2) You can ‘make’ buttermilk with distilled vinegar?? This is a thing??

3) Obviously, I do NOT perform the baking functions within my household.

…I can make a seriously mean Japanese steakhouse chicken and steak with fried rice though.

????????

I make chocolate covered strawberries using the Dulce chocolate hard shell… It comes in a container you put in the microwave to melt the chocolate wafers… I usually find it at the produce section of the grocery store… I dip the washed and dried strawberries in the melted chocolate and place on a sheet of wax paper, sometimes I take out the leaves by using a straw, bottoms up aiming for the top leaves. It hardens when it cools and is really good, quick and easy to make and costs a lot less than buying them already made.

I had one grandmother who could really sew and the other who knew how to knit and crochet. Between the two, I was very blessed by their talents!

I do too at Walmart!

I stick with cake mixes also. People were shocked that my bomb cake was not made by scratch… it’s a lot of work even using boxed mixes. I use white cake, but use whole eggs, and chocolate cake made in 13X9 pans, cool. With a knife, divide them into two layers. I whip a quart of whipping cream with a large box of vanilla instant pudding adding a little milk at the end for a less thick consistency. Bottom is one layer of chocolate cake, then some whipped cream mixture with a layer of sliced bananas and a little more mixture, second chocolate layer, then WC mixture, a layer of white cake, WC mixture, sliced strawberries, before putting other white cake layer, I spread strawberry glaze on bottom and put on top of strawberries… glaze to strawberries. I frost the whole cake with Cool Whip which makes it lighter and is delicious! We like thick layers of the whipped cream mixture between layers… it is so good with the fresh fruit! Once in a while I may do one or the other, chocolate or white, so then only a small box of vanilla instant pudding and half the heavy whipping cream is needed along with one, not two regular sized Cool Whip. Sorry this is so jumbled! It helps putting layers on waxed paper for easier assembling.

Me too! It drives my adult daughters nuts! My youngest always demands that I write down the changes I make so it will turn out the way I make it. I mostly do this with cooking, not baking. One recipe, in particular, chicken fricassee with dumplings, has so little water in the original recipe that it ends up being way too little since the dumplings are like sponges drinking all the sauce so I more than doubled the amount, plus put the cooked chicken to the side instead of putting the dumpling mixture on top… it takes a total of 30 minutes to bake dumplings… end result following original recipe, very dry chicken and a crusty layer of gravy/sauce on the bottom.

Most of my cooking is without recipes like chili, beef in dill gravy, chicken a la King… it is hard to tell others how to do something when no measuring is involved.

You changed my life this weekend. We made this cake and frosting, adjusted for raspberries instead of strawberries, and it was honestly the best thing ever. This cake and frosting combo beats any cake we’ve bought outside of the home.

Ruined. We are ruined. However, we also now have the BEST ever cake to share for birthdays.

Thanks!