The Birthday Cake

John has a birthday (89) in a few days and since rain is forecast for the next two days we opted to bake today.  No it isn’t pretty — but remember I told you up front that I’m not even a relative of Paula Dean or Julia Childs — however, I’ll go ahead to say not one morsel of this cake will be fed to the dog.  When the two of you are eighty-ish just to bake any kind of cake is a chore.

Some years ago one of our daughters had in-law relatives whose name was Nummy.  When she brought this recipe home, John fell in love with the cake and it’s been his birthday choice ever since.  I don’t remember what the name of the cake was when she brought the recipe, but I renamed it the Yummy Nummy.  It is not pretty enough to show — but I doubt all cakes are worthy of photographing either.

Yummy Nummy Ingredients

Maybe yours will be prettier than mine — it’s hard to know when to start spreading the hot icing — it gets cold before you can turn around and then that causes problems.   Another problem is that I forget to protect the cake plate edges and mine always look a sight — doesn’t have one thing to do with the taste.  Try it your family might like it, too.  Wish you could see the vintage plate this cake piece is on.  I bought odds and ends of these little plates at a hardware store that was going out of business more than 40 years ago.  When a dear quilting friend used to visit from Atlanta she would always pick through these and wanted to eat from a different one every time she came.  She’s gone to the great quilting bee on high.

Yummy Nummy Chocolate Cake — makes three layers.

2 cups sugar                                                 1 cup Crisco
5 eggs                                                              1/2 tsp soda
1 cup, plus 2 tbsp buttermilk                1/2 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 cups plain flour                               1 tsp vanilla
Blend sugar and Crisco.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well between each.  Add soda to buttermilk.  Sift baking powder with flour.  Add flour and milk alternately to batter, beginning and ending with flour.  Add vanilla.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

Frosting
2 cups sugar                                                       1/2 cup buttermilk
2 squares chocolate                                        1 stick margarine
1 tsp vanilla
Melt margarine and chocolate squares first. Combine all ingredients, except vanilla. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissolves.  Boil rapidly for a minute and a half without stirring.  Remove from heat.  Add vanilla.  Cool and beat until right consistency to spread.

Yummy Nummy Chocolate Cake