Oh, the Places We See . . . » NaBloPoMo

Favorite chocolate cake gets snapped up at Holiday Helpings!

Rusha Sams — Fri, 15 Nov 2013 18:00:51 +0000

If there’s one cake that we’ve baked a hundred times, it would have to be our favorite: Hershey® Bar Cake. So, when the bake sale in tandem with the Holiday Helpings event at our church, First United Methodist in Knoxville, rolled around this year, we knew we had to get out our old family recipe and “give it a go” for a good cause.

Hershey® Bar Cake, made from Hershey® bars and Hershey’s® Syrup has been a mainstay of my family since I received the recipe from a high school friend in El Dorado, Arkansas. Since then, the sometimes finicky recipe has yielded a moist, dense, deep chocolate cake (well, most of the time) that has been the star of many after-dinner desserts and birthday celebrations for more than 50 or so years.

I say finicky because sometimes the cake bakes beautifully, sometimes it doesn’t. It may be the weather. It may be the oven. It just may be me. But if you can get this cake to turn out the way we like it — slightly undercooked yet not gooey, firm enough to cut with a fork — then you’ve got a treat that almost anyone will love. At home, we serve it with good quality vanilla ice cream topped with rich, warm chocolate sauce.

The recipe is so old that it originally called for two 20-cent cans of syrup (not available now) and seven nickel candy bars!!! I’ve made some substitutions and included them in the full recipe below.

Basic steps:

Cream butter & sugar. Add eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

Add 1 can Hershey Syrup.

Add flour mixture alternatively with buttermilk. Then add vanilla.

Add 5 melted Hershey bars.

Bake at 325 degrees for about 1 hour and 10-20 minutes.

Hershey® Bar Cake

2 sticks butter (1 cup)

2 cups granulated sugar

4 eggs, at room temperature

1 can Hershey® Syrup

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup buttermilk

5 Hershey® bars (1.55 ounces each)

Preheat oven to 350°. Let 2 sticks of butter and eggs come to room temperature. Grease and flour 10″ tube pan.

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Add syrup. Sift dry ingredients. Add to mixture alternatively with buttermilk. Add vanilla. Melt Hershey© bars in microwavable measuring cup and add to mixture.

Bake at 325º for 1 hour and approximately 10 – 20 minutes more. Test for doneness but do not let dry out completely. You want this to be moist. (I use a knife and look for it to come out with a little gooeyness clinging to it!)

For the bake sale at Holiday Helpings, we sold halves of the cake wrapped in plastic wrap and tied with burlap ribbon. The tags were printed on cardstock and glued to scrapbooking paper.

Hope you enjoy making this cake. Let us know if it works for you! But even if it doesn’t, pull it out before it’s almost done and just eat it with a spoon. Mmmm!

This post is #14 for National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) 2013.

Filed under: Cooking, NaBloMoPo2013, Recipe Tagged: bake sale, First United Methodist Church, Hershey Bar Cake, Holiday Helpings, NaBloPoMo, recipe

Ah, November . . .

Rusha Sams — Sun, 03 Nov 2013 01:30:02 +0000

“But there is always a November space after the leaves have fallen when she felt it was almost indecent to intrude on the woods…for their glory terrestrial had departed and their glory celestial of spirit and purity and whiteness had not yet come upon them.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Windy Poplars

Filed under: Travel Tagged: Fall, NaBloPoMo, November, Tennessee

Hashtag the #hashbrowns at Frank’s Diner, Spokane.

