Our "family cake" is famous. We inherited the recipe from my grandmother and we haven't done a different cake ever since. This cake has been my constant companion for endless birthdays and meetings. When I first went to lunch at my boyfriend' house, I brought the "family cake" and I'm sure this had a lot to do with me being accepted as part of his family. There is something different and truly special about this cake, about its soft texture and its sweet (but not so sweet) taste.
Like all good cakes, it has a "key ingredient". We don't keep our recipe as a "family secret" but we won't reveal the "key ingredient" until everyone has tasted the cake. We have a reason for it: as soon as we reveal it, everyone puts ugly faces exclaiming how gross and weird it is to use that for a cake. Most don't believe us, they think we still keep a secret, and hence, never try what we do at home.
The key ingredient is (drums roll, please): cooking oil. That's right, cooking oil. No, we don't "fry" the cake as someone once dared to suggest (he was weird, not us). We simply use cooking oil (vegetable oil) instead of butter. And it might be not like that where you are,- I have seen many online cake recipes using cooking oil- but here, a cake without butter simply strike many housewives and cookers. That's why, strange as it sounds, the recipe has remained exclusive for all this year; as my family tradition. A tradition which now could be questioned.
With a serious cooking (vegetable) oil shortage and with my nephew' birthday coming soon; the cake has been a worrisome topic at home. My sister tried making a cake using butter and it tasted weird. Like bad- weird. Perhaps she did something wrong or more likely, we are simply not used to cakes made with butter. Let's face it: for us butter and cake don't go in the same sentence. Those cakes are heavier and look way too yellow. The second possibility is to buy one; but that's an insult to my "cake Masters" (self given title, that's for sure) family.
While we search, supermarket after supermarket, popular markets and convenient stores for a bottle of cooking oil (we need even less than that for one cake); my nephew plays around the house wearing a weird blue-red outfit. He screams: "Don't worry, I'm going up there to save you!" - then he raise his arms and makes the fumiest sound ever. For him there are no shortages, or crisis, or revolution. For him there is just a world as big as our home, filled with "people in danger" (actually, toys in danger) which he must save.
He's clueless (and he should be clueless) about all those things we adults worry about; the things - we hope - he will know by asking us for old stories or by reading them in history books.
And he probably won't even care whether his cake is the usual "family cake" or not; as long as it has a Spider-man figure and four little candles on top.
PS: The image was taken from here. No copyright infringement intended
Like all good cakes, it has a "key ingredient". We don't keep our recipe as a "family secret" but we won't reveal the "key ingredient" until everyone has tasted the cake. We have a reason for it: as soon as we reveal it, everyone puts ugly faces exclaiming how gross and weird it is to use that for a cake. Most don't believe us, they think we still keep a secret, and hence, never try what we do at home.
The key ingredient is (drums roll, please): cooking oil. That's right, cooking oil. No, we don't "fry" the cake as someone once dared to suggest (he was weird, not us). We simply use cooking oil (vegetable oil) instead of butter. And it might be not like that where you are,- I have seen many online cake recipes using cooking oil- but here, a cake without butter simply strike many housewives and cookers. That's why, strange as it sounds, the recipe has remained exclusive for all this year; as my family tradition. A tradition which now could be questioned.
With a serious cooking (vegetable) oil shortage and with my nephew' birthday coming soon; the cake has been a worrisome topic at home. My sister tried making a cake using butter and it tasted weird. Like bad- weird. Perhaps she did something wrong or more likely, we are simply not used to cakes made with butter. Let's face it: for us butter and cake don't go in the same sentence. Those cakes are heavier and look way too yellow. The second possibility is to buy one; but that's an insult to my "cake Masters" (self given title, that's for sure) family.
While we search, supermarket after supermarket, popular markets and convenient stores for a bottle of cooking oil (we need even less than that for one cake); my nephew plays around the house wearing a weird blue-red outfit. He screams: "Don't worry, I'm going up there to save you!" - then he raise his arms and makes the fumiest sound ever. For him there are no shortages, or crisis, or revolution. For him there is just a world as big as our home, filled with "people in danger" (actually, toys in danger) which he must save.
He's clueless (and he should be clueless) about all those things we adults worry about; the things - we hope - he will know by asking us for old stories or by reading them in history books.
And he probably won't even care whether his cake is the usual "family cake" or not; as long as it has a Spider-man figure and four little candles on top.
PS: The image was taken from here. No copyright infringement intended