A Sponge Cake with Fresh Strawberries and Whipped Cream

It's strawberry season again, y'all! Even though the weather here has been much cooler than normal, strawberries remind me that springtime is indeed here to stay.

When I told Mom that I wanted to make a cake for a friend's belated birthday, she suggested that I try this sponge cake recipe with fresh strawberries and whipped cream. It's not your typical icing laden and often chocolate birthday cake, but it made sense in this scenario because I wasn't giving it to Charlie on his birthday and Sandy doesn't eat chocolate. Think of this cake as the birthday version of angel food cake, strawberries, and cool whip--richer and more decadent but still fresh and light.

This hot milk sponge cake recipe comes from my great, great aunt Ollie by way of my great grandmother Anne. My grandmother Eleanor then gave the recipe to my mom in the 1970s, telling her that the recipe was over 100 years old at that time. I cherish recipes with histories because I enjoy feeling connected to the women in my family who have come before me.

Ingredients:
1 cup AP flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 cup hot milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 carton strawberries
2 tsp sugar
1 cup whipping cream
2 Tsp powder sugar
1 tsp vanilla

The well used copy of the recipe that my grandmother wrote for my mother, the title reads: "Cake Aunt Ollie (Mother's cake)." 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Measure out all of the ingredients through the vanilla, making sure to cleanly separate the eggs. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

Beat egg yolks until they form stiff peaks. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks and the sugar together until they reach a pale yellow color. Alternately add the flour mixture and milk to the egg and sugar mixture. Add vanilla. Fold in the egg whites. Line a 8x8 or 9x9 baking pan with tin foil. Do not grease the pan or the foil. Bake for 25 minutes.

For the topping:
Cut up the strawberries into your desired size. Mix 2 teaspoons of sugar in with the strawberries. Begin the whipping cream on a low speed in the mixer increasing the speed as it thickens. Add 2 tablespoons of sifted powdered sugar and a teaspoon of vanilla to the whipped cream.

Let the cake cool and turn it out onto the serving plate. It is not the prettiest cake uncovered as you can see above, so cover the top with whipping cream. Then, cut the cake and serve it with strawberries.

This was the first time that I have made this cake on my own, and although I did not taste it, I received rave reviews about it from those who had a piece or four.

Happy baking, y'all!

A Fried Chicken Birthday Supper

If you asked Steve for a list of his favorite foods, I'm pretty positive fried chicken would be at the top of that list, so I knew fried chicken would be the perfect supper for this Michigan guy's first birthday in the deep South. I had a little bit of a problem though, I'd only tried my hand at frying boneless chicken once before, and they had tasted good but weren't too pretty. So, my mother kindly offered to stop by on the way through town and help me with my first experience of frying an entire bone-in chicken.

Steve's favorites: fried chicken, cornbread, mashed potatoes, and snap beans

With instructions from Mom, I bought the smallest pre-cut chicken that they had at Publix along with a galloon of buttermilk.

Soaking the chicken over night in
the refrigerator is best if you have time.

The night before, I put the chicken in a large bowl, covered it with buttermilk, and added 1 tablespoon salt, 1 teaspoon pepper, and quite a few dashes of tabasco sauce. I covered the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge until the next afternoon. Mom-wisdom says that soaking the chicken overnight is key to having moist fried chicken, and your choice of buttermilk or regular sweet milk determines the thickness of your crust. Buttermilk makes the thicker crust.

Let the buttermilk almost all of the excess
 buttermilk come off the chicken.

That afternoon, we removed the chicken from fridge and took each piece out of the buttermilk. Placing the chicken pieces in a stainer over the sink let the excess buttermilk run off the chicken. Mom warned that if there is too much buttermilk still on the chicken with it dredged and fried, the breading will side right off the skin.

Making sure the chicken skin is
 completely covered is key to a good crust.

When it came to dry ingredients for the dredge, we combined:
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper

We took the chicken piece by piece and dredged it in the dry ingredients making sure to cover the chicken completely in the flour, so that the chicken skin was no longer visible. When the dry ingredients got too gummy from the liquid or more breading was needed, we simply added more flour, salt, and pepper in the same ratio.

After all of the pieces were dredged. We let them sit for 10 minutes, so the breading had time to dry out some, which made a crispier crust.

Chicken is ready to be fried

Of course I used my trusty cast iron dutch oven for frying the chicken. We used an entire  48 oz bottle of peanut oil and heated the oil to 360 degrees F on a cooking/candy thermometer. (If you do not have thermometer, you can test the oil with a tiny bit of water or flour. If the oil spits and bubbles when either is added, your tempature should be about right). We added the first batch of chicken which brought the tempature down to 350 degrees F, and we kept the tempature as close to 350 as possible throughout the frying process. We fried most of the pieces for 10 minutes on each side for a total of 20 minutes of cooking time, but the two breast pieces were significantly larger and took a total of 30 minutes to cook. 

 When the chicken is first added

After flipping the chicken 

The chicken is done when the internal temperature measures 170 degrees F for the breasts and 180 degrees for the other pieces.  

We removed the chicken from the oil and let it cool for a few minutes on a paper towel lined plate. 

It was a success birthday dinner that everyone enjoyed and a pretty fun time for my first experience frying an entire chicken (even the liver at Steve's request). 

I also made a deliciously decadent birthday cake using Martha Stewart's recipe for yellow butter cake and her chocolate frosting. 

Happy Birthday 26th birthday to Steve!