Good morning, all! I hope everybody is doing well on
this beautiful Sunday morning. Snow on the ground
here and very cold, but the sun is shining. Thanks
to Jill and Wayne for the praline suggestions. I
stirred the pralines pretty constantly when it was
boiling, and although the family thinks they're fine,
I think they're a bit on the grainy side, just as
suggested.

I'm baking a HUGE cake right now. I bought a 12"
round pan a week ago at the cake store that was going
out of business and I am just now putting it to use.
I'm getting some experience with the Hershey's
Perfectly Chocolate cake, so I did it. I increased
the recipe by 50%, and that is just the first! I'm
waiting right now for it to cool a bit and then I'll
go for round two. That will be a total of three
times bigger than what I usually make! I didn't have
the flower nail to put in the center to conduct heat,
and I was nervous about that. After 25 minutes the
cake was still way wet, so I put it back for another
10 minutes. Going like this, it took 55 minutes to
bake.

I'm hoping to slice the two layers in two and end up
with a four layer cake. After the next layer gets
comes out of the oven, I'm going into town to rent a
cement mixer to make the icing.

Michael