Patty cake, Patty cake

K14 came home this afternoon and stated that she needed to make a Miss Havisham cake.  You are probably wondering, as I was, what is a ‘Miss Havisham’ cake?  As it turns out, it is the old wedding cake found in the book Great Expectations.  I’d forgotten that A16 made one last year.

Commercial cake mix is not something we keep at the house; We found  this one.  It mixed up nicely and cooked up easily. 

How to make Homemade Yellow Cake Mix:

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup non-fat dry milk

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and non-fat dry milk. Store in an airtight container or baggie. Keeps well in the pantry for months!
To replace in recipes calling for a yellow cake mix:

Use in any recipe calling for a yellow cake mix as a base (add 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla to the recipe along with the cake mix as the recipe will assume vanilla was included in the store-bought mix).

Or to make a basic yellow cake, use the following instructions.

Cake mix directions:.

1 recipe Homemade Yellow Cake Mix
1 1/4 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup butter, softened
3 eggs

Place Homemade Yellow Cake Mix in a bowl. Add water, vanilla, butter, and eggs. Combine with an electric mixer then beat two more minutes. Pour into a greased and floured cake pan. Bake at 350-degrees, using these baking times (watch carefully as your oven may vary–test for doneness using a toothpick):

8″ or 9″ cake rounds — 25-30 minutes
13 x 9 pan — 40-45 minutes
cupcakes — 15-20 minutes
tube/bundt pan — 45-50 minutes

Don’t overbake! You’ll dry out your cake.

This cake was baked in the wood stove and even thought it is supposed to be an old cake, we still wanted it to be eatable.  Because we ran out of butter, she used one 13×9 cake pan and then cut the cake into halves and then one half into half again to create layers.  It turned out very nicely; K14 said it tasted like a sugar cookie – and it did!  The icing was a bit on the runny side since I ran out of butter and had to borrow a stick from the neighbor (thanks Pat!)

*whew*  Project complete!