COMPETITIVE COOKING
The Battle of Stone Mountain
by
Cathy Jones Bauer
In my family cooking was a competitive sport. There was nothing graceful, as in women’s figure skating, about the contest--it was more in line with full-body-contact hockey. The main contenders were my mother, grandmother, and aunt. They were in a constant battle for the gold--not willing to settle for the silver or bronze.
The games were held every Sunday after church, when the family gathered for dinner. The arena was my grandmother's house and the playing field, the dining table. My grandparents sat at opposite ends of the table, my family occupied one side, and Aunt Peggy’s family filled the other.
Each contender had her own winning dish that the others dared not challenge. My mother’s fried chicken was so delicious it caused battles to erupt over who got the last piece.
No one could make corn bread hoe cakes like my grandmother. The thin, crispy cakes fried up on her cast iron griddle were perfect for sopping up her collard greens and turnips. Diced onions and a bottle of homemade hot sauce added to the aromas that stunk up the house.
Aunt Peggy’s pies were to-die-for and were the funeral food of choice in the community. Her baking skills made her third in line of people to notify when someone passed away--the undertaker buried, the preacher blessed, and Aunt Peggy’s lemon meringue, chocolate silk, and pecan carmel pies comforted the living at the wakes and funerals.
My mother was always on the lookout for new and exciting recipes. Some worked, some didn’t. One memorable experiment--goulash from a recipe she found in a True Confession Magazine--was not worth repeating. The melding of canned spaghetti, onion soup, and hamburger meat looked better on paper than it actually tasted.
The aroma of a cake baking in the oven on a Tuesday afternoon meant my mother was testing a new recipe. Before unveiling them at my grandmother’s table, she did a trial run at home using us as guinea pigs. Among her winners were Mrs. Farmer’s Coconut Pound Cake, Mrs. Conger’s Devil’s Food Cake and a George Washington Birthday Cake drenched in orange juice and decorated with cherries.
While cake baking disasters were not common, they did occur. The infamous Tunnel of Fudge Cake incident made family history. My mother found the recipe in the local newspaper. It called for the cake to be baked in a bundt pan. She had no idea what that was and neither did the clerk at Woolworth’s. After searching the local stores and coming up empty-handed, she discovered an aluminum bundt cake pan in her S&H Green Stamp catalog and ordered it.
After the pan arrived, she commenced with the project. The recipe used a particular cake mix but she figured it was just a way of promoting that brand so she used what was on sale. Her first Tunnel of Fudge Cake collapsed in on itself as it emerged from the oven and became a pile of gooey chocolate.
After all the trouble she had gone through to find the bundt cake pan, failure was not an option. It took trips to three different groceries stores to find the cake mix used in the recipe. My mother purchased it and carefully followed the instructions. When the cake had baked the required amount of time, she tested it by inserting a toothpick into the middle. The toothpick came out coated with chocolate. To her that meant is wasn’t done so she put the the cake back into the oven.
She continued testing it every few minutes to make sure it was cooked all the way through. Each time the toothpick came out coated with chocolate. Finally, after baking the cake almost an hour longer than required by the recipe, she became frustrated and pulled the cake from the oven.
Still following the instructions, she let the cake cool for a few minutes before placing a plate over the cake pan and flipping it. According to the instructions, gravity should have caused the cake to fall onto the plate. It didn’t. She then used a knife to loosen the cake but didn’t work well with the curved pan. She tried anyway, then flipped the pan back over. The cake still didn’t come out.
My mother’s frustration level peaked. The cake had become an enemy that she was determined to conquer. She picked up the cake pan and slammed it repeatedly into the counter until it finally broke free, allowing her to flip it on the the plate.
With a renewed vigor she sliced into the cake but, the knife barely made a dent in the chocolate crust. She pressed harder. The knife still failed to penetrate the cake. Her rage erupted. The damned cake would not defeat her. She grabbed a large butcher knife used for cutting up chicken. This time she pressed down on both ends of the knife and succeeded. She continued slicing until she had a piece for each of us to sample.
David, my brother, was the first to dare make a comment. “It’s different. The inside taste good, but the outside is kinda like trying to eat a piece of rock.” My dad and I both agreed with him. Tears welled up in her eyes and she admitted defeat.
In an effort to comfort her, my dad asked what she had done different from the recipe. She told him that she had baked it longer because the middle off the cake just stayed gooey. “Gooey, like fudge?” he asked her. “Isn’t it called Tunnel of Fudge because it’s supposed to stay gooey in the middle?”
We changed the name of the cake and called it “Stone Mountain Cake” even after she successfully baked another one. It became one of her favorites recipes and she shared it proudly at my grandmother’s table.
