Flashback: Totally Minnie

So recently the commercial I've been getting more than any other on Hulu is Verizon's new takeoff on Big Red's 80s ads.

It seems like kind of a genius campaign to me - it plays on the familiar while acknowledging the cheesy, and the jingle remains unbelievably catchy. It took me back to the video tapes of late-80s TV specials I used to watch ad nauseam as a kid. It's a means of media consumption that I assume would be totally foreign to kids today, who can get their made-for-TV movies on DVD weeks later or keep them stashed on DVRs. On those tapes, the commercials became part of the viewing experience; I was too young to be annoyed by them, so it never occurred to me to fast forward through them. Frankly, The Wizard of Oz still feels kind of incomplete when I watch it without the commercials touting McDonalds' employment of a young man with Down's Syndrome or an episode of 48 Hours featuring a story about a lifeguard trapped at the bottom of a pool. It's a fascinating glimpse into the world of whatever week the special aired and a mini-tour through a moment in history of advertising.

I thought it might be fun to write about some of the things I watched over and over as a kid. Several are really strange to watch again now, recognizing people who I didn't realize were celebrities at the time or noticing holes in plot logic that I once accepted at face value. The one the Big Red ads immediately brought to mind: Totally Minnie, starring Suzanne Somers and Robert Carradine.

To summarize: Somers is Carradine's guide at the "Minnie Mouse Center for the Totally Unhip." That's right, Somers is the "hip" one in this scenario. Oh, the "rapping." The special, which aired as part of the Wonderful World of Disney (or whatever its equivalent was at the time), is an impressive bit of Disney branding from the time right before they would recapture the hearts of America's children with The Little Mermaid, mashing up clips from old shorts and features with pop songs from the 70s and 80s. Bizarrely, this was my first encounter with the phrase "Miss Jackson if you're nasty":

I think repeated viewings of the following clip made me A) love "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" forever (I was really excited when I got older and realized that this was actually a real song and not just some random Disney thing) and B) buy heart-shaped sunglasses last year.

Every once in a while when I'm getting ready to go shopping, this ode to unrepentant materialism pops into my head. Oh, the tragic, tragic 80s fashion.

Walt Disney says Be Yourself! (Unless yourself is a cartoonist who wants to unionize!)

Baking: 1-2-3-4 Cake

So I baked this cake on Sunday, and had plans to frost it and bring it in so my friends in my program could enjoy it, but I cannot for the life of me find the energy within me to find and execute a decent frosting recipe. The ones I've made before have felt really work intensive and by the time I'm home and have anywhere approaching enough time to work on it, I just feel like I'd rather take a nap instead. I'd also rather not use frosting out of a can for sharing with others. However, I wanted to discuss the cake anyway, since the recipe came from an interesting place. Maybe I'll still bring it in, maybe I'll just keep it to practice decorating techniques on (and to eat, of course).

One of the cooler things about going to an old school is that you can find some neat old books in the library just wandering through the stacks. (Also, old magazines, but that's another story entirely.) One day I came across The Ebony Cookbook from 1962:

In case you had any doubts that this came from the sixties, here's the endpaper:

And the photo accompanying the "Desserts" chapter:

I liked the idea of baking something from the cookbook as a sort of Black History Month celebration. It's a sort of artifact of the intra-United States Black diaspora; Ebony readers sent in recipes to construct a compendium of African-American foods. There's a chapter specifically devoted to "Creole Dishes," which culminates in a recipe for Stewed Turtle. Where does one even find turtle meat these days?

So I decided to make the "Old-Fashioned 1-2-3-4 Cake." I used my new turn-crank handled sifter for the first time! It's a pretty basic yellow cake; the name comes from the ingredients:

One cup of butter

Two cups of sugar

Three cups of flour (I used cake flour, which is superfine. Sifting it can end up leaving a fine layer of powder all over the kitchen, which makes me feel like I'm in Debi Mazar's apartment in Goodfellas.)

Four eggs

I love the concept of the name corresponding with the recipe; for me, it conjures an image of passage from one generation to the next as a means of teaching kids to remember the recipe easily. Here's the finished product on Sunday:

And still unfrosted today:

If I end up doing something fancy decoration-wise, I'll post that too. Otherwise, I'll just move on to Valentine's Day stuff (I got a heart-shaped cake pan! I'm excited!)