Restaurant Review: Pho 99

Pho 99 - lunch on August 18, 2013

This is another go-to place my parents and I lunch at after church on Sundays.  Similar to Li Zhou, it seems to be a small, independently-owned restaurant that doesn't have its own website so I'm linking to the yelp reviews.  The inside is simply furnished so don't expect fancy but they're clean and they're quick.

We like to get the fried Vietnamese spring rolls as an appetizer - they're 5 for $5.95 and come out fast, hot, crisp and just a little greasy.  I always blot with a paper napkin first then just enjoy them.

They do a good pho here if you're in the mood for hot soup that comes out almost as soon as you order it.  This particular Sunday I was more in the mood for an entree than soup so I ordered the grilled beef and shrimp rice plate.  The shrimp is rather sparse (you get 3) but the beef is tender and has good flavor. They also give you a fair amount of rice so it's a pretty good value for under $10.

As with most pho restaurants, they're fast, cheap and filling so they're the perfect place for a quick lunch.

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (Chickpea Cookies)

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies - made August 24, 2013 from Texan Erin

Let me start off by saying if I had titled these "Chickpea Cookies", you probably would've skipped this entry and kept on going. I would have too.  Chickpeas?  In cookies?  Heck, I had to google "chickpeas" and see exactly what they were.  Then I was even more turned off to discover they're just another name for garbanzo beans.  I have no love for garbanzo beans.  Just bad memories of my parents trying to make me eat them when I was a kid and me spitting them out into my napkin, excusing myself from the table on the pretext of having to go to the bathroom and flushing that napkinful of garbanzo beans down the toilet.  Ick.

So why on earth am I using chickpeas (less traumatizing for me to think of them as chickpeas instead of the garbanzo beans of my childhood) in something as sacrosanct as cookies?? If you've seen the picture of these from Texan Erin's blog, you'll understand why I felt compelled. Some people might want to try them because they're gluten-free, dairy free, and contain no white sugar. I made them because her picture of them looked so good. And a friend as good as dared me to make them.  So I did.

The only change I made from the original recipe is I used almond butter instead of natural peanut butter, mostly because I prefer almond butter and the recipe said it was okay to make the substitution.  So that's what my cookies came out darker than hers.  Otherwise, I followed the directions to the letter, including weighing out all my ingredients to the last gram.  I didn't want any excuses on this recipe and wanted to be able to judge it on its own merit, chickpeas and all.

Baked for 10 minutes

They actually turned out better than I expected.  As with the limited number of things I've made that are gluten-free, they're rather dense, soft and "fudgy".  There are no crisp edges to this one and I'd advise you to let  the cookies cool completely before tasting them or else they might be too gooey.  I baked the first batch for the 10 minutes directed in the recipe and it was a little too gooey.  I baked the second batch an extra 5 minutes with no discernible difference in taste and the texture was just as soft but not as gooey once it had cooled. I think these would be hard to overbake but you definitely don't want to underbake them either.  Taste-wise, you can't taste the chickpeas at all; it seems they just contribute to the texture and give the cookies some body.  The honey was also not prevalent which was good for me since I don't like the taste of honey.  I liked these cookies but I don't know if I could say I loved them.  If someone wanted something with no flour, no sugar and no dairy, this cookie is a good choice.  I don't know that I would add these to my holiday baking list but if I did need to bake for someone who's gluten free, I'm going with these cookies.

Baked for 15 minutes

1¼ cups canned chickpeas, well-rinsed and patted dry with a paper towel
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup + 2 tablespoons (165 grams) natural peanut butter (don't use regular peanut butter) or almond butter, room temperature
¼ cup (80 grams) honey 
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt if your peanut butter doesn't have salt in it
½ cup (90 grams) chocolate chips

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F / 175°C. Combine all the ingredients, except for the chocolate chips, in a food processor and process until very smooth. Make sure to scrape the sides and the top to get the little chunks of chickpeas and process again until they're combined.
2. Put in the chocolate chips and stir it if you can, or pulse it once or twice. The mixture will be very thick and sticky.
3. With wet hands, form into 1½" balls. Place onto a Silpat or a piece of parchment paper. If you want them to look more like normal cookies, press down slightly on the balls. They don't do much rising.
4. Bake for about 10 minutes (or up to 15 minutes). The dough balls will still be very soft when you take them out of the oven. They will not set like normal cookies.
5. Store in an airtight container at room temperature (or in the fridge) for up to 1 week.

