Louella's White Cake with Strawberry Filling & Chocolate Butter-Cream Frosting

This delicious recipe comes from the 1953 edition of The Family Circle Cake & Cooky Cookbook.

Louella's White Cake
3 cups sifted cake flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup PLUS 2 tablespoons milk
4 egg whites

1. Grease bottoms of 2 nine-inch layer-cake pans or 1 oblong cake pan, 13x9x2; line with waxed paper; grease paper.
2. Measure cake flour, baking powder, and salt into sifter.
3. Cream shortening until soft in large bowl; add sugar gradually, creaming after each addition until mixture is well blended; stir in vanilla.
4. Sift and add dry ingredients, alternating with milk; blend until smooth after each addition.
5. Beat egg whites until stiff but not dry; gently fold into batter just until blended.
6. Pour batter into prepared cake pans.
7. Bake in moderate over (375 degrees) 25 to 30 minutes, or until centers spring back when lightly pressed with fingertip.
8. Cool cake in pans on wire cake racks 5 minutes; loosen around edges with knife; turn out onto cake racks; remove waxed paper; cool completely before frosting.

Strawberry Filling
1 package (12 ounces) quick-frozen strawberries, thawed
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
1/4 cup sugar

1. Drain syrup from thawed strawberries into small saucepan; stir in corn syrup and sugar; cook over low heat to dissolve sugar, stirring constantly.
2. Boil syrup until candy thermometer registers 238 degrees, or until 1 teaspoon of syrup dropped into cold water forms a soft ball that flattens when removed from water.
3. Remove from heat; blend in strawberries; chill; top 1 layer of cake with strawberry topping.

Chocolate Butter-Cream Frosting
1/2 cup butter or margarine
4 cups (1 pound) sifted confectioners' (powdered) sugar
2 one-ounce squares unsweetened chocolate, melted
2 tablespoons undiluted evaporated milk or cream
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Cream butter or margarine until soft in medium-size bowl; add sugar gradually, creaming well after each addition.
2. Stir in melted chocolate, evaporated milk or cream, salt, and vanilla; cream together until frosting is smooth and of good spreading consistency.

My Notes: For the cake, I would recommend NOT using waxed paper to line the pans unless you make sure all of it is covered with cake batter. Otherwise, the paper smokes like crazy in the oven. I made the strawberry filling the night before I made the cake so it could chill and give me less work the next day. For the frosting, I used regular milk instead of evaporated milk and it turned out fine. I am not the world's expert on cake making by any means, and this cake still turned out SUPER TASTY!

Cinnamon Biscuit Balls

On our family vacation this summer we were able to see some old friends from our college days. It was so nice to see them after 9 years and my sweet friend, Karen, gave me a little gift. I am now the proud owner of The Bisquick Cookbook- Recipes from Betty Crocker in answer to your requests, printed in 1964. I believe it was her grandmother's and I am honored to have it. It is full of fun recipes using, of course, Bisquick. And the graphics are so cute! 

The following recipe was listed under "Breads a Bride Can Bake". I thought it would make a nice snack for my kids today.

Cinnamon Biscuit Balls

2 cups Bisquick

2/3 cup milk

2 Tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

Heat oven to 450 (hot). Add milk to Bisquick all at once; stir with fork into a soft dough. Beat dough vigorously 20 strokes, until stiff and slightly sticky. Roll dough around on cloth-covered board lightly dusted with flour to prevent sticking. Knead gently 8 to 10 times to smooth up dough. Drop a teaspoonful at a time into a mixture of 2 Tbsp. sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon. Place on lightly greased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 min. Makes 2 doz. small cinnamon balls.

This is all it takes, folks!

My Notes: After kneading the dough I rolled them into balls as well as I could (dough was still a little sticky) or you could just use a spoon to drop it into cinnamon mixture like the directions say. These were pretty good. I wouldn't take them as a dessert to a function, but they definitely passed for my kids' snack time. 

