Our Favorite Recipe

Our favorite family recipe is actually a desert. It’s a basic yellow cake that I have been making since before the kids were born. It is a tradition in this house to make this particular cake for every birthday at least, but often I will make it just because it tastes so good. I top it with a delicious chocolate icing. When the kids came back from opening night of their recent school drama, I had a freshly baked cake there waiting for them. I was greeted with a big, “Alright!”
The cake recipe calls for:

3 cups all-purpose flower
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 ½ cups milk
½ cup margarine or butter, softened
1 ½ X 2 teaspoons of vanilla (not imitation)
2 eggs

Mix the flour, sugar and baking powder in a mixer. Add milk, margarine and vanilla. Beat, then add eggs. Beat two minutes more and then pour into either a 9” X 12” pan or two 8” round pans and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes.

I always use a butter icing and I add double the vanilla here too.

Our mixer is old and it’s a little low on the power end and sometimes struggles with thick mixtures. So we have toyed with the idea of replacing it with another brand such as a Hamilton Beach® Mixer and something like the Hamilton Beach® Stand Mixer would be perfect. The particular model I was looking at is the Eclectrics® Mixer.