Joy's Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake with Mocha Butter Frosting

Marilyn’s mother Joy had seven children. When her husband died in his early forties, she went to work to feed and support them, first as a waitress and later, owning her own café. None of her children ever went hungry and I quickly realized during the short time I knew her that she was a wonderful cook. Former customers of Joy’s café still remember her home-made cakes and pies. Here is one of her personal favorites.

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 4 tbsp cocoa
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1 ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup mayonnaise

Directions

Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Stir in mayonnaise, water and vanilla. Mix well and pour into two 9” greased and floured layer cake pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Spread with mocha butter frosting.

Mocha Butter Frosting

Ingredients

• 1/3 cup butter
• 4 cups confectioner’s sugar, sifted
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp light cream
• ¼ cup cocoa
• ½ tsp instant coffee

Directions

Cream the butter, adding half the sugar, cocoa and all of the instant coffee until well blended. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla. Blend in remaining sugar and cocoa, adding enough cream to bring the frosting to spreadable consistency.

Eric'sWeb

Kansas Dirt Cake - a recipe

Here is a recipe I found on the web. The author (unknown) suggests that you serve it in a flower pot complete with gummy worms and artificial flowers. Sounds gummy, I mean yummy!

2 pkgs. vanilla instant pudding
2 ½ cups milk
1 8 oz package of cream cheese
½ stick of butter
¾ cup powdered sugar
12 oz. Cool Whip
1 pkg. Oreo Cookies

Mix the vanilla pudding and milk in a medium size-mixing bowl. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Mix cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar together in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the vanilla pudding and mix until thoroughly blended. Add the carton of Cool Whip and mix until blended.

Line 9 x 13 in. pan with Oreo cookie crumbs. (I use 2 Oreo crusts and mash the crusts up with a fork. You need one crust for the bottom of the pan and one to put over the pudding mixture.) Pour pudding mixture into the pan and spread the rest of the Oreo crumbs on top. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Eric'sWeb

Mother's Fresh Blueberry Pie - a weekend recipe

There are three blueberry bushes in my parent’s backyard in Vivian, Louisiana. Each year, blueberries fill their branches and my mother provided Brother Jack and me with countless jars of blueberry jam, and fresh blueberries for pies, etc. When Jack and I cleaned out the house last week in anticipation of selling it, Marilyn gave me one specific order.

“Bring home a cutting from one of your Mother’s blueberry bushes.”

Inclement weather accompanied us to Louisiana and back again. The tarp used to cover the bed of the truck ripped in the wind long before we made it to Atlanta, Texas, our cuttings whipped and torn by the wind by the time we reached Oklahoma. I transplanted my cuttings into Oklahoma earth, damp from days of rain. Will they survive? I am keeping my fingers crossed.

While sorting through a box containing numerous cookbooks and many individual recipes, I came across this recipe for fresh blueberry pie. I hope that you can find blueberries as tasty as Mom’s. If you can, you are in luck.


· 1/3 cup flour
· ½ cup sugar
· ½ tsp. cinnamon
· 4 ½ cups fresh blueberries
· 9-inch unbaked pie shell
· 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
· ½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
· 1 cup flour
· ½ cup butter or margarine

Combine 1/3 cup flour, sugar, cinnamon and blueberries. Mix well and put into pie shell. Drizzle with lemon juice. Combine brown sugar and 1-cup flour. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse meal.

Spread topping over berries. Bake for 30 minutes at 425 degrees, and then cover with foil and continue baking for 20 minutes more. Enjoy.

Eric's Web

Mama's Pecan Pie

My grandparents had a giant pecan tree in their back yard and every year they would share its bounty with anyone that asked. My mother always got a few bags of pecans and would use them to make her famous pecan pie on special occasions. Her recipe is simple, its preparation easy but take my word there is nothing much better tasting in the world!

Mama’s Pecan Pie

1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup dark corn syrup
½ teaspoon salt
3 eggs, whole
pastry for one pie
1 cup pecans, broken

Beat sugar and eggs until thick. Add corn syrup, pecans, vanilla and salt. Mix well and then pour into a pastry-lined pie pan. Bake at 300 degrees for about an hour or until filling is firm. Wonderful when served hot with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

Eric's Website

Brandy Ice - a recipe

Junior’s, in the basement of the Oil Center Building, is one of my favorite Oklahoma City restaurants. They serve choice steaks and strong drinks. Brandy Ice, one of their after dinner drinks, is a favorite of mine. In a recent trip to Junior’s, a waitress gave Marilyn and me their recipe. It’s simple but wonderful.

1 pint Vanell ice cream
¼ cup dark Crème de Cocoa
1/3 cup brandy

Blend in blender until smooth then serve in a brandy snifter

Eric's Website

Peaches in Champagne - a recipe

During the almost six months that I spent in the boonies of Vietnam, I ate many C-Ration meals. Most of the foods, contained in small, Army green tin cans, were very forgettable. There were only two entrées that could even remotely be described as “good” - the peaches and the pound cake. Unfortunately, they were in short supply and never came in the same box.

I still love both peaches and pound cake and recently found a wonderful recipe that includes one of these ingredients. It’s in a cookbook called Recipes from an Old New Orleans Kitchen by Suzanne Ormond, published in 1988 by Pelican Publishing Company, Inc. Here is Suzanne’s recipe for Peaches in Champagne.

6 large fresh peaches
24 whole cloves
1 cup sugar
1 bottle chilled champagne
Water
6 sherbet glasses
½ cup Napoleon Brandy

Peel peaches and leave them whole. Press 4 cloves into each peach. Place peaches in a large saucepan. Pour sugar over them and cover them with water. Bring peaches to a boil. Add brandy. Lower heat and simmer until peaches are tender to a fork. Drain peaches and remove cloves. Put peaches in covered bowl and refrigerate for 4 to 6 hours. Place peaches in a sherbet glass and fill glass with chilled champagne. Serve with cookies. Serves 6.

Eric's Website

Pecan Charmante - a recipe

Marilyn did it again. She found a magnificent old cookbook filled with wonderful recipes. The name of the book is New Orleans Creole Recipes, written by Mary Moore Bremer. The original was published in 1932.

The copy we have is the nineteenth edition published in 1962. Our initial browsing of the book revealed an appetizing dessert called Pecan Charmante and Marilyn couldn’t resist whipping up a batch. If I’m any judge, the final product was awesome and reminded me of what an early-day candy bar probably tasted like.

Ideafinder.com defines a candy bar as “A confection made with sugar and often flavoring and filling with a shape that is longer than it is wide.” If this is so, Pecan Charmante should have become a famous candy bar. It didn’t, as far as I know, but here is your chance to taste it anyway. In my mind, it’s a scrumptious delight.

Pecan Charmante

Cream one cup of sugar with one stick of butter. Spread this over fifteen large graham crackers; sprinkle on this one cup of chopped pecan nuts. Put in moderate oven and bake for eleven minutes.

Hey, I said it was simple!

Eric's Website