[Sca-cooks] Favorite dessert?

[S CLEMENGER]

I'm teasing, of course, A, although I've not yet met a scotch (and I've tried several) that I've actually liked.  I will, on occasion, drink straight vodka or a good non-scotch whiskey, but that's rare.  I love to tease my scotch-drinking friends--local ones are forever swearing that there's bound to be a variety out there that I like, and I swear that they're wrong.  I even have official "volunteers" to drink the scotch for me, if there's a bottle going around at a peer's circle.
I've actually never been that fond of cake, although your mother's version sounds pretty tasty.  I agree with you, though...I do like chocolate, but it sounds like there were enough other flavors going on in the cake and its presentation to make the chocolate...superfluous.  The family foods that I get a jones for were all either made by my dad or by me--Mom wasn't exactly, uhm, anything much above servicable and edible, food-wise, and was happy to leave the desserts, fancy stuff, holiday cooking, seasonal canning, etc., up to me and Dad.  I understand that my little sister (only 2 when I left) developed a deft hand with a few dishes as well.
Oh my, now I'm missing family comfort food.  Chicken soup, and my dad's spaghetti, and the Weird Family Casserole, and oatmeal with waay too much fresh cream on it to be good for my waistline OR my arteries! ;o)
--Maire, wondering if she can think of a family food that fits into her diet....hmmmmm.....

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius<mailto:adamantius1 at verizon.net> 
  To: Cooks within the SCA<mailto:sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org> 
  Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 9:31 PM
  Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Favorite dessert?



  On Apr 3, 2008, at 9:19 PM, S CLEMENGER wrote:
  > Cailte, scotch only qualifies as engine cleaner....

  I was taught when I was a wee one never to strike a lady nor the daft,  
  so I'll let that pass... but I'll also point out that there's a very  
  broad range of products known as Scotch. It's on a par with condemning  
  all fruit when you don't like unripe gooseberries.

  > And what is "cream cake?"
  > --Maire

  I can't speak for this particular usage, but one possibility is to  
  identify it as a cake leavened with neither egg foam (i.e. sponge  
  cake) nor yeast, but made by starting out by creaming together butter  
  and sugar, then adding eggs and flour (which may or may not have  
  additional chemical leavening added to it). In practice, anything from  
  pound cake to the standard American-type yellow layer cake type  
  entity, or its chocolate or other-flavored counterpart.

  Incidentally, while all this discussion of favorite desserts has been  
  going on,  I've had occasion to note that it is apparently no longer  
  possible to go to a bakery anywhere in the civilized world and  
  purchase an ordinary two-or-three-layer cream cake with buttercream  
  frosting made with actual butter -- you know, the old, archetypal  
  1950's "birthday cake", that isn't an obscene mound of fake  
  buttercream with a few scraps of cake hidden underneath gluey pseudo- 
  fruit jellies, more oily, sugary-gritty Twinkie-filling buttercream,  
  and gum paste that will dissolve your teeth at 30 paces. That, you can  
  buy, or you can buy a box of cake mix and a can of chemical frosting,  
  or you can make it yourself from scratch, but apparently no one feels  
  the return on the investment of time and money is worth it anymore.

  But that, especially after having lost my Mom last autumn, is the  
  dessert ever over the horizon, that I have been craving: for me, it  
  would be a two-layer yellow cake made with about eight eggs, in my  
  mother's twelve-inches-across by two-inches-deep cake pans that were  
  really aluminum beer serving trays, with either chocolate buttercream  
  (eggless) or, even better, chocolate cream-cheese frosting, with  
  either jam or buttercream in between the layers. Traditionally served  
  in a horse-choking wedge that probably weighed two pounds and hung  
  slightly over the edges of a small dessert-plate ;-) Some people  
  preferred the cake itself to be chocolate, and that was good, too, but  
  to me it was gilding the lily.

  Adamantius