My Dad never baked but he did make a great breakfast. Mary sent this to me today and I wanted to share it with you because it made me feel good. She is such a terrific writer!
My Dad’s Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting by my good friend Mary E. Davies
If you looked in my recipe box, filled with 3×5 cards collected
over decades, you’d see many names. Bob and Eileen’s Mexican Chicken.
Wendy’s Salsa Fish Chowder. Aunt Marilyn’s Aunt Mill’s Dutch Apple Cake. I would
see more names than you, because for me the names don’t have to be written on
the cards. Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting will never be anything other than Dad’s.
Most of his working life, my dad was a minister. He was a wonderful
preacher, but not as good at the political side. I think he took things personally.
Maybe that was why, when I was in junior high, he left the ministry
for some years. He moved the family from rural Michigan to urban Johnson City,
New York. He decided to sell real estate.
My dad was a fine salesman, but something was going on with the
real estate business, because he wasn’t making any money. After a few
months of this, when my previously stay-at-home mom had taken an awful night shift
job in a hospital laundry, we all started to agree with her that dad ought to
pump gas if necessary to bring in that paycheck. We thought we knew what a man
oughta do. As far as I know, Dad ignored us. Within six months, though, we’d
moved again, and he was teaching special ed.
I don’t remember when it dawned on me what a huge pressure a man
took on with a family. In those days, a man was born into the expectation
that he would support at least himself and probably a family by his labor.
Nobody questioned it. Just like when we were really little, in the middle of
the night when we heard the high heels of the murderer tap tap tapping down the hall
to our bedroom, we never questioned that it was “Dad!” we needed to scream
at the top of our lungs. And Dad never doubted that he was the one who had to
get out of bed and protect us. Even if there really were a murderer.
My mom was a housewife who took her apron off before Dad got
home, jumped up to pour his coffee at dinner, taught her kids, not her husband, to
do the dishes. When she got us all grown, she went back to nursing school.
I do understand the flaws in this domestic model, but honestly,
compared to my marital experience, it sometimes looks comfortingly
straightforward. It’s so wearing to negotiate every darn thing. (Believe me, honey, if
you’ll handle the rats and the lightbulbs, I’m all over the kitchen.)
I’m thinking about all this because I’ve been baking cakes
lately and I almost never make one without putting my dad’s chocolate cream cheese
frosting on it. In a variation on those traditional sex roles, my dad was a cake-
baker. Even during that wretched real-estate phase, of which few memories
are good, I remember Friday nights. There was a family TV show called Fair
Exchange, about teenage girls who trade homes to study abroad. We’d arrange the
evening so we could be watching this as a family while eating Crown Cake, a yellow
cake Dad made from scratch. He baked it in an oblong pan so we could eat it as
soon as it cooled enough to hold the frosting, but while it was still lovely
and warm.
Last summer, my sister Marty announced that Buttermilk Cake had
replaced Crown Cake in her repertoire. Her recipe has made a convert of me, with
ever-so-slight variations of my own. But we still frost it with Dad’s
frosting.
Marty’s Buttermilk Cake
Combine 1 1/2 c flour, 1 3/4 c sugar, 1 t baking powder, 1/8 t salt,
1/2 t baking soda. Add 1 1/3 c buttermilk, 1/2 c butter, and 1 t vanilla.
Beat on slow speed for half a minute. Add 2 eggs and beat fast for 2 minutes. Bake
in 2 9” round pans or one 9×13 oblong for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees.
Mary’s Dad’s Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting
Soften 8 ounces of cream cheese. Stir in 1/4 t
salt and 1 t vanilla. Gradually stir in 1 c cocoa and 3 c powdered sugar, adding a
few tablespoons of milk, coffee, or cream as needed for spreadability.
Mary E. Davies writes for the Leader in Port Townsend, WA. three times a month. She bakes
cakes almost as often and has made me more than one amazing German chocolate cake for birthday.
