Cake and Complaints.

Hello, my bloggy world. I'm still here, doin' mah stuff. Today, I'm making Neckbone Stew (I just used some cheap beef neckbones and seared them in butter with salt & pepper, then deglazed that with onions, and added veggies & stock. It's been simmering for hours. That'll be dinner.  I am also making Grandma Georgia's Sour Cream Cake, and I thought I'd blog it, jurst becurrze.

Neckbones R good.

Grandma Georgia is my Hubby's grandma. She's a feisty 90, mostly lost in demetia--suspended sometime in the fifties some days, getting fractious and locking horns with care workers and with other other residents. She even gets into fights. LOL. She's a tiny little bundle of sticks with a fiery soul. She had a little book of recipes, very 50s recipes, full of butter and LOTS of sugar, and she let me copy some down. One of which is the eggy, sugary sour cream cake, which is delish.  So I thought I'd bake some today. Dan comes home from training in New Jersey -- Alex has turned the house into a romper room but heck. Let's bake (and bitch, 'cause I do that so well).

First we start with the recipe.

Add caption (what if I don't wanna?)

Georgia is Dan's favourite relative. She helped raise him while his mom worked, and she loves Dan like nobody else in this world. He is the only person that dedicates time for her. He makes sure she gets her hair cuts and her bags of M&Ms. He takes her to the doctor. His father rarely sees her. His other siblings, even less.

Ready... set... bake!

Ideally, you should let the butter soften to room temperature. Since I didn't,
I cubed it, and tossed it into the mixing bowl anyway (I'm such a rebel)

Georgia has been getting progressively worse, dementia-wise for a while now.  It's hard for Dan to cope with seeing someone he loves so much fading away into a stranger; somebody he never met. She doesn't recognize him very often. She thinks he's other people sometimes.

THREE cups o' sugar, it's a lot, I know.  Just slice it thin. :^D

Regardless of how hard it is, my husband is usually dealing with her all the time. But as a caregiver, it can be stressful. The worst part of it is trying to get other family members involved. It's always a struggle.

I cracked open all six eggs into a little pourey-thing. Yes, that's the techincal
term for it.  It will make adding them easier, and there's less of a chance
of getting egg shells in your cake batter.

Before you put in your eggs, cream the sugar and butter together.

What's really frustrating, is that when people can be persuaded to help with Georgia, you end up seeing shit like this all over Facebook. So ANNOYING!

SO damned irritating.  Anyhoo.... I digress.....

Mixety Mix

Start adding your eggs one at a time. Trust me, they will divide themselves
ingeniously.

One straggler to go.

Use real vanilla please. Not the fake stuff. It's just better. I've never used
this brand. Hope it's okay. Dan made cookies a couple of weeks ago and
Alex dumped the whole bottle of my good stuff in the batter.

A little bit of salt.

I had to measure out the sour cream 'cause I had a 16 oz container. 

Blending all these beautiful ingredients.

I loved Georgia the moment I met her. In a weird way, she reminded me of my mom. But the good side of mom. The spirited, opinionated, frank part of her that I like. Georgia is sassy, with a slightly softened Southern drawl. I miss the old Georgia. She doesn't even know who I am at all. I can't imagine what Dan is going through, honestly.

Oh, right, I forgot. This is my sous-chef for the day.

He likes to eat raw flour. He likes it.

Try to get it all in the bowl this time, will ya kid?
Add the baking soda in at this time too.

It's so much easier to use a sieve rather than those sifter things that kill your
hands. Just dump the flour in and then shake, shake, shake, and it's done.

Mix it in.

Line two bread-pans with parchment. I
smudged a little butter in the pan to help
the parchment stick.

It's a pretty batter. Silky looking.

Try not to pay any heed to the grime all over my oven display. I'm a crappy
housekeeper. LOL.

I never had grandparents. They were all gone by the time I was old enough to acknowledge them. So I value Georgia a great deal. And I treasure the things she's passed onto us so far; including her butter-rich recipes--even if they were copied from some book years ago.  She loved them enough to write them down in her amazing cursive, and keep them in a book. I'll honour her by keeping them in my book for Alex to have.

Where's the cake, mom? You said there'd be cake!

They took an hour and fifteen for me.
The toothpick test doesn't lie.

I hope you'll try Georgia's Sour Cream Cake too! 

It's wonderful. Nice crunchy exterior, a subtle, not-too-sweet interior. Perfect with coffee or tea. I might try this recipe with a crumble topping on it. YUM!

Caught you, punklet! He was trying to gnaw on the corner
of the nearest cake.