Earrings for Elephants

Sara in Madison, Wisconsin, was reading an old edition of The Joy of Cooking and came across a recipe that described a cake’s ingredients as earrings for an elephant. She couldn’t discern whether the authors meant that was a good thing or a bad thing. The cake in question is Orange-Filled Cake, and the recipe calls for orange juice in the batter plus orange filling and orange icing, then adds, Earrings for an elephant with no apologies! Apparently the idea is that using so much orange flavoring is like adding something extra to an animal that’s already quite extra indeed. This is part of a complete episode.