I started my fitting class last week, and the instructor is a real pro. I can get a blouse to fit except for across the front shoulders, and she showed me where the adjustment has to be made. I am going to try it out on a new pattern, so have been doing the preliminary adjustments before I try the front shoulder narrowing. It’s nice to know that when I do the muslin I can go to class and she will tell me everything I did wrong.
I have cut out the Weekender Travel Bag and am in the middle of quilting the pieces. This is turning out to be a much bigger project than I thought at first, but it is not difficult. I am trying a technique I saw online of using painter’s tape to show where to quilt. Pretty great technique.
Today’s Torte Thursday will be a recipe for coffee cake. I have always loved coffee cake, probably because it was very rare in my life. I can’t really remember my mom ever making one. For that sort of thing we mostly had Mexican Bread (pan dulce) from the Mexican store. In those days, there wasn’t the great variety of ethnic stores around here, and the folks would have to go into Oakland to the Mexican store there by the police station. Now we have a great store right in the local strip mall. But Grandma G. came from a midwestern German background, so I am sure coffee cake was a regular thing to her.
Crumb Coffee Cake
1 cup shortening (or 1/2 cup margarine + 1/2 cup Spry) Spry was a vegetable shortening
2 cups sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
3 cups sifted flour
Cream shortening, sugar, salt & cinnamon. Work in flour till it crumbs. Take 1 cup out for topping and set aside.
To remaining cinnamon mixture add 1 cup sour milk or buttermilk with 1 tsp soda and 2 eggs.
Fill 2 square 8″ pans or 1 large pan. Grandma obviously assumes you know enough to grease the pans. Cover with crumbs and bake at 350 degrees about 45 minutes for large pan (less for smaller pans).
Serve warm.
This is an interesting recipe because the crumb mixture is used as the base for the batter.
Now, back to my pattern wrangling.
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