Happy 14th Birthday #DS106RADIO

@joemurphy, @eLearningTechie, and I met on discord and the radio for another session of the #ds106radio cooking club. Well, baking club presently. We each made a cake in celebration of the radio station’s 14th birthday.

I made a rag cake and a very conventional birthday cake. Birthdays are funny things. Some folks don’t want to observe their birthdays. Other folks take it really hard when their birthdays pass without anyone recognizing them. I figure if ds106radio were a person, they would have to be more of the second sort of person. After all, it’s broadcasting itself all day, every day. On the other hand, it’s about the least promotional radio station in existence, and I can imagine it wouldn’t want to make much fuss.

Just to be on the safe side, I made the cake recipe my wife made for me way back when we were first dating. And I want to talk just a minute about the object of the recipe keeper where this recipe is found.

a multi-colored, spiral bound recipe keeper. There are tabs across the bottom of these landscape oriented cards that flip along the long edge at the top. — My wife’s recipe keeper, made by her mother when she left for college.

It’s a spiral bound set of tabbed index cards and was made just before the age of AOL and the other dial-up walled garden communities online. A few years before the web. These days, I very often start my cooking or baking with an online search on my open laptop. But not birthday cakes and about a dozen other things. Those start with this little book, and it shows.

a closer look at the tabs, like vegetables, poultry, salads, and desserts

a very food-stained recipe for garlic mashed potatoes

The recipe for Irish Rag cake

3 cups sugar

1 cup butter

6 eggs

3 cups flour

2 Tbs Baking Powder

1 cup milk

2 tsp vanilla

cream together sugar and butter

an animated image of a standup mixer beating butter and sugar together

Once combined, add two eggs at a time:

two eggs cracked into a bowl, being added to the mix

Sift the flour and the baking powder together. It really helps the crumb of the cake to thoroughly mix this one.

milk in a measuring cup being added to the mix

Add the milk and dry ingredients in three rounds. Add the vanilla, too. I set the mixer to fast but not the fastest setting.

Grease and flour two round baking pans, and divide the batter. It’s okay if the pans aren’t perfectly divided. The larger of the two cakes can go on top of the other.

two greased round pans with a small bit of flour in the middle of each

flour spread evenly around two cake pans

Bake at 375 degrees F for 25 – 30 minutes (sometimes 35). Do the toothpick thing to make sure they’re done.

Make whatever frosting you like. I did the shortening frosting. If it’s good enough for Loretta Lynn, it’s good enough for me.

I made some orange frosting, and some blue. And while we’re on the subject – instead of coming up with all the things we don’t need, like enormous inflatable yard decorations – how about someone invent a better way to store and pour 10x sugar. Jeesh does it make a mess.

whipping shortening and 10x sugar in a standup mixer

And there it is! Happy birthday DS106Radio. I’ve put together a few songs that make me think of the people and the spirit of my “new old radio friend”. I’ll try to hop on later tonight for a bit. Make a wish #4Life.

an animated image of an orange cake with blue piping, a bunch of birthday candles being blown out.