Hostess chocolate cupcake is dessert favorite

BY Pat Van Dyke

I consider cooking an art, baking a passion and menu planning an impossible task! I’ve watched hundreds of cooking shows, purchased tons of cookbooks and spent time with the best cooks of the entire Midwest; but I still limit my choices to the deli case at Stater’s Bros. Market or the frozen food cases at Costco.

I even went as far as becoming a home economics major for my BA degree. In foods, I learned everything about an egg. I know all the parts of an egg, the chemical and nutritional makeup of an egg and how every part reacts to cold, heat, water, ocean tides, a full moon and roosters. Maybe not the last three, but to everything else!

Did you know that the white stringy things at the side of the yolk is called chalazae and they hold the yolk in the center of the egg? I’m sure that the only time I’ll ever need to know this is when I’m working on a crossword puzzle.

No one warned Pastor Pete about my lack of cooking skills, which you think he would have figured out before we were married. We dated for five years and I never made him a complete meal. During a disastrous newly-wed homecooked dinner, I suggested to him that he was “blinded by love.”

It’s not the meal that was disastrous, but the guests that we had invited for dinner. When Pastor Pete’s brother walked into the living room and called out “Can we come in?” I replied, “Sure, come right in!” I heard some commotion, turned around, and there stood George in the middle of my kitchen with a horse! “You said that ‘we’ could come in!”

During that first year of marriage, an elaborate meal was meat, potatoes and gravy. For a more extravagant meal, I would make an item which had amazing nutritional value. It consisted of orange Jell-O, raisins, grated carrots and cottage cheese. I cooled it in a fish-shaped mold. I am proud to say that I had included three of the basic four food groups: fruits and vegetables, milk, and meat: the fish-shaped mold should count for something!

During Pastor Pete’s first year in seminary, I was given the assignment of making a dessert for a seminary wives gathering. All the wives knew I was the home economics teacher at the local middle school, so they expected something incredible. They didn’t know that I made pizza by covering an English muffin with canned spaghetti sauce and topping it with cheese.

I decided to make petit fours (translated “small oven”). I had never made them before but what could be so difficult about making these little cakes covered with a sugar glaze.

The direction said to make a pound cake. I did just that, but I didn’t have time to let the cake cool as was suggested. How was I to know that you can’t cut a cake into small squares when it’s warm? Soon, I had pieces of cake all over my kitchen. I rescued the larger pieces and changed the name of the dessert to grande fours (translated “large oven”).

Next was the making of the glaze. The recipe said to cook the glaze until it was smooth and runny and spoon it over the cake squares. I did just that, but the glaze not only “ran,” it organized the cakes into one large glob which then staged a mutiny.

Immediately, I went into rescue mode. I bought Hostess chocolate cupcakes, arranged them on a fancy plate and called it “Home Economics Teacher’s No-Fuss Dessert.” It was a hit.

Now that I am retired, I should have more time to bake, cook and plan meals; but I don’t! I have important things to do such as being a great-aunt to my great-nieces and nephew.

I love being a great-aunt! As an “aunt,” you watch what you feed the kids so that your siblings don’t become upset. But as a “great-aunt,” you can feed the kids whatever you want because you’re just the “crazy old great-aunt” who tends to be a bit eccentric.

Whenever my niece and her family visit, I plan carefully and label bags of cookies with the kids’ names. It’s hard for parents to deny their child a gift that a feeble great-aunt prepared, despite her peculiar way of life. After all, “Great-aunt Pat gave these to us, and you never know how much longer she’s going to live.”

I love being considered “old” by my family. It gives me license to do anything I want! I can wear my clothes backward and sing in church at the top of my lungs. Because I’m old, I can cook whatever I want. To prove that fact, just this past week, I served my famous “Home Economics Teacher’s No-Fuss Dessert” to a very discerning panel of judges: my two great-nieces and great-nephew. I received rave reviews! But best of all, they declared that I’m a “great” great-aunt!