When my sisters and I were young our mother was a Cake Lady. You know who I mean, every town has at least one. She was the woman that other moms would turn to for their Holly Hobby, Mickey Mouse and Garfield cake needs (those of you who weren't alive in the late 70s/early 80s would be surprised at just how large those needs were - and this was before the surge in children's party character licensing we see today when it's possible to find a pan for the most obscure of interests and virtually every movie short of Boogie Nights). She made wedding cakes, Christening cakes, graduation cakes, end-of-softball-season cakes and other confections in such numbers that my memories of childhood are practically themselves sugarcoated. It was rare that there wasn't a cake around either baking, being decorated, cautiously carried to the car for delivery or cast aside as a dud. We got the duds in our lunchboxes.

Our friends, of course, thought this was fabulous. Cake all the time! What's not to love? Except, of course, constant exposure even to the awesome dulls and after a while we collectively stopped eating much cake at all. Duds sat around uneaten and undesired until they hardened sufficiently that they could be thrown out without the attendant guilt of wasting food and, once it became possible by the early 90s to buy an airbrushed cake in virtually every supermarket, mom gradually went into Cake Lady retirement.

Among the legacies of my cake-filled youth is the ability to produce simple icings for almost any requirement without a recipe or really much thought at all. Mom never taught me (she preferred to keep her kitchen to herself) but somewhere along the line I - and perhaps my sisters, too - picked up all kinds of frostings from glazes to the less tasty but more substantial decorator icing, suitable for roses and borders and other things you need to keep their shape. Come to think of it, the only "icing" I can't make from memory is fondant, which I suspect is because Mom disapproves of fondant and seldom consented to its use.

Last night I made the following chocolate icing for brownies for the Boy Wonder's school holiday party. Recipes for chocolate icing abound and there are probably at least three for everyone who has ever made any - I, of course, think mine is the best. I also think it's the easiest, a feature not to be underestimated as far as I'm concerned, especially this time of year when we're all so busy. This is a general-purpose spreading icing, suitable for brownies, a layer cake, sugar cookies or - let's be honest withourselves here - just spooning directly from the bowl into the mouth. You may see some recipes that require cooking, evaporated milk, separating eggs and so on and while these may produce perfectly pleasant icings I assure you that they are all unnecessary.

For a nice, general-use chocolate frosting, soften a quarter-cup of butter in a mixing bowl. When nicely softened (you can press a finger into the butter with little resistance), add a one pound box of confectioner's sugar and, say, a cup of cocoa powder. Start adding milk (I use 1%, but used both skim and whole successfully) slooooowly, about a tablespoon at a time until the frosting starts to form. Keep adding the milk until you get the consistency you like. If you accidentally add too much milk, mix in more sugar or cocoa powder. Taste liberally! It'll help you adjust the ingredients to get to where you want to be. Some folks like to add a pinch of salt and a bit of vanilla - I find them superfluous but, hey, it's your icing. Your frosted baked goods can sit out overnight or a couple days covered - the sugar and chocolate keep the milk and butter nicely protected for a short time.

Mom comes out of retirement every so often, mostly to make wedding cakes. These she has made for each of my sisters and me, as well as our friends who remember the birthday cakes she made for their own childhood parties. As even the youngest of our girlhood friends is now in her 30s these wedding cakes are becoming fewer and further between and her stretches of retirement longer and longer. The cake-filled bits of our lives exist now primarily in photographs and the ability to make almost any kind of icing, whenever we need that fix of memory combined with necessity. All except that fondant, of course.