Baking

So what’s my birthday cake of choice? Chocolate cake with caramel icing. Yum! Most people have tried white cake with caramel icing, but my grandma Elizabeth Yearwood spread that amazing Caramel Icing on chocolate layers, and it was even more delicious. The cake recipe came from my grandma Paulk. I guess I could call this Two-Grandma Cake! Now my mom makes this cake for me every year. The Caramel Icing has a mind of its own, so you never really know what it’s going to look like, but it doesn’t matter to me. It always tastes amazing!

I’m always looking for fun recipes to make with our girls, hoping they will grow up to love cooking as much as I do. This cake is fun because they can’t believe you put all the pretty decorations on the bottom of the pan and the cake still turns out to be gorgeous!

I like a good plain pound cake, but I also like it when I can find a way to make it a little bit different or special. Chocolate pound cake is so simple and so good. This cake is excellent served at room temperature or heated for 15 seconds in the microwave and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

Every February, when Garth’s birthday rolls around, I make this beautiful and delicious cake for him. Last fall, he made some sad statement like, “Only three more months until you make me that awesome German chocolate cake again!” I made the cake the next day. (I know, I’m a sucker.) I double the frosting recipe to frost the entire cake, because my husband likes extra frosting, but one recipe will frost the tops of the layers and do the trick just fine—unless you’re Garth, of course! If you have some left over, the frosting is also good spread on a graham cracker or on brownies (page 198). Okay, it’s also good right off a spoon!

My wedding to Garth was such a wonderful day! We wanted it to be a small, private event, and it was, made possible by the help of our friends and families. Everybody was happy to pitch in and help—everybody except my mom, that is, when I asked her to make the wedding cake! I know, it sounds crazy, but I knew she could do it. My mom taught school for twenty-five years, but there was a period in her life (when she had me, to be exact) when she needed to be home. To earn extra money for the family, she began baking and selling cakes for birthday parties and weddings. She resumed her teaching career when I started first grade and retired in 1991 to run my fan club. (She has since retired from that too, and has gone back to being just Mom.) She came out to Oklahoma the week before the wedding to make a wedding cake that I think turned out to be much bigger than she had been picturing, but it was simply stunning. She gave me the bride and groom decoration from her own wedding day, June 19, 1960, and it literally made the cake. My parents were very happily married for forty-five years, and the only thing that could have made my wedding day better would have been to have Daddy there. I think he was, though. He probably wouldn’t have had any wedding cake, but he would have enjoyed the fried chicken and the barbecue! My finished wedding cake took four electric mixers to make, but we’ve included the regular pound cake recipe here.

My nephew Kyle requests this cake every year on his birthday. You know that if this is a twelve-year-old boy’s favorite cake, it’s gotta be good!

Beth makes this cake every time it’s her turn to take refreshments for her Sunday School class. It’s made in a bundt pan, so it looks beautiful, and the sour cream gives it great flavor and a moist texture. Those little tunnels of brown sugar and nuts are a nice surprise. People always ask her for the recipe.

These muffins are rich and chewy, but they are also a bit delicate, so be sure to use paper liners in the muffin tins and spray them with nonstick spray; otherwise, they will crumble when you peel off the liners. This recipe also makes great mini-muffins; just shorten the baking time by 5 minutes.

These are the best muffins of all time! My friend Lisa brings me quarts of fresh frozen blueberries every year, and I make these yummy muffins until the blueberries run out. Of course, either fresh or frozen blueberries will work in these muffins. This is a classic choice for breakfast; serve with a fresh cup of coffee.

Every summer, my sister Beth fills her freezer with blueberries her family has picked. They eat as many as they can while the berries are in season, share some with friends and family, and then freeze the rest. This quick bread is good made with fresh or frozen blueberries, and Beth uses lemons from her own lemon tree, right in her backyard! (I’m jealous!)

This is great bread for any meal, but one of my favorite ways to eat it is crumbled up in a big bowl with really cold milk. Mmmm! Beth likes it cold with buttermilk. Now that’s just wrong!

My sister hates bananas. Imagine all of the yummy recipes that eliminates for her! Nonetheless, when my niece Ashley makes this banana bread, it’s so good, even Beth will eat it. Maybe it has something to do with all that butter.

This was Daddy’s “I quit smoking” bread. When I was in high school, he stopped smoking for good. Being a man who was never still, he started looking for ways to occupy his hands other than smoking. He bought some of the first bread flour ever to hit the shelves in Monticello, Georgia, and started experimenting. He became known around town for his homemade bread, and often made loaves for bake sales and church suppers.

Biscuits are synonymous with southern cooking. If I had the time, I would have homemade biscuits at every single meal. They should be required in every household! When my niece Ashley was small, one of the things she liked best about going to Granddaddy and Grammy’s house was breakfast. There was usually a conversation the night before about all the awesome things on the menu—bacon, grits, sausage, and, of course, homemade biscuits. Ashley would be up early to help make the biscuits, standing on a chair beside Granddaddy, wearing a big apron and covered with flour.

This is a nice variation on regular sweet potatoes for a Thanksgiving side dish. It’s almost a dessert, it’s so sweet!

I think making someone else’s recipes is a wonderful way to remember them when they’re no longer with us. Garth’s brother Jerry loved my cooking, and he was a good cook himself. He always made me feel he truly appreciated the meals I made for him, and I loved him for it. He had a wonderful smile and a great spirit. Jerry brought these pecans out to the house one day, and I only stopped eating them when they were gone! The butter and sugar make them crunchy, sweet, and rich.

Consider the Spitzenberg. The heirloom variety ripens in mid-October, when Chick Evans buys every one of these local beauties he can get his hands on. Black Diamond Farm supplies the Spitzenbergs, and Chick turns them into a delicious apple cake, spiked with apple brandy. If you can’t find Spitzenbergs, substitute Ida Red, Cortland, or Granny Smith apples.

Pretzels are probably the best snack to enjoy with beer, and if you’re a fan of stout, these pretzels are an especially winning partner. The Pennsylvania Dutch brought their love of pretzels to Penn Yan, where Birkett Mills still turns out the dark, gritty buckwheat flour that gives handrolled pretzels a distinctive, nutty flavor. Since these pretzels don’t require yeast or rising time they can be made very quickly, so start this recipe when hunger strikes. Caution: Baskets of these pretzels served with a peppy horseradish mustard will make you drink more than you may have bargained for.

To accompany the fine and fancy food at Holloway House, there has always been Sally Lunn bread. The recipe dates back to Colonial America, although history tells us there was actually no one named Sally. The words may be a corruption of sol et lune, French for sun and moon, probably used by French immigrants to describe the round shape of the buns, similar to brioche. Sunday suppers in Bloomfield wouldn’t be the same without it.

The local tradition of purple pies began sometime in the 1960s with Al Hodges, who commissioned Irene Bouchard to make a unique grape dessert for the Redwood Restaurant in Naples. Forty years later, thousands come to the village of Naples to celebrate the grape harvest and sample the native grape pies. The robust flavor of Concord grapes makes this unusual pie a treat. You will have to peel each grape, but the delicious results are well worth the effort.