Rich's Bakeshop Coconut Cake

Rich's and its Magnolia Room restaurant are no more, but here is one of the recipes that made it famous.

RICH'S BAKESHOP YELLOW CAKE:

Shortening and flour for pans

2 1/4 cups cake flour (if you can't find cake flour, use White Lily brand all-purpose flour)

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tablespoon powdered milk

1/2 cup water

2/3 cup liquid milk (2 percent or whole)

3/4 cup vegetable shortening

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

3 large eggs




RICH'S BAKESHOP ICING:


1/2 cup vegetable shortening

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon salt

1 pound confectioners' sugar

2 tablespoons powdered milk

1/2 cup water (for dissolving milk powder)


RICH'S COCONUT FILLING:
2 pounds frozen shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened --- recipe tested with unsweetened), divided
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons granulated sugar


Instructions:
TO MAKE THE YELLOW CAKE LAYERS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare cake pans by lightly greasing with shortening, then dusting with flour. In a large bowl, mix the flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside. In a small bowl or measuring cup, stir the powdered milk into the water and mix until dissolved. Combine the liquid milk with the powdered milk/water mixture and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the shortening and the sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add about half the flour mixture, beating until just incorporated, and then half the milk mixture, again beating until just incorporated. Repeat this step, adding the remaining flour with the remaining liquid, and beat until just smooth (about 1 minute). Be sure to scrape down the sides of the bowls once or twice during the mixing. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pans and bake for about 20 to 30 minutes. The cooking time will vary depending on how many cake pans you use and how full they are. The cake is done when it springs back when lightly pressed near the center with your finger. Allow the cake to cool for a few minutes in the pan, and then turn out onto cooling racks to cool completely.


TO MAKE ICING:

In a mixing bowl, using an electric mixer, combine the vegetable shortening, vanilla and salt and cream together until incorporated. Slowly add the confectioners' sugar until it forms a very thick consistency. Dissolve the powdered milk in the water and gradually add, just 1 or 2 tablespoons at a time, until the icing is a nice, spreadable consistency.



TO ASSEMBLE CAKE:

Make filling: In a large bowl, thaw the frozen coconut. Set aside. Take 1 1/2 cups of the coconut and place in a smaller bowl.
Combine the water and sugar and pour over this smaller bowl of coconut. This should be very moist but not soupy. Place one layer of the yellow cake on a cake plate and spread with icing. Spoon the moistened coconut over that. Place the next layer on top and spread with icing, spooning the moistened coconut over it. Continue this process until all your layers are filled; however, don't put the moist filling on the very top of the last layer, as it will be iced. Next, cover the entire cake with the icing. Make sure to use a thick coating of icing to eliminate any of the cake showing through. Take handfuls of the dry, thawed coconut and press the flakes into the icing. You may want to put a tray underneath to catch any coconut that falls as you do this. Continue pressing dry, flaky coconut all over the cake until it is completely covered. Chill for about 1 hour to set (it helps the coconut to stay), and then serve.

Knucksie K's four in one Inning

July 29, 1977 - Braves knuckle ball pitcher Phil Niekro struck out four Pittsburgh Pirates in one inning - the first pitcher in Brave history to do so. It's possible because baseball rules provide that if a catcher fails to catch the ball on a batter's third strike, that batter can try to make first base. In such a case, if the batter makes first base, the pitcher is credited with a strike out, but the out doesn't count against the team at bat.

Smothered and Scattered

Another one of Metro Atlanta's claim to fame... The Waffle House. What Atlanta partier or concert goer hasn't eaten at a Waffle House in the middle of the night, I've heard they are also open during the day. There is never a dull moment at the Waffle House, someone always has a story to tell you or a drama unfolds right before your eyes, like true life dinner theater. ANYWAY the first Waffle House opened it's doors labor day weekend in 1955 at 1955 at 2719 East College Avenue in Avondale Estates. The restaurant was conceived and founded by two neighbors, Joe Roger, Sr. and Tom Forkner, they decided Avondale Estates needed a 24-hour restaurant. Today, the chain they started has 1600 restaurants in 25 states.

Willie B.