Restaurant Review: Howie's Artisan Pizza

Howie's Artisan Pizza - dinner on August 16, 2013

I had never heard of Howie's Artisan Pizza before but the night I met my cousin and Vanilla King for dinner at Mayfield Bakery & Cafe, we passed by Howie's on our way to the Palo Alto Cream as Howie's was located in the same Town & Country Village just outside the Stanford campus.  They had a menu posted on the outside of the restaurant so we ventured a look.  Despite already being full from dinner and trying to save room for ice cream sandwiches for dessert, the menu looked mouth watering and we resolved to come back and try out Howie's.

Garlicky Prawns appetizer

I ended up trying it out first because when I met Lisa, one of my oldest friends from high school, for dinner last month, I suggested Howie's. Lisa was up for it and we have compatible eating tastes so it was easy to agree on Garlicky Prawns for the appetizer and we split the Baked Potato Pizza.  I don't have a picture of the inside of the restaurant because we never went in.  Howie's has outdoor seating and it was nice summer night with perfect weather so it was an easy choice to make to be seated outside.

Baked Potato Pizza

The Garlicky Prawns were delicious. As someone partial to shrimp, I really enjoyed them. It comes with garlic bread which can also be ordered as a separate appetizer but I'd go with the two-fer and get the prawns instead so you can have both.  The Baked Potato Pizza had scalloped potatoes, grueyere cheese and bacon.  It was also tasty although our choice of toppings was probably a bit more carbo-loading than I needed.  Potatoes aren't a typical pizza topping for me so I thought it would be interesting to try. Uh, tasted just like sliced potatoes on a pizza :). The crust was also good.  It wasn't as thick as Premier Pizza's but still a decent thickness with a crisp edge if you don't want to gorge on too much bread. Think of it almost like a perfect blend of flatbread and deep dish pizza.  It's got the crunch of flatbread pizza at the edges but also the satisfying chewiness of deep dish in the middle.

Price-wise, Howie's is inline with specialty, mom-and-pop places with good pizza so I didn't mind paying it. I'm always of the mindset that I'd rather pay a few extra bucks for good food made well than get the mass-produced cheap stuff which isn't very good or is only "okay". From their website, Howie's looks like they've been in business since late 2009 and, 4 years later, they appear to still be thriving by the crowd there on the Friday night we went.  It's also very family friendly (lots of kids in action) if you wanted to bring your family out for a good pizza night.

Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough August 23, 2013, adapted from Crazy for Crust

Never let it be said I'll pass up trying a new chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Because I won't.  Especially when they're big cookies loaded with chocolate chips. And have brown butter.  And come from a food blogger whose taste seems so similar to my own and whose recipes I've tried before with much success.  This is no exception.  In fact, I'll even go so far as to say this may dislodge one of my previously favorite recipes for chocolate chip cookies and take one of the top 2 spots for chocolate chip cookie greatness. It ranks right up there with Alton Brown's recipe in my book.

Actually, it might even have a slight edge over Alton's recipe although I may have to bake both and try them "side by side".  You know, just to be sure.  But for now, I'm going off of sensory memory.  My taste buds have excellent recall. Why do I like this particular cookie so much? Well, you all know my idea of an optimal chocolate chip cookie eating experience is to eat it warm, 10 minutes out of the oven.  Eat it too soon and it's more gooey than chewy, not to mention you burn your tongue (er, not that I would know or anything).  But give it 10 minutes to cool and the edges have had time to get a little crisp while the middle is still soft and the chocolate chips are still melt-y.  Yum.  But oftentimes, a good chocolate chip cookies 10 minutes out of the oven is only so-so once it's completely cool.  That's when I notice it's too sweet or the texture isn't quite so chewy at room temp or it stales too fast and less than a day later it's already dry.

