Beer Cake

2/3 cup butter or oleo
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 sq. bitter choc.
2 1/4 cup flour
2 tsps. soda
1 cup beer
3/4 cup buttermilk
8 oz bottle maraschino cherries
1/4 cup cherry juice
1/2 cup chopped nutmeats

Cream shortening and sugar. Add eggs and melted chocolate and mix well. Sift flour and soda; add to creamed mixture alternately with beer and buttermilk. Add cherries, cherry juice and nutmeats. Mix well. Pour in 9 x 13" pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 40 mins.

Frosting:
8 oz cream cheese
1 stick butter
1 lb. powdered sugar
2 tsps. vanilla

Blend softened cream cheese, softened butter, powdered sugar and vanilla. Spread on cake.

Submitted by Dona Jahn, Tripoli, WI

Bloggers Note: I used "Point, Special Lager" beer from the Stevens Point Brewery.

It was only after starting to mix the ingredients did I realize that all of our 9 x 13" pans were in use with left over casseroles. So, I had to use three, eight inch round cake pans. As I learned, this cake is not meant to be a layer cake! It's very moist, and therefore very hard to stack. Keep that in mind as you gander at the pictures. It really does taste much better than it looks!

I was really happy with how the cake tastes and am excited to make it again in a 9 x 13" pan. Don't worry, I'll keep you posted.

I have to admit, I'm not a huge fan of maraschino cherries, but I did not mind them in the cake. I also used almonds for the "nutmeats".

When I make it again I will place the cherries in the pan once the batter has been poured in. They had a tendency to clump together so parts of the cake have lots of cherries, and other parts have none.

This definitely will be making a few appearances this summer and parties and cookouts... maybe paired with the Cherry Bounce!

Fruit Cocktail Cake

Fruit Cocktail Cake

1 cup flour

3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1 beaten egg

pinch of salt

1 small can fruit cocktail, undrained

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Mix first 6 ingredients; place in slightly greased pan. Top with brown sugar and pecan mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. Serve plain o

r with whipped cream.

submitted by Mrs. Vina Schlindwein of Aurora, IL

Blogger's note: We forgot to buy pecans so we substituted 1/2 cup of

slivered almonds. The recipe also says to put it in a pan. I found an 8x8 baking dish to be the appropriate size.

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This was an extreme simple cake to make. I'm terribly organized in the kitchen and this took me about 5 minutes to get in the pan. Since the fruit cocktail is the sum of the liquids, there was no mess of oils and this promises actually to be a pretty healthy cake as cakes go. It's cooling at the moment. I'll update after dinner to let you know how it turned out.

Update: The cake was nice. Very simple. It lacked the fruitiness I thought it was going to have, but still it was quite nice. It was also not as sweet as I'm used to in cakes. We hypothesized that this was due to the proliferation of bad bakeries in America that equate sweet with good. Fruit Cocktail Cake is definitely more on the savory side of cakes, and the almonds and brown sugar on top made it taste even a bit more like a coffee cake.