Made with love

Surprise Daddy! 

The kids and I pondered over what to do for Jason's birthday since he would be arriving home from China the very night.  Little did I know that the homemade gifts they suggested would require help from my friends in Germany and Alabama. 

The candles they wanted to make turned out to be fun and pretty easy.  It was just hop on a train to head down to the Christmas market.

We will help convert all the ingredients!!

Making my grandmother's Cold Oven Cake...not so easy.  I have made this cake for many of our family's special occasions as did my grandmother, Ma, however, this would be my first attempt at it here in German.  I am pretty sure my grandmother never even considered my living in Germany when she wrote her recipe for me some 20 years ago.  I am also sure she would get a good chuckle out of my having to learn the metric system in order to cook. ( which seems to be going more SLOWLY than my German)   Task list was made:

1. Convert "3 sticks of margarine" to grams of butter.  Clean up kitchen after making a thorough mess trying to measure butter. 

2. Convert 8 oz of cream cheese also to grams...then deciding who needs to measure-throw the whole block into the bowl.
3.  Find an alternative for Vanilla extract.  After my German friend spent a day hunting it down and found it at the Apotheke at a cute cost of 16 Euros at the Apotheke!  (Thank goodness for my sweet friend who found an even better Alternative...she bought me a bottle on the military base)
4.  Spend a few hours googling 'Swans Down', hunting for the German version with no luck, then trying to understand what all the numbers mean on the shelves lined with flour in the German market.  
5.  Call my best friend in Alabama to figure out what exactly had to be done to the #405 flour I purchased to make it a good substitute for Swan's Down
6.  Begin sifting the flour and start questioning myself as to why we needed to make this cake?

The cake didn't look so pretty, but tasted pretty good according to Jason and the kids.  If I was a betting person, then I would put my money on "he liked the birthday steak dinner better the next night at Pier 51" which required no converting, flour, or phone calls. However, sometimes it is those gifts made with love that mean the most.  So, WITH LOVE, I share Ma's cake recipe and hope it doesn't require any conversion!  

Ma’s Cream Cheese Cold Oven Cake

8 oz cream cheese-softened

3 sticks margarine

3 cups of sugar

3 cups of Swans Down

6 eggs

2 tsp of vanilla extract

Cream the cheese and margarine until smooth

Add sugar slowly until well combined

Add eggs one at a time

Add vanilla

Add Swans Down flour

Put in cold oven, turn oven to 300 degrees-bake for 1 hour 25 minutes.  (Start checking it with a toothpick at about an hour and keep checking until done.  Simple after you make it one time!