Grand Mama Hall's Cola Cake

Today Chelsea and I are going to bake my Grand Mama Hall's famous cola cake from scratch. We are not chefs of any kind and neither of us really bake... well... ever but we are going to give it our best shot. It will be especially difficult because I have only vague scraps of paper that she quickly jotted the recipe down on and Grandmother's hand writing is semi illegible. I only ever remember having this cake once... at the Hall family reunion back in the like 1994 but it was so good that I never forgot about it maybe its because I was a little gipper who loved cake and maybe it was because Grand Mama had an amazing gift for baking but I'm excited to see if we can make some thing that is at the very least edible:)

Here is the recipe just in case you ever want to try your hand at baking some good old southern comfort desert.

2 cups sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup coca cola classic
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
3 "heaping" TB of coca
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter milk
1 TS baking soda
1/4 TS salt
1 TS vanilla
1 1/2 cup mini marshmallows:)
and my personal favorite ingredient... 1 TS instant coffee

preheat the oven to 350
put sugar and flour aside in a mixing bowl
in a saucepan blend Cola, shorting, butter and coca. bring to a boil remove from heat.
add flour mixture
add eggs
heat mixture until blended
add buttermilk, baking soda, instant coffee, salt and marshmallows mix well
bake in 13 X 9 inch pan for 40 min .

and for Grand Mama's frosting
2 cups sugar
3/4 cup water
1/2 TB vanilla
4 egg whites

Combine sugar and water in a saucepan. Cook on medium heat until mixture looks like "spins of thread" (DO NOT STIR WHILE COOKING.)
in a bowl, beat egg whites stiff.
gradually add syrup to eggs, stir constantly. Add vanilla. Beat until thick.