This particular cookie was fantastic 10 minutes out of the oven but even better(!) once it had cooled. The taste held up as well as the texture.  I actually baked it a minute or two longer than Dorothy's original instructions because I preferred it a little more baked than gooey.  The only other thing I did differently was instead of mini chocolate chips, I chopped up a slab of milk chocolate into chunks and used that instead. So good. Like "extra miles on the treadmill worth it" good.

Just to show you how thick these cookies bake up, here's a comparison of one of the cookies against my iphone encased in its Otterbox - pretty chubby, eh? 

2 sticks butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract, optional (I left it out)
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate chunks)

1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring often, about 6 minutes, until it becomes brown in color. It will foam, reduce, then foam again. Once it’s done cooking the foam is a light brown and it will dissipate after you remove it from the heat. Once it starts to brown, keep stirring so it doesn’t burn. Let sit for about 5 minutes to cool.
2. Pour into an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment. While still hot, add both sugars and mix on low until combined. Let sit to cool for a few minutes.
3. While butter mixture is cooling, combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir and set aside.
4. Turn mixer (with butter mixture bowl attached) on low. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing completely. Mix in vanilla extract and almond extract (optional, but it adds great flavor). Add flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
5. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill dough for at least 3 hours. (My alternative: I portioned the dough into generous-sized dough balls first, placed them in an upside-down plastic pie cover, covered them in plastic wrap then chilled them overnight.  This way you can bake them directly when you're ready.)
6. Preheat oven to 350°. Line cookie sheets with parchment or silpat liners. If you didn't already portion your dough into dough balls, you may need to let the bowl of cookie dough sit at room temp for about 20 minutes before you can scoop it.
7. Scoop out 1/4 cup sized balls and place 6-8 on a sheet. They don’t spread a lot, but they’re BIG cookies.
8. Bake for about 11-12 minutes. They will be golden on the outside and still doughy on the inside. Let cool for 5 minutes, and then remove from pans to cool completely.

Eatery Review: Premier Pizza

Premier Pizza - lunch on July 31, 2013

I'm blogging out of order about the places where I've eaten but I didn't want to skip this one.  One of my coworkers and I went to get lunch near the office.  The main purpose of the trip (at least for me) was to go to Prolific Oven but since neither of us wanted to get lunch there, we opted for Premier Pizza instead.  Both are located in the same strip mall and we both had meetings until noon so we didn't arrive until the height of the lunch rush. 

Neither one of us had a lot of time for lunch since duty called back at the office but fortunately, Premier Pizza is quick.  You can order pizza by the slice of whatever is available at the time so there's no wait time for the pizza to bake.  This is also a good place to go to if you're hungry and on a budget.  One slice of pizza is $4.25 and the slices are huge!  It's literally a quarter of a pizza. For under $5, you can pretty much fill up for the rest of the day.  What I like about them is their crust; it's soft and thick crust but not too dense or hard. 

 

Premier Pizza also specializes in corporate catering and it's how I heard about them in the first place when my old company ordered in for lunch and I tried out their pizza.  They have four locations to serve the South Bay and Silicon Valley. They're a good option when you have to feed a lot of people at once and the different choices of toppings means you can easily accommodate both vegetarians and meat lovers alike.

Brown Butter Snickerdoodles - Baked Elements

Brown Butter Snickerdoodles - made dough August 18, 2013 from Baked Elements by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

It's September.  Not even the first day but the second.  Where did summer go?  Technically it still IS summer but let's face it, once it's Labor Day, summer's over.  Kids back in school?  I say break out the cookies for lunch boxes or after school snacks. Starting with these.

I love browned butter.  I have an almost Pavlovian response to it every time I read it as an ingredient in a recipe. I've made Brown Butter Snickerdoodles before but there's room in the universe and my blog for more than 1 version of it and anything from the "Baked" family of cookbooks has a good chance of being a winner.

I didn't even know there was a third Baked book out until a friend casually mentioned it.  You know my ears perked up and amazon was my destination before I drew my next breath.  Yup, sure enough, there it was: Baked Elements.  I think I must've lost a few minutes of conscious thought because the next thing you know, I was getting a confirmation email from amazon outlining the expected delivery date of my new baking book.  How'd that happen? I decided not to dwell on my lapse of consciousness it too closely but just rolled with it and waited for my book to arrive 2 days later (thank you, prime membership and free 2-day shipping).

