Say Cheese!

Tomorrow marks the yearly school ritual of school picture day (ugh). I have never been a fan of this day since I was in school, mainly because most of my school pictures needed to be burned. In my early days, school picture day was often forgotten, so I always posed with casual attire...

and the traditional blue background. What I would have done to be able to have the laser background with a chin pose...

  (I would have looked way cooler)

In later school pictures, all which have been stashed away or burned, I adorned flower hats, braces, acne, and frizzy hair. It wasn't until last years school picture, as a teacher, that I finally had a keeper. I gave one to my parents to make up for the years of disappointing school photos. I think that the lighting of the laser background would have done wonders.

Mary always had our photos plastered all over the house in plastic frames. When you handed her a new photo, she would place it on top of the previous photo in the frame. Upon her passing, I got about 4 plastic frames which actually contained about 16 memorable photos all stacked on top of each other.

I will make sure to update you about how picture day goes.

Now to baking. Another football game today so another dessert needed. Today I picked a cake recipe. Mary wasn't big on cakes, but she had quite a few in the box of recipes.

Iced Chocolate Chip Cake
(recipe cut out of newspaper and taped onto plain recipe card)

1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup softened shortening
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
2cups flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
Grease and flour loaf cake pan. Cream sugar and shortening; mix well with electric mixer. Add eggs; mix well.
Combine milk, vanilla. Combine dry ingredients; add alternately with milk mixture to creamed mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture, mixing well after each addition. Fold in chocolate chips. Bake @ 350 for about 1 hour.

Butter cream icing:
Cream well together:
1/2 stick softened butter
3/4 box confectioners' sugar
1 tsp vanilla
dash of salt.
Blend to spreading consistency

Cakes makes 16 slices.