Column from April 15, 2010

Sharing your time and a favorite recipe

We were having lunch at The Old Hotel Café the other day and Sally Laufer was there. She’s the manager of the art gallery.

Sally was telling us about how she met her husband and we just had to share our story, too.

Some local folks might remember the recipe column we used to run in The Othello Outlook. We would run a feature story about someone in town and include their favorite recipe.

It was lots of fun and I met many very nice people right here in Othello.

Eric had won a set of Brittany Spears concert tickets from a promotion Pepsi had going. He chose to take the cash instead because he couldn’t imagine sitting through a concert with a bunch of screaming teenagers.

I did the story for the “My Favorite Recipe” column. We started dating a couple weeks later and got married the following year.

The Old Hotel Art Gallery is a volunteer organization. That means they rely on the kindness of others to keep running. Sally told me they are very short-handed and could use some extra help right now.

That's probably true of some of the organizations in your own areas. If you have a couple hours a week to spare, please consider spending some time helping these great groups.

I know how busy people can get. In fact, I’ve been telling myself to get on the ball and make some craft items to take to The Old Hotel for consignment sales. But, sometimes, there just aren’t enough hours in the day.

Sally was also kind enough to share this great recipe for my column. She said her kids always expect to have some of this cake when they come home for a visit.

She said it’s more like a brownie texture and the icing is similar to a layer of fudge on top.

Chocolate syrup cake

1 stick butter

1 cup sugar

4 eggs

1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 can chocolate syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream butter and sugar; add eggs. Mix in flour, baking powder and salt alternately with chocolate syrup. Add vanilla.

Bake in a sheet pan at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Cool before icing. This will be like a brownie, so don’t over bake.

Icing

1/2 stick butter

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup evaporated milk (must be evaporated)

1/2 cup chocolate chips

In a saucepan, mix butter, sugar and evaporated milk; boil 2 minutes. Remove from heat and add chocolate chips.

Beat until thickens to the texture of icing; pour over cake.