things are not taught anymore. Now days even mom have failed to teach their kids the old school homemaking skills that used to be a given.
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I am only 32 and I took Home Economics. Maybe it’s because I’m from the south…I don’t know.
My answer to your question “why”? is this: The “women’s movement” or feminism is the reason home economics isn’t taught anymore!
I’m all for women having the same rights as everyone else, but I think they went too far in trying to make us equal in every way with men. Anyway, off my soap box…for now! LOL
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Congratulations on winning First.. I found your blog thru Mom Blogs. I enjoyed it very much. I hope you have a greak weekend!
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I wish I knew the answer to that question. I have the fondest memories of my home ec classes. They are where I learned to cook and bake (still have some of my handwritten recipe cards!) and sew, including hand tailoring techniques that I don’t think anyone even uses anymore, but I know ‘em. It sure is a different world we live in these days.
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I didn’t have home ec at all growing up, but my mom involved me in baking and cooking many things.
I’m 21. I don’t have mixes for anything – cake, pancakes, brownies, etc. I make them all by scratch. My bread, too. And honestly, it wasn’t until I went to college and started living on my own and making friends in a new place (where we all had to cook for ourselves) that I even realized that most people didn’t do that.
But it does impress men when they see me put my apron on and make them something from scratch. Many friends say they’ve never known anyone who does that. That really surprised me – my mom made everything from scratch growing up.
I still can’t sew worth a damn, though.
(that was a really long comment for my first one ever on your blog. I found it today through sk*rt – hi!)
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Everyone…boys and girls should HAVE to take this. In a fast food society we no longer to take the time to value certain skills.
Personally, I would have benefited from it…I’ve set an electric stove on fire and made hard boiled eggs explode!
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[...] find a pattern and learned how to shop for the right of fabric and sewing notions. I think that Home Ec should still be a required subject in [...]