And now for something completely different: A nice surprise

Snow, ice, cold. We're far enough from the Christmas/ New Years celebrations for them to have completely worn off, and far enough into a new semester for the grading to start piling up again. One of my colleagues wants to get a gun just to shoot it at the weather, and that is starting to sound unreasonably reasonable to me. No unpleasant surprises today-- no kidney bean pizzas or cauliflower pancakes. I just don't think I could take it.

Today's surprise will actually be quite pleasant:

And no, the cake isn't stuffed with Lima beans or sauerkraut. It's a delectable devil's food cake decorated with flowers and seven minute frosting!

So what surprise makes this cake from the 1962 pamphlet "Miracle Maid: A Treasure of Beauty and Convenience" worth posting about?

It's the make-do ingenuity that I admire in some of the older cookbooks, coupled with the brazen "buy our products because you can use them for ANYTHING" promises that amuse me.

Look at the cake pans the recipe calls for, and you will see my point. The tiers are made in a chicken fryer, a one-quart saucepan, and a two-quart saucepan!

I'd be tempted to call a cake baked in a chicken fryer my "Famous Fried Chicken Cake" just to make people wonder (and maybe leave a few extra slices for me)....