There’s an old pun that I appreciate about the father with two daughters, Katherine and Edith.
Both were being courted by a young suitor. After weeks of dating one then the other, the father tired of the indecision. He called the young man in and said, “Make up your mind. You can’t have your Kate and Edith, too.”
Sorry, but it does lead us into our first topic for today, Cake Trivia.
Ancient Egypt was actually home to the world’s first large-scale bakeries. Those bakers were the first recognized to use yeast for making cakes rise before baking them on hot stones. There was a concern about getting their pet snakes too close to the ovens. One wouldn’t want a scorched asp.
The Romans incorrectly called small bread loaves cakes; they had no sugar and honey was a scarce commodity.
A big breakthrough in cake baking occurred in the mid-19th century as yeast was replaced with the introduction of both baking powder and baking soda. Both were more effective as raising agents.
Temperature-controlled ovens also brought consistency which yielded improved baking quality.
My wonderful late mother-in-law made a super “German Chocolate Cake.” However, she didn’t know that the cake had nothing to do with Germany.
In 1852 in Dorchester, Mass., Sam German (an Englishman by trade) was an employee of the Walter Baker Chocolate Co.
Sam developed a milder, sweeter baking chocolate that the bittersweet chocolate then in use. His product was first known as “German’s Sweet Chocolate Cake” in recognition of his invention, but the possessive was later dropped from the tasty delight leaving it with the name we know today.
Sam would have been proud of Virginia’s version. And keep in mind Eileen Barton’s delightful 1950s’ song, “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Have Baked a Cake.”
- Doug Larson determined: “March is a month that helps to use up some of the bad weather that February just couldn’t fit in.”
- Then who’s listening? Experts state that about four-fifths of the talking that you do in a day will be to yourself.
- From the reservoir of strange book titles comes this one I might have written while in the Army, “Nuclear War; What’s In It For You” (1982).
- Some things continue to amaze me. About 40,000 Americans participate in “fantasy fishing leagues.”
- The concept of a tunnel beneath the channel between England and France was first conceived in 1802. A French mining engineer envisioned a passageway lit by oil lamps and traversed by horse-drawn coaches. He included an artificial island halfway in between as a place to change horses — envisioning changing horses in the middle of the stream. No information was offered on clean up.
Jim Willard, a Loveland resident since 1967, retired from Hewlett-Packard after 33 years to focus on less trivial things. He calls Twoey, his bichon frisé-Maltese dog, vice president of research for his column.
