grace grits and gardening - ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

If you are following along, you may remember I am recreating recipes from Keiser’s Kitchen, a recipe book created by the Keiser Elementary School PTA moms in 1969. A few weeks ago, I made the Yum Yum Cake. It was delicious. If you missed it, you’ll want to go back and check it out. This week’s dish is the Milky Way Cake. With company coming for Halloween weekend, it sounded like the perfect choice. Plus, I had a bag of those fun-sized Milky Ways. What a great way to use up leftover Halloween candy…

After having made only two of these vintage recipes, here’s the thing I’ve realized—the art of cooking has drastically changed. In only forty years, ingredients have evolved. Recipes are written differently. Like everything, there are trends in cooking. Foods go in and out of style, and the language of food changes.

I was reminded of the importance in handing down recipes. These recipes are part of our family stories.

I experienced this first-hand while making the Milky Way Cake, mainly because this recipe was contributed to the Keiser cookbook by my Aunt Lavern. For those of you who never knew her, Aunt Lavern had a sweet, generous spirit, loved family, friends and God, and was a fabulous cook. She even owned a little restaurant one time—her southern, down-home cooking was that good.

As I began making this cake, I imagined Aunt Lavern mixing the batter. I remembered the smells of her comfy kitchen. Several times I wanted to ask her questions, especially while trying to get the icing to “soft ball stage”. Even though my icing boiled over onto my stove and made a huge sticky mess, the cake turned out amazing. I think she was helping me.

The ingredients were basic.

I am no baker, but I truly believe this is the most beautiful icing I have ever made. It was smooth and creamy and rich like fudge.

Ummmmm.

Look at my lovely, giddy taste testers!

So you want the recipe, right?

Here it is…

Milky Way Cake

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Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

4 Milky Way candy bars
1 stick oleo I used unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Milky Way Icing

2 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup evaporated milk
6 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup marshmallow cream
1 stick oleo I only used 1/2 stick in the icing

Method

Melt candy bars and 1/2 stick butter. Set aside.
Cream sugar and 1/2 stick butter in large bowl.
Add eggs.
To the sugar/egg mixture, alternatively add flour and buttermilk until mixed together.
Add melted chocolate/butter mixture and mix well.
Add pecans.
Bake at 325 degrees for 35 minutes or until done.

Milky Way Icing

Mix sugar and milk and cook in a double boiler until soft ball stage. Add chocolate chips, marshmallow cream and butter. Stir until melted.

Notes

Candy bars in general are much larger these days. Be sure to buy "regular" sized Milky Way bars. Or two "fun-sized" bars = one regular candy bar.
In the icing, I couldn't bring myself to add an entire stick of butter so I reduced the butter to 1/2 stick. This may be why my icing was fudge-like, but I thought this was the best part!

Here’s a helpful YouTube video that explains soft ball stage…