Recipes from Aunt Shirley -- White Cake

I may have mentioned earlier that I grabbed a bunch of recipes from the great-aunts when I saw them back in August. This one is from Aunt Shirley, another of Grandma Ollie's younger sisters. When we lived in Utah, Aunt Shirley and the late, greatly missed Uncle Preston lived in our congregation and were like surrogate parents and grandparents to us all. Since she was my other granny, I'm including this in the Grandma Recipes.

Also, Aunt Shirley is the only living person who I will allow to use a certain nickname (and you are seriously kidding me if you think I'm telling you what it is).

White Cake

2/3 cup shortening (Crisco-butter flavored)
1 1/2 cup sugar (white)
2 eggs
2 2/3 cup flour
1 1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream sugar, shortening, eggs
Add dry ingredients with milk (and vanilla) (to the rest of mix and beat well until there are no large lumps)
Place in a well greased 13x9 baking pan
Bake 350 degrees 30-35 minutes (or until a test of the middle comes out clean)
Let cool well or overnight before attempting to frost

Why do people persist on using cake mixes from the store. What is so hard about this recipe? There's not so many ingredients that it's over whelming, nor too many steps for little people to help.

My only confusion at the outset was which baking pan to use. I defaulted to the standard 13x9x2 to be on the safe side. Since it was for work, I figured that if it came out slightly thinner, it would be fine.

To be entirely truthful, I had planned to cheat by using store-bought chocolate frosting. My original plan was to frost it after it made it to the appropriate office.

Then I decided to leave them with the can and a knife and let people frost at will.



I finally grabbed piece of this at the end of the next day, and it was still super moist. The cups of milk and not underbaking it kept it from drying out. It actually almost didn't need the frosting.

But you always need a helping of chocolate frosting ... ALWAYS.