I've made lots of snickerdoodles in my baking past.  I've even made lots of good snickerdoodles, modesty aside, and I know an 8-year-old Vanilla King who can attest to it.  But these are really, really good snickerdoodles. The browned butter gives them a decadent richness and I used fresh Vietnamese hoity-toity cinnamon from Sur La Table.  Snickerdoodle heaven.

Now you do have to chill these first but I do that with almost all cookies anyway.  The directions say to chill the bowl of cookie dough then when you're ready to bake, make them into dough balls and bake them.  I prefer to make them into dough balls first, depending on the softness of the dough.  If the dough is too soft, chill for 10-15 minutes then make them into dough balls and chill them for another 1 to 24 hours.  But don't chill them completely then make into dough balls.  Why?   Because it's much harder to portion out chilled dough than unchilled dough.  It's easier and faster to make them into dough balls then chill them.  Not to mention they'll chill a lot faster because they're now in individual dough balls instead of one mass of dough in a bowl.  And if you chill the whole bowl of dough, when you portion them into dough balls later, you sometimes have to thaw them a little to get the cookie dough malleable enough to be scooped out and then you just wasted/undid some of that chilling time.  I'm all for baking efficiency so I make the dough balls first then chill them.  If you're not going to bake these within a day of mixing the dough, just put the chilled dough balls into a freezer bag and store them in your freezer until you're ready to bake them.

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into ½” cubes

2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons cinnamon, divided

½ teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

1 tablespoon whole milk

1 cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided

½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1. In a medium skillet, melt the butter over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally until the foam subsides and the butter turns nut brown, 8 to 10 minutes.  Pour the brown butter through a strainer directly into the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Beat the butter on medium-low speed to release the heat and bring it to room temperature, 5 to 7 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, 1 teaspoon of the cinnamon and the salt.
3. In a small bowl, combine the eggs and milk and whisk lightly.
4. Once the butter is cooled, turn off the mixer, add 1 cup of the granulated sugar and the brown sugar and beat on medium speed for about 2 minutes.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl and beat again for a few seconds.  Turn the mixer to low and stream in the egg mixture.  Continue beating on medium speed until thoroughly combined, 30 to 45 seconds.
5. Add the flour mixture in three parts, beating after each addition for 10 to 15 seconds, or until just barely incorporated.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl and gather dough into a mound in the middle.  Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or up to 24 hours.
6. Preheat oven to 400⁰F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
7. In a wide-mouthed bowl, stir together the remaining 3 tablespoons of sugar and 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon of cinnamon until the mixture is uniform in color.
8. Using a small 2-tablespoon-size ice cream scoop with a release mechanism, scoop dough into balls and rolls the dough balls in the cinnamon sugar mixture.  Place the cookies about 1 ½” apart on the prepared baking sheets and bake for about 10 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through the baking time, until the cookies are cracked and the fissures are set.
9. Set the pans on wire racks to cool for 10 minutes.  Use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the racks to cool completely.

Restaurant Review: Li Zhou Chinese Restaurant

Li Zhou Chinese Restaurant - lunch on August 11, 2013

The restaurant business is a tough one.  I don't have to be in it to realize that.  It's easy to tell by the ones that come and go in a fairly short time as it's an industry with a high failure rate.  Which is why I think it's important to patronize the small ones as much as possible and why I've started doing these blog reviews.  Even if you don't live where I do and can't go to the same places, I'm hoping it'll get people thinking about the small business restaurants and/or bakeries in their own area and go try them out.  Some will be good and some won't.  The ones that aren't good won't last long and even the good ones can go under if there isn't enough business and word of mouth. 

Won Ton Soup

Some are even too small to have their own website.  Li Zhou is one of them so I've linked their yelp reviews to the title.  My parents don't use yelp and I think they found this restaurant simply by driving past it.  Or one of their friends brought them the first time and they've been going back ever since.  My dad likes their Crispy Fried Chicken as it IS crispy but not greasy.  Their won ton soup is also pretty good, not too salty.