Rusha Sams — Sat, 02 Nov 2013 02:44:31 +0000

Just about any good diner
serves a bountiful breakfast, but mostly the tried-and-true menu
items look and taste the same wherever you go: scrambled eggs
are scrambled, pancakes are light and fluffy, and toast comes with
butter and jam. So when we try a new place, we hunt for
unique breakfast stand-outs as we scan the menu or gaze at other
customers’ orders before we tell the waiter what we want. It didn’t take long to
figure it out at Frank’s
Diner, located in a turn-of-the-century
presidential railway car in Spokane, Washington. Almost as
soon as we were seated at the counter where we had a front-row
position for the cooking action, we struck up a conversation with
the customer next to us — a chef from Seattle getting ready to
open his own restaurant. He was in Spokane to pick up some
custom-made sinks, but said he never misses a chance to eat at
Frank’s. We asked him what he was ordering.
Every time I come here, I think
I’ll order something else, but I get the same thing: Corned
Beef Hash and Eggs with the big side of hashbrowns, he
confessed. Sure ‘nough. About that time, the cook poured out
a stack of hashbrowns, flattening the pile with a turner.
(Sorry about the blurred picture, but it’s a candid of this
constant-motion cook moving from flipping omelettes to spreading
out the taters!)

out a mound of hashbrowns on the griddle.” src=”http://ohtheplaceswesee.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/img_1287.jpg?w=375″ width=”375″ height=”500″ /> A cook at Frank’s spreads
out a mound of hashbrowns on the griddle.

Right about
then, the waiter brought out the order for the chef seated next to
us: two cooked-to-perfection eggs atop a mound of corned beef hash
with almost a foot-long stack of golden hashbrowns snugged right
beside!

Frank’s Diner” src=”http://ohtheplaceswesee.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/img_1297.jpg?w=500″ width=”500″ height=”375″ /> Corned Beef Hash and Eggs,
Frank’s Diner

I was pretty sure I wanted what the chef
was eating, but still felt compelled to check out the menu with an
eye toward what was unusual or unique at Frank’s. It wasn’t
hard to find. I even liked the name of
it: Gourmet Purple Oatmeal –
Snoqualmie Falls Oatmeal with huckleberries served with toast,
raisins, brown sugar, butter or milk. Tempting. But I decided
to duplicate the chef’s order, and husband Bert decided on a cheese
and bacon omelette. Both came with those toasty, hot hashbrowns!

Omelette with a side of hashbrowns” src=”http://ohtheplaceswesee.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/img_1296.jpg?w=500″ width=”500″ height=”375″ /> Meat & Cheese
Omelette with a side of hashbrowns

While waiting for our
orders, we took a look around. The place has back-in-time ambiance.
To our left was a long counter where customers sipped good
strong coffee and watched as two quick-action cooks fired out
orders with an enviable rhythm known only to folks who work
together well.

Frank’s gives you a front row seat for the cooking frenzy.” src=”http://ohtheplaceswesee.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/img_1284.jpg?w=375″ width=”375″ height=”500″ /> Eating at the counter at
Frank’s gives you a front row seat for the cooking
frenzy.

And to our right were cozy booths filled with
eager diners and waitresses pacing up and down the classy
checkerboard floors.

orders at Frank’s.” src=”http://ohtheplaceswesee.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/img_1298.jpg?w=375″ width=”375″ height=”500″ /> A waitress takes breakfast
orders at Frank’s.

Two chatty, non-stop servers kept our
coffee mugs full and then handed over our
big-enough-for-two-but-we’re-not-sharing breakfasts with a smile!

waitresses never missed a beat.” src=”http://ohtheplaceswesee.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/img_1288.jpg?w=375″ width=”375″ height=”500″ /> Friendly, organized
waitresses never missed a beat.

We came. We
sat. We ordered and watched. Then we dined in style!
And if we ever come back, we just might try some of these other
interesting-sounding favorites:
Great Nana’s Meatloaf
Benedict, Hobo
Scramble, Grilled Banana Nut
Bread, or Frank’s Special French
Toast. But for now, I’m just tweeting what made us
sit up and take notice:

Great #hashbrowns at
Frank’s Diner. You betcha!

Frank’s
Diner

1516 West 2nd Avenue Spokane, WA 509-747-8798
http://franksdiner.com
“Voted Best Breakfast 14 Years
Running!” And where have you eaten great hashbrowns?
Would love to hear from you. Just leave us a comment at
the end of this post. For more posts on our trip to Idaho,
Washington, and Montana, click on the page labeled Inland
Northwest located at the top of this
post.

Filed under: Restaurant, Travel Tagged: Breakfast, Frank's Diner, hashbrowns, NaBloPoMo, restaurant, Spokane, Washington