My first cake

I like my own cooking.

That might sound boastful, but after almost 80 years of herding a cook stove, something would be wrong if I couldn't cook foods tasty and well.

Mother started me in early. I was in the third grade when she got a small rural school to teach, which took us away from home. There was no place to live, so Daddy set up a canvas tent with a wooden frame, floors and 3-foot side walls. A double fly over the top with woven wire under it to hold a weight of snow made up our home September through May the two years she taught there. Daddy and my brother, Herb, stayed at home on the ranch.

A small cast-iron cook stove kept the tent cozy, and cooked our meals. Water ran only by bucket. Kerosene lamps and lantern lighted our activities.

Mother often stayed after school to prepare lessons and activities and sent me home to start dinner.

She taught me to make baking powder biscuits and simple meals like beans, potatoes, home canned vegetables and the like, so dinner was usually on the way when she arrived home.

Later, when I was 11 or 12, she made a business trip to San Francisco. She planned what I was to prepare and put me in charge of meals for the family.

I was proud and decided to celebrate her homecoming by baking a cake, which I had never done before.

I didn't know where to start, so I hunted recipes.

In those days, cakes were not premixed as they are today. The recipes all started out, "cream the shortening."and went on from there.

Cream the shortening? What was that?

I was lost. I kept poring through all the recipes that I could find until, at last - success, a recipe I could understand!

LAZY DEVILS FOOD CAKE

Sift together: l 1/2 cups flour, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup powdered chocolate, 1 tsp each soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add to dry ingredients: 1/2 cup cooking oil, 1 egg, 1 cup sour milk. 1 tsp vanilla

Beat all together well and bake in either layers or loaf.

Success! The cake was perfect, but the frosting, a cornstarch filling, was a joke. My brother, Herb, never let me forget the rubber frosting I had on my first cake.