Cake

Baltimore area cake decorator Tracey Buchanan - who labored over fondant icing and Styrofoam for more than a dozen hours as part of the Mid-Atlantic Cake Show and Wedding Cake Competition on Saturday - was awarded second place in the decorative cookie category yesterday. Buchanan entered a foam core wedding cake in the shape of the purse her mother carried on her 1980 wedding day, as well as a St. Patrick's Day cake, the cookie decorated as a jewelry cameo, a three-tiered pale green and ivory cake, and a gingerbread cabin with creeping vines.

When artists turn their brains, eyes and palettes toward food, interesting things happen. What they serve up is usually not standard fare, but it can be intriguing, a different way to look at eating. I say this as Artscape, the city's annual sweltering carnival of music, street food, crafts and art, is about to begin. I can't avoid Artscape. I live a few blocks away, close enough to run over and grab a sandwich, or roasted vegetables on a stick. In search of supper, I usually happen upon some culture, perhaps catching a glimpse of pieces of sculpture set up in the median of Mount Royal Avenue.

SEATTLE -- You can add it all up -- the thousands of days, the millions of minutes, but what it comes down to is that a long time ago, in a little church near the Canadian border, three young women all made promises and decided to keep them.For 50 years.When a couple endures 50 years, that's impressive enough. When three sisters, married on the same day, are still happily hitched after half a century -- well, you could call that a big deal, one that will be commemorated with a family dinner today in Lynden.

It's hard to believe now, in these days of pricey polenta and trendy tamales, but cornmeal was once reviled by early European immigrants to North America.Raised on wheat flour, colonists couldn't stomach the sandlike meal made from corn. Wheat flour made such soft, pretty cakes and bread. Corn products were leaden in comparison. No yeast could make the stuff rise, and cooked in primitive ovens or on skillets -- sometimes even hoes -- set in the ashes of a fireplace, these biscuits were more like hardtack than the pillowy, chewy bread 17th-century Europeans were used to.Even pioneers, who should have been used to the hard life, found living on cornmeal almost unbearable.

Sweet change: Small treats grow to family sizeItem: Tastykake Bakery Fresh Classic Baked GoodsWhat you get: 6 or more servings per cakeCost: About $3.29Preparation time: Remove from box and serveReview: For Tastykake devotees, the arrival of their favorite hand-held treats in family-sized portions will seem like nirvana. The "large cake" line includes the company's most popular flavors like Butterscotch Krimpet Kake, Chocolate Cupcake Square and the Coconut Junior Square. We tried all three and found them to be true to their origins, although a little on the dry side.

The cook may drape a sinister "spider's web" of icing over this Pumpkin-Pecan Cheesecake, and put nasty, nutty "spiders" on guard. But it would take a lot more than that to scare sweet-toothed Halloween tricksters away from this treat.The cake is guaranteed to please kids and grown-ups alike, with its creamy texture and gently spiced flavor. It's easy to make, too. You can prepare it as one 9-inch cake or as 12 individual cakes.Pumpkin-Pecan CheesecakeMakes one 9-inch cake (serves 8) or 12 muffin-size cakesCRUST: 3/4 cup finely chopped pecans, toasted 3/4 cup graham-cracker crumbs 1/4 cup sugar 1/3 cup butter, meltedPUMPKIN MIXTURE: 2 envelopes unflavored gelatin 1/3 cup water two 8-ounce packages cream cheese, softened 1 cup sugar 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon allspice 2 1/2 cups canned or cooked pumpkin 2 cups whipping cream, whippedDECORATIONS (OPTIONAL)

CATONSVILLE -- They will never pass this way again -- to quote the greatest band of all time, Seals & Crofts. But at Catonsville High School, they will always have these treasured high school moments.Prom. Homecoming. Holding hands with the lanky guy in the St. Paul's Lacrosse jacket. He's a hottie, isn't he? Bouncing around the school halls, bouncing balls, bouncing off each other, bouncing clear out of slap-happy, slapped-down Youth. And 10, 20, 50 years from now they will think back to the night in the middle of March 1999.

SEPTEMBER WAS the month when the ice tea disappeared from the table. The canvas porch awnings came down. It seemed as if a crazed wasp or bee got into the house every day. And, after a summer spent alongside the sand dunes and boardwalk, the women who ran the Guilford Avenue house where I grew up were ready and rested for domestic vigilance.By the second week of the ninth month, the supply of homemade ketchup would have been boiled down and bottled. It was supposed to last through the upcoming spring.

"I liked 'Princess Furball' by Charlotte Huck because it shows me how to love another person."-- Arron SavageLeith Walk Elementary"I like 'Benny Bakes a Cake' by Eve Rice. Benny baked a cake for his birthday but Ralph (his dog) ate the cake. So instead his father surprised him with a GIANT cake. I just had a birthday and I made the cake."-- Justin HughesYouth's Benefit Elementary"I read a book called 'Mr. Popper's Penguins' by Richard and Florence Atwater. It was great. I like the story because it was funny.

Family and friends say Cinda Kassing and Jeffrey Lack are both fun-loving, kind and generous to a fault. In other words, made for each other.When Cinda and Jeffrey began dating in July 1995, it seemed to their friends the natural evolution of a long-standing acquaintanceship.Cinda's good friend Leli Simpson says she saw immediately how much Jeffrey meant to Cinda. "You can see in Cinda's face when she talks about someone whether she likes that person or not," Leli explains. "The way she spoke about Jeff, it was obvious how much she liked him."