Willie B. the silverback Gorilla who was born in the wild in Africa, came to the Grant Park Zoo as a baby in 1961 and lived in Atlanta for 39 years, until his death in February of 2000. For 27 years, Willie B. lived in a dingy concrete room, watched soaps and played on his tire swing. In the 1980s, Atlanta's zoo was known as one of the country's worst, and it lost its accreditation. As a way to modernize the facilities, Willie B. was moved into fancy indoor-outdoor digs and allowed to socialize and raise a family. He fathered five gorilla babies at Zoo Atlanta: Kudzoo, Olympia, Sukari, Kidogo, and Lulu. Kidogo, the only male offspring, took on the name Willie B., Jr. after his father died, taking his place as the heir. When he died at the age of 41, he was the oldest Gorilla in the United States to have fathered offspring. 8,000+ attended the memorial ceremony held in his honor, and the zoo now has a life-size bronze statue of him on permanent display outside the Gorilla exhibit. His remains were cremated. 80% of his remains were kept in a bronze box in the bronze statue at Zoo Atlanta and the other 20% were flown back to the African jungle.

Sex Pistols first U.S. appearance

The Great Southeast Music Hall gained international notoriety when Alex Cooley booked the first U.S. appearance of the Sex Pistols, Jan. 5, 1978. The Hall was packed minutes after the doors open at 7:00 p.m. Among the attendees that night are 5 television crews, approximately 50 members of the press, several police officers and vice squads from both Atlanta and Memphis(where they would perform the next night)... after a local band called Cruisomatic opens the Pistols take the stage at about 10:15 p.m.; Rotten asks, "Where's My Beer?"... "You can all stop staring at us now," Rotten says after opening with "God Save the Queen," "We're ugly and we know it... See what kind of fine upstanding youth England is chucking out these days?"...About 60% of the audience is standing and doing an Americanized version of the Pogo throughout, 20% of the audience is nasty, yelling yelling and throwing things at the band, and 20% of the crowd clearly does not know what on earth is going on... And that's Punk Rock!! Nine days later, Rotten would play his last show with the Pistols.
Ten months later, Sid Vicious would be arrested for the murder of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. After Sid spent some time in Riker's Island Prison, McLaren convinced Virgin Records to put up the $50,000 to bail Sid out. At a party celebrating his release on Feb. 2, 1979, Sid Vicious died from an overdose of heroin.

