Making desserts

Once in my foolish youth my brother dared me to eat a whole can of cherry pie filling.  And I did!

When I was little I learned to make Jello. (For a variation, you can put it into the freezer instead of the fridge, so it comes out icy!) Then IU learned to bake cakes from Duncan Hines mixes:  they had flavours like burnt sugar!  I haven't done that in recent years.  I read that when they first came out with these instant cake mixes back in the '50s, the recipe originally didn't require adding an egg.  But the marketers figured out that they should include the egg so housewives wouldn't feel like they were "cheating" on dessert, because this way it seemed more like a true "recipe."

Today I make superb gingerbread.  I use a recipe from Craig Claiborne's New York Times Cookbook.  The first thing you do is add vinegar to the milk and put it aside to make it curdle.  The hardest part is "creaming," where you add the sugar to the shortening little by little, mixing it in so the result will be smooth.  I figured out that before measuring out the molasses, the smart thing is to put a little oil in the measuring cup and spread it around so that it covers the whole inner surface.  That way, little of the molasses will stick to the measuring cup afterward!

With a whisk, I can take on the world!