THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 16, 1997 TAG: 9701160262
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 50 lines
What I'm wondering is, are we ever going to get shut of that recipe for red velvet cake?
The better part of a day was spent last week in my trying to get the recipe down pat to pass to you.
That recipe - or receipt, if you want to put on airs - is a formula that is about as easily understood as Einstein's theory of relativity, which, as I understand it, boils down to the discovery that time spent with your relatives is twice as long as time with anybody else.
Once directions for mixing the cake part were on paper in fractions of a pound and ounces of liquids, pinches of this and that, we had to supply details for the icing.
They proved as abstruse as those for whomping up the cake batter.
At last, I thought, the pesky chore was done. But next morning, first thing, five readers called to lament that the recipe failed to specify the size pans in which to bake the cake.
Can you believe that?
Here I was fearful that the cake might have blown up somebody's stove overnight, and they were complaining of my failure to specify sizes of the cake pans!
Off hand, I couldn't recall ever reading any recipe that denoted what size pan to employ. Is it that you all hold me to a higher standard than you would even Escoffier or Martha Stewart?
All right, here is my well-considered answer.
Crawl around under the kitchen counter to retrieve pans, taking care not to bump your noggin, and find two pans into which the ingredients will fit - and there you have it.
A child playing bake-a-cake in a sand pile could figure that out.
Calling from Chesapeake, Ann Ramsey reported that she had tried the recipe and that it had worked well. What a vast relief her call proved to be.
She used 9-inch cake pans.
Ever resourceful in your service, I called to check the size with Eva Hennage, the 82-year-old Montross resident who supplied the recipe.
``Why, you use regular cake pans, that's all,'' she said. ``Most people use an 8-inch or 9-inch pan. I'm looking at mine right now, and it probably is a 9-inch pan.''
``Eva,'' I asked, just to make sure, ``is that a 9-inch deep cake pan?''
``No, that would be a mighty steep cake. It's 9 inches across.''
So, it seemed we were done.
But a little while ago, a reader telephoned with one last question.
``What size pan do you use for a flat cake?''