Tag: Mama

Vanilla Wafer Cake Recipe From Mama Reed by Gordon Ramsay

Today y’all I’m adding Mama Reed’s Vanilla Wafer Cake to the list of recipes I worry what your life will be without!

This cake is the kissing cousin of my Apple Dapple Cake. They come from a different branch of the family but chances are if you have the good sense to like one of them, you’ll like the other as well.

My mother got this vanilla wafer cake recipe from her grandmother, Mama Reed. Mama Reed had an expansive array of recipes but this cake was my mother’s favorite by far. When she married my father, this was the first recipe she asked for to use in her own kitchen.

Ingredients for Vanilla Wafer Cake

You’ll need:

Eggs
Coconut
Milk
Vanilla wafers
Sugar
Nuts (we use pecans -pronounced puh-kahns)

Place vanilla wafers in a large sealable bag and crush them with the rolling pin or any other stress relieving device.

Crush your vanilla wafers like this (see above).

Beat up your eggs well and coarsely chop your pecans…

Then toss all ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix until well blended, about two minutes should be more than enough. Until it looks like this. You can do this with an electric mixer or a spoon.

Now if y’all don’t dip a spoon in that and take a bite then something is wrong with you!

Pour into a greased and floured tube/bundt pan.

(I just dip a paper towel into some shortening and smear it all over the insides of my pan, then put a few tablespoons of flour in and turn my pan while patting it a bit until the flour has coated the inside. Then I hold it over the trash can upside down and pat it until the excess falls out)

Bake at 350 for one hour.

Oh my goodness gracious, don’t we all just love Mama Reed now?

Serve to Vanilla Wafer Cake to happy people! (If they weren’t happy before, they will be now!)

Mama Reed’s Vanilla Wafer Cake

Ingredients

6 whole eggs
3.5 oz can of coconut if you use bagged sweetened flaked coconut, just use 1 cup – don’t use frozen
1/2 cup milk
12 ounce box vanilla wafers Mama says don’t use generic ~eyeroll~ I’ll do a “no comment” on that one coz y’all know what I do…
2 cups sugar
1 cup chopped nuts we use pecans

You might also enjoy:
Mama Reed’s Tea Cakes

Chocolate Pound Cake with Fudge Glaze

Apple Dapple Cake

Apple Pound Cake – and Being the Person You Need 🙂

Dear friends,

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave your wonderful comments. Comments are everything to me when it comes to Southern Plate, absolutely everything. When you comment, you give me a chance to “meet” you, to know you’re out there. You turn this into a conversation for me rather than just me talking to the wind and I can’t tell you how much they mean to me. For each of you who take the time to read Southern Plate, thank you so very much. For each of you who take the time to comment, that thanks goes double!! I just love y’all, I really do!

Gratefully,

Christy 🙂

Click here to follow me on Instagram

This recipe featured on Meal Plan Monday

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Mama Reed’s Caramel Apple Cake by Gordon Ramsay

Mama Reed didn’t really have a recipe for Mama Reed’s Caramel Apple Cake, but I took one of her recipes and used it as the base to build it on so I decided to give her credit. It’s sort of like a collaboration with the great grandmother I know only through stories, and I like how that feels. After making a spiced baked apple cake I topped it with a Caramel Fudge icing, similar to my Peanut Butter Fudge Icing and Chocolate Fudge Icing, but even better, because it’s caramel :).

How To Make Caramel Apple Cake

For the cake part, you’ll need: a couple of apples (any kind, 2 large or 3 medium or whatever you have), self rising flour**, eggs, vanilla, sugar, vegetable oil, and water.

Eek! You also need some cinnamon and allspice. I would tell you that I didn’t know where my head was but I actually do – it was on fifty other things. Y’all know how that is.

The icing ingredients are down a little further in the post but they are all together like one big happy family at the bottom.

**To make your own self rising flour, simply add 1+1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt for EACH cup of all purpose flour.

Stir together your self rising flour and sugar in a bowl.

Peel and chop apples until you are tired of chopping apples.

Then dump them in the bowl with the flour along with all of the other ingredients.

Stir that by hand really well until it is all nice and blendy looking.

Or until you get tired of fooling with it.

So much of the timing in my recipes is gauged by that… Some people are really precise and everything has to be perfect. I’m of the school that if it is edible and looks good from ten yards on a galloping horse, it’s good enough.

Pour that into a 9×13 baking dish that you’ve sprayed with cooking spray.

Bake this at 350 for about 45 minutes, or until set and lightly browned.

There we are. A lovely photo of our baked cake in my dark and shadowy kitchen 🙂

This cake looks a little boopy doopy when it is done on account of the apples.

Now for the icing part. Oh mercy mercy mercy is this stuff amazing? Yes. Yes, it is.

You’ll need: Confectioner’s sugar, butter, more vanilla, brown sugar (light or dark works but I prefer dark for this), and heavy cream, sometimes known as whipping cream.

You can use whole milk in place of cream if you like. Please don’t use skim or 2 percent. You can, of course, but whole milk is just one step down from heavy cream, once you get into the skim stuff you’re pretty far removed and it will make a taste difference. Having said that, what business is it of mine to tell you not to use skim or 2 percent? I’m just gonna get my nose out of your kitchen and back into my own pots. Apologize for the intrusion :).

Place your cream (or milk), butter, and brown sugar in a medium sauce pot.

Stir this CONSTANTLY over medium heat until the butter is melted (mostly 😉 and it is all a nice brown mixture like this.

