Say it with something homemade, even if it's a ski slope

I am so glad I didn't inherit my mother's cake-baking genes. This woman can make homemade bread with a smell so wonderful a line forms around the block (I mean that figuratively - she lives on a lake so there is no "block"), grow an enviable organic garden and tell you what region most coffees comes from upon tasting them, but when it comes to making cakes, she is all thumbs - er, ski slopes.

I don't know how she does it, but across multiple homes, ovens, cake pans and recipes, each homemade cake she attempts is sloped on one end. The woman can even do it with brownies.

I've watched her from start to finish before, just to see if she kind of, you know, slams the pan into the oven with greater force than any other dish, but no, she's just talented at making really tasty cakes that have a whole lot of batter on one side and not so much on the other.

Once, she produced a cake so diagonal that she covered it in green icing, poked a hole in one end and added a flag made from a toothpick in front of the hole. "It's a putting green!" she exclaimed proudly upon presenting the cake to my stepfather for his birthday. He just shook his head. He knows better than that.

My cakes do not turn out this way, thank goodness. But just in case yours usually do - or if you always resort to boxed cake mixes and canned frostings (that's "icing" to us Southerners), give this homemade yellow cake and chocolate frosting a go. If you have an electric mixer, from start to finish this will only take you an hour, which is about the same length of time a boxed mix will take. Believe me, you can tell the difference between a homemade one and a store-bought one or mix, especially on the second day, when this golden cake becomes even moister. (Is that a word?)

You don't have to drag out the layer cake pans if you're making this for someone special: a sheet cake or cupcakes will be just as tasty. And yes, it does call for butter-flavored shortening, but don't try to substitute an equal shortening-for-butter ratio. Shortening is 100 percent fat, and butter is not, so you will need to look up the substitution method --- though I highly recommend using the shortening. When in doubt, full fat is best.


Yellow Layer Cake
Ingredients:
- 3/4 cup butter flavored shortening
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 cup plain flour
- 1 cup self-rising flour
- 5 eggs
- 1 cup milk
- 1 T. vanilla flavoring

Directions:
Cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Sift together plain and self-rising flour and set aside. Add eggs to sugar mixture and mix well. Add flour and milk alternately. Add vanilla. Pour into a greased and floured 9x13 cake pan, three 8- or 9-inch round cake pans or into a muffin tin with cupcake liners. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.


Perfect Chocolate Frosting
Ingredients:
- 1 6-ounce package semi-sweet chocolate morsels
- 1/2 cup half and half
- 3/4 cup butter
- 2 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

Directions:
Combine chocolate morsels, half and half and butter in a saucepan; cook over medium heat, stirring until chocolate melts. Remove from heat, add confectioners' sugar and mix well. Set saucepan in ice or ice water (important) and beat until frosting holds its shape and loses its gloss. Add a few drops of half and half if need to make spreading consistency. Note: This frosting needs to cool completely, so you cannot "hurry" it. Keep beating until it is glossy.