Atlanta's OG

Michael Thevis was born in 1932 in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he was raised by his Greek Orthodox grandparents. They had emigrated from Greece and brought up young Michael strictly and in the ways of the church, keeping him in from play to teach him the value of work. In 1949 Michael left home and moved to Atlanta, where he enrolled at Georgia Tech and began to take engineering courses. He couldn't afford to stay in school, though, and dropped out in 1950 to run a newsstand. By 1960 little had changed. He was married with three children, but his newsstand job was barely covering the cost of living. The Thevis family was forced out of their apartment one month when he could no longer afford to pay the rent, which had recently been raised to $57. Thevis' entry into criminal enterprises began one day while going over the books for his newsstand. He discovered that, while Playboy only accounted for 10% of his sales, it was almost solely responsible for his turning a profit. He went underground, and while overtly selling only tame nudie publications, he worked with gangster and pornographer Kenneth "Kenny the Jap" Hanna to make contacts with customers whose interests were far more suspect. Soon Thevis was using the newsstand to deal in black market pornography including hardcore bondage, rape, bestiality and, eventually, child porn. Business boomed. In the last half of 1967s Hanna introduced Thevis to a fellow gangster, Roger Dean Underhill, a low-ranking associate of the Gambino organized-crime family. Together Underhill and Thevis would move the small underground porn stand to the next level. Underhill recalled machines he'd seen at fairs and in supermarkets that played cartoons to keep children occupied. Using this concept, Underhill and Thevis developed some of the first sexually oriented peep booths in America. They set up manufacturing companies and began to distribute the peep booths to locations all over America, from New York to Pasadena, California, to locations ranging from airport bars to the sex shops on 42nd Street in New York City's Times Square. By the end of the 1970s the phrases "loop" and "peep booth" would be synonymous with sleazy porn. One of Thevis' first tastes of competition came from Nat Bailen, owner and founder of Urban Industries, which manufactured peep booths. In the early 1960s Bailen had invented peep booths to show children's cartoons on. He publicly spoke out against Thevis for turning his creation into a smut machine. In April of 1970 Urban Industries was burnt to the ground: fire investigators ruled it an arson. Another major crime linking Thevis to the world of organized crime came in November of 1970, when Kenny Hanna turned up murdered. Investigating the case, the FBI turned up Thevis' name. What began as a routine check into what the FBI believed was one more murdered gangster ended with the realization that they had stumbled onto the man who'd become responsible for distributing 40% of the United States' pornography, legal and illegal. In addition to his black-market and peep-show enterprises, he also owned nearly 500 adult bookstores and X-rated movie theaters across the country. The government estimated his annual income at $100 million. Word reached Thevis that he was under investigation. Aware that gangsters Al Capone and Dutch Schultz were brought down by federal investigations into their finances, Thevis began to branch out into legitimate enterprises, not only to account for his illegal income, but to launder some of it and make even more cash in the process. His peep booths were manufactured by one of his legitimate fronts, Cinematics. He owned General Recording Corp., a music distributor, and began to produce movies. He fronted the cash for Zhui ming qiang (1971), and anonymously put up money for one of Oliver Stone's earliest films, Seizure (1974). In 1973, Roger Dean Underhill was present when James Mayes, an employee of Cinematics, came to Thevis asking for a raise. Thevis was incensed, and shot Mayes to death. Shortly thereafter, Underhill was arrested during a routine traffic stop when the alert officer found a small cache of stolen guns in Underhill's car. Underhill was booked on charges of possession of stolen weapons and transporting stolen property across state lines; conviction meant a long stretch in federal prison. Sensing a potential breakthrough in their investigation of Thevis, the FBI got involved, offering Underhill leniency in exchange for his help in bringing down Thevis. Underhill was getting no assistance from the mob; he was too low-ranking to be seen as anything more than a liability, so he agreed to turn states' evidence. Over the next three years he helped the FBI in building charges against Thevis, and revealed in a sworn affidavit that Thevis had given him the order to set the fire that burned down Urban Industries. He further revealed that he was acting as backup when Thevis murdered Kenny Hanna, and that he was present during the murder of James Mayes. The FBI also learned about crimes they had never linked Thevis to, including the bombing of one of Thevis' competitors in Fayeteville, Kentucky, and his extortion of a small-time pornographer in Houston. Meanwhile, Thevis continued to get richer, funding another movie, Poor Pretty Eddie (1975), and extending the reaches of his porn empire into Florida. The beginning of the end for Thevis came in 1976, when he was convicted of conspiracy to commit arson, and distribution of obscene materials; Underhill personally testified against his former partner. Thevis was sentenced to eight years and six months in prison and ordered to pay $650,000 to Nat Bailen, the employees of Urban Industries, and Urban Industries' insurance companies. In prison Thevis received word that his wife had divorced him and that the IRS had teamed up with the FBI to investigate him for financial fraud. The icing on the cake came when Thevis was indicted in Florida on various charges under the RICO statutes, thanks largely in part to Roger Dean Underhill. Thevis escaped from prison in 1978 and was immediately placed on the FBI's top ten most wanted list. Word got to the FBI that Thevis had contacted old associates in the mob and arranged for a contract to be put on Underhill's life as revenge his betrayal. Underhill became one of the most sought-after gangsters in America, as word spread to every wiseguy and gunman that an "open contract" had been placed on him--in other words, no specific hitman was tasked with the job; whoever could prove they killed Underhill would receive a substantial reward. No one ever got to collect, though, because Thevis personally tracked down Underhill himself. Underhill was entertaining a friend, street tough Isaac Galanti, in October of 1978 when Thevis showed up at the front door and killed both men with a shotgun. Thevis was apprehended shortly after the murders and taken for holding to a maximum security facility in Connecticut. Awaiting his RICO trial in Florida, he tried to establish a "prison rep" by bragging to other prisoners about his various murders, including Underhill and Galanti. His cellmate contacted authorities. In 1980, Michael Thevis, the "Scarface of Porn," who had once made $100 million a year and owned nearly half of the hardcore porn industry, was convicted of the murders of Isaac Galanti and Roger Dean Underhill. He was sentenced to 28 years to life, and became eligible for parole in 1998.
Source: IMDb Mini Biography By: Jojo Mac

August 13, 1910

Gov. Joseph M. Brown signed Georgia's first law regulating the use of automobiles. Among the provisions, every vehicle had to be registered with the Secretary of State, had to have a license plate bearing the registration number, and had to have at least one headlight capable of projecting a beam 100 feet at least one red taillight illuminating the license plate. The law mandated no specific highway speed limit except to provide that driving speed must be "reasonable and proper." However, vehicles had to slow to 6 miles per hour when approaching a bridge, sharp curve, or intersection The minimum driving age was set at 16, unless a minor had a year's experience driving and was accompanied by the owner of the vehicle. And, the law made it illegal to drive while intoxicated.