Good. Cake. Recipe.

[nwhiker]

I was able to send my MIL home with some cookies and some vanilla cake.

Because, OMG, I've finally found a worthwhile and good vanilla cake recipe.

I have several fancy ones, the ones I use for birthday cakes, and they're great. They also usually involve sour cream, buttermilk, whipping egg whites etc.

So I've been looking for a good, basic vanilla cake recipe (I have one for chocolate cake, if anyone wants it, holler).

It's still not exactly what I'm looking for, and I think I'll experiment with a bit less baking powder but it's really good and really really easy:

Golden Vanilla Cake.

I want to try one more from the site before I declare this my go-to vanilla cake, but I'm pretty close!

I'm also searching for a molasses cookie recipe. When I was a kid, we'd spend every other summer with my mom's Aunt Irene in Nova Scotia. Aunt Irene made wonderful molasses cookies, and my mom got the recipe. And of course, over the years, lost it (she's really good at losing recipes. There were three that I wanted from my childhood, she's lost all three, sigh...). These cookies were not like the standard soft and chewy molasses cookies with the crackled tops, they were harder/crispier. As in, if they baked too long, they were hard at rocks. I consider this a plus, btw. Anyhow, I've been looking, and langed on two recipes, both from The Maritimes, so I'll be making both to see if they're close enough. The first one is pretty close, except too soft. I'm leaving the cookies out, maybe they'll harden overnight! :)