Crispy Fried Chicken (half order)

This last time around, we also tried out their Tangerine Beef which I liked.  It's a little sour from the tangerines but I liked the little bit of sour as part of the flavor.  It's lightly breaded, the beef was tender and the breading retains some crispness despite the sauce. 

Tangerine Beef

Li Zhou also offers catering which I imagine helps it stay in business.  It's a common practice for most restaurants; that way, they sell more food and can plan ahead for it.  It also alleviates having more wait staff since the orders are for pick up.  Hopefully they're doing well as the last time we went for Sunday lunch, the place filled up which surprised my parents as they're usually not so busy.  It might have surprised Li Zhou's staff as well as our orders took a little longer than usual to come out as their kitchen was behind. I consider it a small price to pay to watch a small restaurant get more business.

Lemon Chip Cookies

Lemon Chip Cookies - made dough August 17, 2013 from Mon Cheri Cooking School

This is one of my favorite cookies.  I've had this recipe for years, ever since I took a holiday cookie baking class at Mon Cheri Cooking School (which sadly I've found out has closed).  I used to make it often but you haven't seen it on my blog until now because I haven't made it in years.  Why?  Because some years ago, the King Arthur Flour website stopped selling mini lemon chips and that's what's needed for this recipe.  Fortunately, I had included this recipe in a tastebook I had made of some of my favorite recipes and a viewer commented that Nuts.com sold lemon chips.  Hello?  They sell lemon chips, you say?  I was excited to learn that, intended to go order some, got distracted by ten million other things and only recently remembered it again.  I also thought to check out amazon (of course) and did find one external vendor who sold them as well.  But Nuts.com had a more competitive price once you factored in shipping so I went with them instead.

This recipe is the single biggest reason I used to buy lemon extract a couple of bottles at a time.  It was once part of my Christmas cookie gift packs every year.  It's a crisp, buttery, lemony cookie perfectly sweetened by the lemon chips and incorporating the crunch of the toasted almond bits.  You know I like a cookie when it defies everything I normally like and don't like about cookies: instead of being thick and chewy, these are thin and crisp.  It's got nuts when I normally don't like nuts in my cookies.  It uses an extract when I normally only prefer baking with vanilla extract as most other extracts are too artificial in flavor.  None of that matters to me when it comes to these cookies.  I can pop them in my mouth and eat them like crackers if I'm not careful. I don't think these photograph well, at least not by me or my camera, but don't let the pictures fool you - these taste much better than they look.

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg yolk

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon lemon zest, finely grated

1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons lemon extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ cup blanched almonds, ground

½ cup lemon chips

1.     With the paddle attachment of an electric mixer, cream the butter with sugar on medium speed until creamy.  Add the egg yolk, lemon zest and lemon extract.  Decrease speed to low and gradually add the flour; increase speed to medium and ensure mixing is thorough.  Remove bowl from mixer and fold in the ground almonds and lemon chips by hand.  Transfer mixture to a work surface and roll into a log about 2 ½” in diameter.  Wrap in plastic and place in the refrigerator until firm. If you freeze the cookies longer than an hour, let it thaw for at least 10 minutes before slicing or else the dough may crumble.

2.     Remove from refrigerator and return to work surface.  Slice dough into ¼” slices.  Line cookie sheets with parchment paper and arrange cookies about 1” apart.  Sprinkle lightly with granulated sugar.  Bake in a 325°F oven for about 20 minutes or until edges of cookies are golden in color.  Transfer cookies to cooling racks and let cool completely.

Restaurant Review: The Counter

The Counter - lunch on August 17, 2013

I can't remember how I heard of The Counter Burger Grill but when I looked up their website, their menu showed they had sweet potato fries and that was all I needed to decide to try them out.  I've been on a burger kick lately since I had the sweet potato fries at The Habit but found their burgers just on the thin side.  I had no immediate plans to go to St John's again so it seemed like a good time to try a new burger place.