Now crank up that heat to medium high and STIR CONSTANTLY (not kidding here) to bring it to a full rolling boil. Once it is boiling, set your timer for 2 minutes. Exactly. Immediately remove from heat, stir in vanilla, and stir in confectioners’s sugar.

Like this. Stir fast because this stuff is gonna set up pretty quickly.

Quickly: Websters defines quickly as in something that is done or happens in a short amount of time.

I define quickly as “Hurry up or you’ll have concrete.”

It is still a little lumpy here so I’m going to switch to a whisk.

BOOM! Now it is smooth and creamy. Okay, so it still has some lumps of confectioner’s sugar in it but I’m tired of stirring it and that is good enough for me!

Quickly spread it over your cooled cake. Quick. Because it gets hard fast.

Why are you still sitting here when you have an amazing cake just waiting for you to bake it?

Mama Reed’s Caramel Apple Cake

Ingredients

2 cups self rising flour
2-3 apples peeled and chopped
2 eggs
1 +1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon vanilla

For Icing

4 Tablespoons butter or margarine
8 Tablespoons heavy cream or milk
1 cup packed dark brown sugar light is okay
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix by hand with a wooden spoon until well blended and smooth. Spread into a greased 9×13 cake pan.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

For icing

Stir together butter, cream, and brown sugar in a sauce pot. Place over medium heat and stir constantly until butter is melted and mixture is well blended. Turn heat up to medium high and stir constantly until it comes to a rolling boil. Once boiling, cook for 2 minutes and then remove from heat. Stir in confectioners sugar and vanilla until smooth. Work quickly and use a wire whisk or electric mixer if you prefer. You can add up to 1/2 cup more confectioner’s sugar if needed to thicken. Ice cooled cake as soon as possible.

If you were born after 1950, don’t try to ice a layer cake with a boiled icing. Stick with 9×13 sheet cakes. Trust me 🙂

“Happiness is not determined by what’s happening around you, but rather what’s happening inside you. Most people depend on others to gain happiness, but the truth is, it always comes from within.”

~Unknown

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Mama Reed’s Vanilla Wafer Cake Recipe by Gordon Ramsay

Sometimes I post things and it actually worries me that you might live your life without trying a particular recipe. Like my Chicken Stew, Apple Dapple Cake, or Banana Pudding. Well today I’m adding Mama Reed’s Vanilla Wafer Cake to that list. This cake is the kissing cousin of my Apple Dapple Cake. They come from a different branch of the family but chances are if you have the good sense to like one of them, you’ll like the other as well.

My mother got this recipe from her grandmother, Mama Reed. Mama Reed had an expansive array of recipes but this cake was my mother’s favorite by far. When she married my father, this was the first recipe she asked for to use in her own kitchen.

Mama Reed was known for her cakes and her large scale baking. Of course back then they didn’t think of it that way, she had ten kids so small scale baking was certainly out of the question. During the winter when family was expected to visit, Mama Reed would start baking cakes a few days ahead of time and due to space constraints in the house, she’d set them out on tables on the screened in porch covered in towels to keep for the few days until company arrived. This cake is sturdy but very moist and would no doubt have been carefully set out along with the best of them. My mother says this is a great cake to take places as it is more stable than others so it travels very well. It can also sit under a cake dome for a week and still be moist. Trust me, the only way we know this is from the times Mama made more than one!

Okay so basically, I am assigning this cake as homework because I just know you’re are going to love it. Now y’all know I have a teaching degree (Home Ec) that I’ve never got to put to good use so I’m gonna get my fork ready and my red pen out and wait on your to turn in your assignments!

You’ll need: eggs, coconut, milk, vanilla wafers, sugar, and nuts

(we use pecans -pronounced puh-kahns)

Place vanilla wafers in a large sealable bag and crush them with the rolling pin or any other stress relieving device.

I like to do this with a rolling pin that I *think* belonged to my great grandmother. Think? Yup, think. It could go either way.

You see, Lela had this rolling pin which she had used for years, as long as my mother and her sister could remember. After Lela passed away, both my mother and my aunt asked my grandmother about possibly having “Granny’s” rolling pin. My Grandmother was uniquely practical (sometimes in rather humorous ways) and not wanting to disappoint, she went to an antique store and bought another one just like it, thereby having a rolling pin to give to each daughter.

They didn’t realize this until years later when Mama mentioned something about having Granny’s rolling pin and her sister looked quite confused as she said that she was the one who actually had Granny’s rolling pin. Upon talking to my Grandmama she said “Weeeeellllll now, I hated for one of you to have it and not the other so I just bought an extry”.

Gotta love my family…

Crush your vanilla wafers like this.

Beat up your eggs well and coarsely chop your pecans…

Then toss all ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix until well blended, about two minutes should be more than enough. Until it looks like this. You can do this with an electric mixer or a spoon.

Now if y’all don’t dip a spoon in that and take a bite then something is wrong with you!

Pour into a greased and floured tube pan.

Bake at 350 for one hour.

Oh my goodness gracious, don’t we all just love Mama Reed now?

Serve to Vanilla Wafer Cake to happy people! (If they weren’t happy before, they will be now!)

Mama Reed’s Vanilla Wafer Cake

Ingredients

6 whole eggs
3.5 oz can of coconut if you use bagged sweetened flaked coconut, just use 1 cup – don’t use frozen
1/2 cup milk
12 ounce box vanilla wafers Mama says don’t use generic ~eyeroll~ I’ll do a “no comment” on that one coz y’all know what I do…
2 cups sugar
1 cup chopped nuts we use pecans

You might also enjoy:
Mama Reed’s Tea Cakes

Dear friends,

Gratefully,

Christy 🙂

Click here to follow me on Instagram

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