Rose's Picture of 'Woody's Cake". Someone punched up the yellow!
Things have changed on my home front. My mother Mina, the creator of the Glorious Charlotte Russe, fell and smashed her shoulder two months ago. Now she is in a free-falling descent and is under 24/7 care. No longer do I pick her up every night to have dinner at my house, or even prepare a dinner to be served at her house. She can hardly move, has no balance, has limited speech and horrible coughing jags while she eats. So what can I do to cheer her up?
Easy. Once a week, we have cake night. Supposedly, I spend a couple hours making a fab new cake recipe and the whole family meets at her house around 9 pm to have cake and light conversation about the previous week. Then, much to the joy of my mother and the caregivers, I leave them one half of the cake. Mom then has dessert for 4 – 5 days, which seems to be the highlight of her day. The first week, I tried the Mary Todd Lincoln’s Vanilla Almond Cake which we all loved.
My good friend Patricia Raines, the Vanilla Queen, recommended a cook book called “Rose’s Heavenly Cakes” by Rose Levy Beranbaum, the cake goddess. After seeing the photos, how could I not resist making a cake from her delicious book? In fact the book is so beautiful, that Christie and I sat down and went thru the book, marking our favorites. Since Mémé (my mother) loves lemons, we decided to make Rose’s majestic Woody’s Lemon Luxury Layer Cake.
My "Woody's" Cake
Now, I am never one to be intimidated, but a 4-page recipe for cake is a little daunting. Beware, Rose Beranbaum is an obsessive baker and minutely precise in her instructions. So although this recipe is intense, there is no room for failure if you follow (to the book) her instructions. However this recipe took me 11 hours to make.
Admittedly, I am a little slow whenever I face a new complex recipe, but as they say, this one took the cake. Plus it was very expensive to make with 23 eggs, 3 bars of good white chocolate and 3 sticks of butter. And I had to cheat since the finished cake needed to be refrigerated for an hour and I had 15 minutes to make it to Mom’s house.
Was it worth the effort? Well, when we tasted our fabulous cake, sighs of ecstasy went around the table. Would I make this cake again if it took half the time? I don’t know. It is truly a great recipe, the butter icing is to die for, but shoot me if I try this again. However next week, Rose’s Chocolate Velvet Fudge Cake sounds promising, and the recipe is only 1.5 pages long.
If you are a cake freak, do buy this book. My only reservation is the picture of Woody’s Lemon Cake does not represent the final product. It is a light yellow and cream colored cake instead of the glowing bright yellow cake with glistening icing shown in the book.
I wouldn’t even dare copying the recipe to put on my blog, since it is a work of art, but instead am leaving you with the excellent Mary Todd Lincoln’s Vanilla Almond Cake. It is quick, easy and the frosting is wonderful.
Mary Todd Lincoln’s Vanilla Almond Cake: Ready in: 1-2 hrs, serves 12
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups sifted cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/3 cup milk
1 cup almonds, finely chopped
6 egg whites, stiffly beaten
White Frosting
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 dash salt
2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions:
Set oven temperature to 375 degrees
Cream together sugar, butter, and vanilla extract.
Stir together the cake flour and baking powder; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. Stir in almonds. Gently fold in the egg whites. Pour into two greased and lightly floured 9 x 1 1/2-inch round baking pans. Bake for 28 to 30 minutes. Cool 10 minutes; remove from pans. Fill and frost with White Frosting.
White Frosting: In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, cream of tartar and salt. Bring mixture to boiling, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
In mixing bowl place egg whites; very slowly pour the hot sugar syrup over, beating constantly with electric mixer until stiff peaks form, about 7 minutes. Beat in vanilla extract.
I hate ants and this is the time of year that they are on their Sunbird migratory path, straight for my honeys. So I, the Dark Lord, have been trying various deterrents to help them decide that my kitchen is a truly hostile environment. So far they’ve ignored the toxic chalk that I can no longer get in Chinatown, and Windex. But Gold Seal Foot Powder is holding the swarming mass back. If that doesn’t work, I’ll try orange, lavender and peppermint essential oils. Unfortunately, since half of the contents of my cabinet are on our kitchen island, the place looks once again, trashed. It’s bad enough that I’m lousy at housekeeping, but when this happens, the disaster grows exponentially.
DOUGH – Prep – 10 minutes, chilling – 1 hour, rolling – 10 minutes, cooking – 10 – 15 minutes The standard ratio is 1 cup of flour for each stick of butter. This makes enough dough for a pie crust. However, if you want the dough to be more buttery, add a ½ stick of butter. If you want the dough to be flakey, add lard. Butter and water must be cold. Add just enough ice cold water to get the dough and butter to stick, usually about ¼ cup, and a dash of salt. You can add sugar (about a tablespoon) to sweeten the dough. Remember to let the dough rest for 2 hours before using. What I usually do is make enough dough for 4 pies in the food processor, and divide in 4 balls. The other 3 doughs are put in the freezer wrapped in plastic wrap or a plastic bag.
Custard
In a small sauce pan, bring milk/cream to a boil and remove immediately from heat. In a bowl beat egg yolks, whole egg, almond extract and slowly add the sugar. Once mixture is light and fluffy gradually beat in the scalded milk/cream combination.
I can still remember it to this day. It was a beautiful can, brown, blue, green and and gold curlicues with elegant French script. In fact, it was too beautiful to be called a can; Boîte de Conserve would be a more honorable description. 
When asked “What is your favorite dessert?” my answer is spontaneous. Cream puffs, those exquisite little morsels of pastry and sweet whipped cream. And one of the best things about serving cream puffs is to hear the “oh’s” and “ah’s” when they are presented at a dessert table. They are so simple to make with inexpensive ingredients, and really get the bang for the buck. There is nothing better to see than the eyes of children when they catch sight of the cream puffs, and the adults that turn into kids while stuffing the little darlings into their mouths.
The title says it all: A great weekend of food, fun and friends. How do I begin? I knew that on Sunday we would have a wonderful time. October is grape harvest time and our friends, Joan and Milt Barber, have a tiny but delicious little vineyard in the Santa Cruz Mountains near their lovely casual home that overlooks the valley. Milt, who is now retired, has spent years cosseting his vines that produce mostly sweet chardonnay grapes (I always feel guilty when I pop a few in my mouth) that are purchased by the 
After many years of trying different places to live, I finally decided to move to the San Francisco bay area and settle down. So of course, the fickle finger of fate had me fall in love with a Colorado Mountain man and move out to Colorado Springs. During those days, Colorado Springs had beautiful scenery, lovely woods, Air Force boys, no jobs and even worse, NO GOOD FOOD. To me, living this was dining hell. I only found one passable restaurant and it closed up four months later.