Old Neon Signs

There once was a vintage neon motel sign. It was tall and skinny and had a curvy arrow. It was the most beautiful turquoise (or was it pistachio?) green. I drove past it at least 2 times a week and admired it each and every time. It sat in front of a car dealership even though it was for a motel...that shows how many decades it had stood there. I knew it was special and always planned on stopping to take a picture. I even had plans to enlarge the picture and display it in my home. But that day never came. One day I drove by and the sign was gone. Well, at least everything but the frame. I was devastated. I don't know if it was vandalized or if the car dealership got tired of it blocking their cars on display, but whatever happened a unique piece of our city's history was destroyed. And boy do I wish I had stopped to take that picture. Or even stopped to ask the car dealership if I could buy it.
Lesson learned: STOP FOR NEON SIGNS! Do you have any fabulous neon signs in your city?

I learned my lesson and captured a historic sign in Lexington, KY. This drive-in is still operating!

Vintage Vacation: ROAD TRIP

What could be more vintage than a road trip? Back in the days of yesteryear long road trips were more common. Yes, people took airplanes to exotic places and even within the country, but not so much as they do now. I believe we Americans knew our country a little better because we experienced it through looking out the window of a car rather than flying over it all in a plane. My family and I recently experienced a 3-week cross-country road trip from Washington state to Kentucky and back. There were so many things to see along the way that the travel time was anything but boring. We would have missed so much if we'd taken a plane straight to Kentucky. Here are some sites we took in along the way:

Old Faithful!

Buffalo in Yellowstone

Historic Nauvoo, IL LDS Temple

Historic Dinosaur Park Rapid City, SD

Jackalope at Wall Drugstore in Wall, SD

Cookies from The-Mom-Next-Door

We just returned from a 3-week vacation and I have a lot of things I want to blog about! I saw lots of old things that got me excited: vintage houses, signs, cars, towns, plantations, cemeteries, trees, homesteads, churches and more. I'll be writing more in a few days when I get my pictures loaded onto my computer.

But today I have a simple recipe to share. I needed a treat for tonight and my daughter requested a special chocolate chip recipe I have. This recipe goes way back to when I was a kid! My neighbor's mom made these a lot and we loved them! My mom finally asked for the recipe which is why I am able to make these for my own kids. This recipe is unique because it uses 1/2 vanilla and 1/2 almond extract for the flavoring. It makes a wonderful difference! Taking a bite brings me back 20+ years...how nice!

Chocolate Chip Cookies from Mrs. Mildon

1 cup softened margarine

3/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. almond extract

2 3/4 cups flour

1 tsp. soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 package (12 oz.) chocolate chips

Heat oven to 375. Mix margarine, sugars and egg. Mix in vanilla and almond extract. Stir in flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir in chocolate chips. Put dough balls on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake until light brown, 8-10 minutes. 

Makes 6 dozen cookies.

Dining Room Table Makeover

Here is what my dining room table looked like BEFORE. Sorry, it was the only recent picture I could find and it doesn't even do justice to how abused the top was. My kids have stabbed it with forks, drawn on it with permanent markers...you get the picture. I like distressed furniture, but this just looked ugly. I really wanted a white table to tie in the white from my family room curtains and rug. So I finally took the plunge and painted and antiqued it! I used a tutorial from the blog All Things Thrifty http://www.allthingsthrifty.com/2010/06/dining-room-table-transformation.html and it turned out just how I was hoping! I used more of a white paint than the one in her tutorial though.  I wanted the table to be smooth enough to wipe down and protected enough that it won't stain so I added 3-4 top coats (more for the top of the table and less for the chairs) of Deft Clear Wood Finish in "Gloss" which comes in spray cans. It worked great! Here's the finished product:

P.S. Don't mind the crumbs on the floor...we do actually use this room :-)

I love me some vintage cars!

Our family of five has a tradition that brings both mine and my husband's hobbies together in one event. That event is a local, annual car show & parade. Now, I do not LOVE cars! And I don't love the kind of "muscle" cars that my husband adores. But I do longingly admire some of the beautiful vintage cars, especially those painted in turquoise, seafoam green, robin egg blue, red, etc. And so we are both satisfied as we gaze at each car passing by in the parade. And of course my kids love all the colors, noise, and candy! Here are some of my favorites from this year:

That's my cute 9-year-old daughter posing in front of one of her favorites!