I had expected The Counter to be similar to a fast food place but it was really more like a diner.  You could eat in or take out.  I opted for takeout as I had other things to do on an errand-running Saturday.  At The Counter, they give you a sheet of paper with the menu choices and you can mark up what kind of burger you want (beef, chicken, turkey or vegan veggie), what kind of bun, which type of cheese, any add-ons like tomatoes, mushrooms, fried egg, sauces and/or condiments (no thanks).  So it was easy for me to order a plain burger, hand my slip of paper to the takeout order person and not be judged that I just wanted a burger, bun and cheese.  Their lettuce was the shredded kind so I skipped the virtue since I only like leaf lettuce on my burgers.

You can also choose whether you want a 1/3 lb burger or a 2/3 lb burger.  You're going to laugh at me but after wanting a thicker burger than The Habit's, I decided to go all out and order the 2/3 lb burger.  I mean, really, how big could it be? (insert your laugh here) Uh, it turns out 2/3 of a lb of ground beef after cooking is quite a lot.  Like a behemoth burger on steroids. I don't know why but I hadn't expected it to be so sizable.  Silly me.  Nevertheless, it was a good problem to have.  The burger was quite tasty and very juicy.  It did take me 3 sittings over 2 days, however, to finish a 2/3-lb burger.  Next time, I'd better go with the 1/3. At least I got only a single serving of the sweet potato fries.

I liked The Counter and think it's a good place to meet friends for a casual lunch, especially if you want a burger and sweet potato fries and particularly if you're a Meg Ryan type from When Harry Met Sally and want what you want how you want it.  Because you fill out the order form yourself, checking off all the things you want, there's very little room for error in the order taking process.

Old-Fashioned Butter Cake

Old-Fashioned Butter Cake - made August 18, 2013 from Food for a Hungry Soul

When I was a kid, I used to be fascinated by those Betty Crocker cake mix boxes.  You know, the ones that pictured a luscious two-layer yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  We were new to the US, came from a tropical country where ovens are not the norm in a kitchen, and yellow layer cakes were not every day fare in our cultural culinary repertoire.  When my mom baked, it was things like bibingka or puto.  The Betty Crocker cakes were the stuff of birthday cakes that I only got a taste of when I went to a childhood friend's birthday party.

As I grew older and was learning how to bake, a cake mix was a safe bet to use, as was the can of ready-made frosting.  I look back now and shudder what I used to bake and eat but back then, that was all I knew and those box mixes and frosting cans look really, really good (and doable) when you're 10.  Flash forward a(n undisclosed) number of years and now I'm a bake-from-scratch snob whose culinary pride wouldn't be caught dead baking those mixes or using those ready-made tubs of frosting. But there's still some nostalgia whenever I think of a two-layer yellow cake with chocolate frosting.  So I made one from scratch.

This recipe is as easy as a cake mix but sadly, I managed to mess it up, not in the mixing but in the baking.  Meaning I was busy doing other stuff while the cake pans were in the oven, never use a timer and subsequently almost forgot I had these in the oven so I overbaked them a trifle.  So the texture came out a little dry for my picky taste buds.  Beyond that, I didn't get a really robust butter flavor from the cake.  I don't know if it's because I overbaked it or if  that's just the way the cake is supposed to taste. If you look at the picture from Food for a Hungry Soul's blog (click on the recipe title to take you to the direct page), you'll see how much better that one looks than mine.  I've got to think something that looks that good has to be taste much better than what I ended up with so I will have to put this in my "try again" file to see if I can get a better result when I bake it properly.

2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour two 8 inch x 2 inch baking pans and set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. Add butter, milk, and vanilla.  With a hand mixer, beat for  2 minutes, occasionally scraping down the sides of the bowl. 
4. Add eggs and beat for 2 minutes more.
5. Pour batter into prepared pans, dividing equally between the pans.  Bake 30 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.  Remove from oven.
6. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then turn cakes out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.
7. Frost with your favorite frosting.

Chocolate Frosting
1 stick (1/2 cup) butter
2/3 cup cocoa
3 cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup milk  (plus an additional few drops to make a nice consistency)
1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Melt butter.  Stir in cocoa.  Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating on medium speed to spreading consistency.  Add more milk if needed.  Stir in vanilla.  About 2 cups frosting