Baking!

Growing up my mother was the town's best baker. Although I grew up in a town of less than 200, that did not make her prize less earned. Whenever bake sales came around, or concession stands, people would call our house early to find out what Mom was baking. Her love of baking carried over to her daughter, who truly believes in the art of baking from scratch. Upon going to college, I was mortified and flabbergasted to realize that most mom's didn't make a 3 layer cake from scratch weekly. She is one of the reasons that I have such a fascination with 50s housewives. (Even though my mother always had a job.)

This past weekend part of my work load ended. I was the president of our history honor's society, and this weekend we had our annual banquet. Very fancy, good food, lots of awards and speeches. I got home Saturday night from the banquet, and needed to unwind. I turned, as would my mother, to baking. (Plus, I had to bake the birthday cake for our church's 4th Sunday luncheon.)

I turned to my "old reliable" cake recipe. Whenever in the past I wanted to impress others

with a good cake or needed to win brownie points with hubby, I have always made a chocolate-peanut butter cake that I learned to make at a Taste of Home Cooking School. Since entering graduate school, I have found that baking and cleaning are fabulous stress relievers. Its a fabulous disorder to have when you can't sleep and thus feel the need to fold laundry or wash dishes.

The cake turned out great, not a crumb left. (Much to dismay of hubby who really wanted another slice after church.) I did, however, cheat a tiny bit on the training/eating healthy and split a slice with hubby and Miss Mia. The cake, however, was well worth the extra workout time!!