On August 27, 2009, CAROL LEE TOLZMAN (nee Davis), devoted mother of Kurt, William, Karl, Rachel and the late John. Also survived by Ed Tolzman, Jr. Lee was co-founder and vice president of SPEAK (Suicide Prevention Education Awareness for Kids). Lee enjoyed singing and participating in Fred Waring's "Pennsylvanian's" Summer Workshops. She was a member of the Second Presbyterian Church and active member of the youth group, a graduate of Friends School and attended University of MD as an English major.

On August 27, 2009, CAROL LEE TOLZMAN (nee Davis), devoted mother of Kurt, William, Karl, Rachel and the late John. Also survived by Ed Tolzman, Jr. Lee was co-founder and vice president of SPEAK (Suicide Prevention Education Awareness for Kids). Lee enjoyed singing and participating in Fred Waring's "Pennsylvanian's" Summer Workshops. She was a member of the Second Presbyterian Church and active member of the youth group, a graduate of Friends School and attended University of MD as an English major.

The new ad campaign from Liberty Mutual features a shaken father sharing his anxiety about losing his job. Another TV commercial reminds viewers that Allstate was founded in the darkest days of the Great Depression. And the latest spot from American Express opens on this note: "During times like these, it seems like the world will never be the same." Viewers turning to TV for an evening of escape from the gloom of the Great Recession have been finding something else altogether lately: more and more such ads reminding them of our economic woes.

After a few albums, most bands like to mix things up. They'll write songs in a different setting or bring in a new producer to help find a fresh perspective. Not so for Cake. After almost 20 years together, the alt-rock group behind such '90s hits as "The Distance," and "Never There" stubbornly refuses to change for change's sake. John McCrea, Cake's founder and lead singer/songwriter, hates the idea of trying something different just to get new fans on board or make a media splash. He even has a fancy name for it: strident rejection of gratuitous innovation.

Florence Shimano of Glen Ellen, Calif., was looking for a recipe for banana cake like the one her mother used to make. She remembers that her mother's recipe called for the addition of sour cream. Helen Frantz of St. Clair, Pa., sent in a recipe for a banana cake that was given to her by a friend in 1953. She says that she has made this cake for her family many times over the years, and folks always love it. This is a great recipe to have in your collection when you need to use up over-ripe bananas.

About four years ago, when Leslie F. Miller was a graduate student in the Master of Fine Arts Creative Nonfiction program at Goucher College, she was searching for a thesis topic. Cake was one of her passions. She had read an essay at a gathering of writers detailing her intense, quixotic relationship with the cakes of her past, and it had gone well. So she decided to write about eating cake. She set out on a cake odyssey, visiting the kitchens of the area's better-known bakers - Duff Goldman of Charm City Cakes, Warren Brown of CakeLove, Jamie Williams of SugarBakers, Leslie Poyourow of Fancy Cakes by Leslie - all the while retaining her fondness for simple cakes, like the Safeway sheet cake.

Dining in Nashville means having your cardiologist on speed dial. A look at the local food and drink of the Music City and Charm City: NASHVILLE Country ham and red-eye gravy Get this: The gravy starts with the drippings in a pan in which slices of ham were fried. So it's ham gravy on ham. Served with a nice ham salad? Pork barbecue In case you didn't get enough ham. MoonPie Graham-cracker cookies, marshmallow filling, chocolate dip. Who needs a bathroom scale, anyway? Stack cake Sugar, eggs, molasses, buttermilk, flour ... you can feel your arteries hardening.

Little more than a week after an electrical fire destroyed the women's shelter at the Bea Gaddy Family Center, Executive Director Cynthia Brooks was flush with reasons to be thankful. She and siblings John Fowler and Sandra E. Briggs were counting their blessings yesterday as they prepared to start the annual Thanksgiving dinner at Patterson Park Recreation Center that is part of their mother's legacy. They were thankful for the friends who took over paying for the center's gas and electricity bill after it had climbed to $6,000 and the power was about to be shut off. And for the various contractors who walked into the building, ravaged by fire earlier this month, and restored it so that 48 hours later the damage was largely a memory.

Vegetarian Desserts Bakery 827 N. Howard St., first floor; 410-383-7770. Hours by appointment. Place orders at veggiedesserts.com. What price are you willing to pay for "purity?" That is the question I mulled over as I sampled a $40 chocolate cake and $25 a dozen oatmeal cookies made with no animal products. They came from Vegetarian Desserts Bakery, a one-year-old enterprise run by Charmane Baker. When I asked Baker about the price of the cake - $40 seemed like a lot - she replied that the cake is large, 9 inches in diameter and 3 inches high, and serves 20 to 30. She added that her products use no eggs, milk, honey or preservatives.

Shirley Gladden-Jones of Baltimore was looking for a recipe for something called "Better Than Sex Cake." It was made using a box of yellow-cake mix and a can of crushed pineapples. Based upon the volume of responses her request generated, this must be a very good cake. Either that or people just get a kick out of the name. The recipe seems to have been around for a long time. Marion Sue Fortner of Pasadena sent in a recipe from a magazine for the cake by Paula Deen. It was reprinted from the book Food Network Favorites: Recipes From Our All-Star Chefs.