Peanut Butter Icing on Lynden's Sixteenth Birthday

Well, it's birthday cake season again (we have several within a few short weeks early summer)and I've got Stella's Wackie Cake in my oven. While it's baking, I went in search of a recipe for Peanut Butter Icing - I recall doing this every year. The cake recipe is easy to find, as it's hand-written in an old Contestoga Composition Book, "property of Bryan Hollinger". Somewhere along the line it became mine, and I spent the summer of 1979 jotting down my favorite recipes from home to take with me to college. Number 15 in my contents on the first page shows "Wackie Cake".

This afternoon I put on my Williams Sonoma black and white ticking apron, a birthday gift from my son Joe and prepared to whip up this delectable cake for Lynden's 16th birthday. Joe sat across the island from me searching thru my digital archives for photos to turn into a slide show to commemorate Lynden's day. It's become a family tradition to show a slide show of the celebrant on our big screen in loft - projecting onto a white, king-sized sheet stretched across the upper railings. I think the first one was for Layne's 16th, and when it was complete I sat and watched it over and over before she came, tears streaming down my face. Nothing like the past going by bigger than life!

Back to my search.. the first place I looked for the icing recipe was on my blog, as I thought I'd been doing a pretty good job of posting my old favorites. But alas, it was missing, so here it is...

Thoroughly combine the following in a mixing bowl:

1/2 cup softened butter

1 cup creamy peanut butter

Wipe down the sides of the bowl and mix until there are no lumps, then on slow speed, add a little milk, a little sugar, in small portions at a time, mixing until smooth. Use the following proportions:

3 tablespoons milk

2 cups confectioner's sugar

Beat with happy abandon until smooth, adding a bit more milk to improve spreading consistency.

POSTSCRIPT: We just finished making Grandma Stella's Chocolate Wackie Cake for Layne's nineteenth birthday. She's working at the pool all day and only has a 45 minute break to celebrate, so we're taking pizza, vegies and cupcakes to her. With my niece Maya's help, we made cupcakes and put a mini Reeses peanutbutter cup in each one, frosted them with peanutbutter icing, then decorated them with buckeyes. Yum! Can't wait for dinner - Happy Birthday Layneb!

stella's chocolate wackie cake

Dinner is cooking on the stove - it's Lorelei's birthday, and we're having boneless porkchops from the local butcher, rubbed with dill and garlic salt, mashed potatoes - at her request, fresh steamed green beans, and chocolate cake (my grandmother's wackie cake recipe) with peanut butter icing for dessert.

WACKIE CAKE

This recipe is Grandma Stella's - no changes, just pure, unadulterated, fattening, delicious, yummy chocolate!  Delicious with peanutbutter icing.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 13 x 9" cake pan with butter, and dust with flour.

In a large mixing bowl, add:

3 cups flour

2 cups white sugar

2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

4 tbs. cocoa powder

 

Mix with a fork or hand beater.  In a large liquid measuring cup, combine the following, then whip into the dry ingredients by hand:

1 cup salad oil

3 tbs. vinegar

2 tsp. vanilla

2 cups cold water

Fold gently into cake pan and bakd 30-35 minutes, or until the smell of chocolate overcomes you!