Mrs. Lanier’s Buttermilk Sheet Cake

On a yellowed scrap of paper torn from a sheet of the thin and inexpensive stationery you could buy in pads at the five and dime when I was a boy is a recipe written down for Jerri by Mrs. Lanier of Atlanta, Kansas. It’s probably the same paper that she used to write letters to her daughter Joyce. Joyce was married to Merle, one of Jerri’s twin brothers.

Atlanta is a small town, but it still has two churches, a United Methodist Church and a Christian Church. The Laniers belonged to the Christian Church, and you can be sure that Mrs. Lanier made her Buttermilk Sheet Cake for a lot of potlucks. For one thing, it’s delicious; for another, you can make it in a ranch house in the Flint Hills of Kansas with no electricity without tiring your arms beating the batter.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup oleomargarine
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup water
2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 T cocoa powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 large eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
1 tsp. baking soda

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 400º.

Bring the oleomargarine, oil and water to a boil in a small saucepan. Sift the sugar, flour, cocoa and salt together into a mixing bowl. Pour the boiling liquid into the dry ingredients and beat well with a wooden spoon.

Beat the eggs with a fork or whisk until lemon colored. Then beat in the buttermilk and baking soda. Blend the egg and milk mixture into the cake batter and stir just until it is well mixed. You will have a thin batter that looks like milk chocolate.

Grease a 9 by 11-inch cake pan. Pour in the batter and bake it for 23 minutes on the center shelf of the oven. Test for doneness with a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, the cake is done. If not, bake for two or three more minutes and test again.

Cool and frost with your favorite chocolate icing. You might want to try this very simple recipe for Good and Easy Chocolate Frosting.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup granulated sugar
4 T butter
4 T milk
1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

PROCEDURE:

Stirring continuously, bring the butter, milk and sugar to a rolling boil in a small saucepan over moderate heat. Boil for 30 seconds. Remove the pan from the heat and quickly stir in the chocolate chips. Stir until the chips are melted. Cool and use.

NOTES: If necessary, return the pan to the heat to help melt the chips, but do not bring the frosting back to a boil. Add a dash of salt if you make this frosting with unsalted butter.

I normally avoid using oleomargarine for anything, but Mrs. Lanier was from Kansas, where even today restaurants serve oleo and call it butter. Jerri told me that the cake recipe did not work with butter, and I have learned to trust her. It definitely works with oleo. Try it.

Buttermilk White Bread

My mother used many different liquids to make bread. Water of course, but also potato water she saved when she boiled potatoes, milk, sour milk and buttermilk. Each of them changed the texture and flavor of the breads, but we devoured them all. For us, bread really was the staff of life. I think that we had bread for every meal except those when we had pancakes or waffles.

If we exclude the cinnamon rolls and sticky buns that she made with egg batter doughs, my favorite breads were the ones she made with sour milk or buttermilk.

Buttermilk adds a subtle flavor to bread and I like the texture. This has become my “basic” white bread recipe, at least when buttermilk is available. Whenever possible I like to use hard wheat bread flour, but the recipe works with all purpose flour as well.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups buttermilk
1 package or 2 heaping tsp. active dry yeast
2/3 cup water
2 T butter
2 T sugar
1 1/2 tsp. salt
5 to 6 cups white flour

PROCEDURE:

Put 2/3 cup warm water (90º to 110º) in a cup with 1/4 teaspoon sugar and stir in the yeast. While the yeast is proofing, warm the buttermilk to about 110 degrees and pour it into a large bowl. Stir in the salt and sugar. Melt the butter and add it to the buttermilk.

Stir in the flour one cup at a time, beating thoroughly between additions. After three cups of flour have been stirred in, mix in the yeast. Continue adding flour one cup at a time until the dough becomes stiff and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Let the dough rest in the bowl for five minutes, then scrape it out on to a well floured work surface with a spatula and use the spatula to turn the dough to coat it with flour before starting to knead it. Powder your hands with flour, and knead the dough until it is smooth and satiny, about seven to eight minutes.

If you have never kneaded dough, you should check out Wikihow.com for an excellent lesson on kneading or go to Thekitchn.com for a good video showing you how to do it. Actually, doing both is a good idea.

Return the dough to a greased bowl, roll it to cover the surface lightly with grease, and cover the bowl with a damp towel. Let the dough rise until it has doubled in bulk. Punch it down and knead it on a lightly floured work surface five or six strokes, then divide the dough into two parts. Form the halves into loaves and put them into greased 9 x 5 inch pans.

Cover the pans with the damp cloth and set them in a warm draft-free place to let the loaves rise. Preheat the oven to 375º once the loaves have started rising.

When the the dough has risen to slightly above the top of the pans, put them on the center shelf in the oven. After 10 minutes, reduce the heat to 350º and bake 25 to 30 minutes longer.

After 25 minutes, remove the loaves from the pans and tap on the bottom of the loaves. They are done when they sound hollow. Bake an extra five minutes or so on the oven rack if necessary.

Remove the loaves from the oven and cool them on a rack. Slice with a serrated knife and serve with butter, jam or whatever!

NOTES: If there is no buttermilk in the house, make sour milk with two tablespoons vinegar and enough milk to make two cups. Mom greased her bread bowls with lard, vegetable shortening, butter, oleomargarine or even bacon grease. They all work, though you may notice slight differences in flavor.