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Both umpiring and baking are hobbies, and it's easy to see which one will win more friends and influence more people. Joe's angel food cakes, eclairs, cream puffs, fudge, and chocolate brandy cherries would melt even the heart of Leo Durocher.

And, what's more, Todor's culinary efforts are truly profitable, and not just an expensive hobby.

"I'm glad I make money at it too," says Joe, "because then I don't feel guilty about spending money for something I enjoy so much!"

Joe Todor got his start in baking when he was a boy, although he didn't know it at the time.

"My mother couldn't read," he explains, "so she always had me read her recipes to her. The ones that turned out well were marked with a check.

"About three years ago, long after Mom had died, I got her old cookbook and noticed the checked recipes. I thought I'd try a Vienna Torte, just for the fun of it, and it turned out pretty good. From then on, I was the official baker of the family when it came to fancy stuff. My wife doesn't like to fool around with complicated cakes and things."

Most housewives will understand Connie Todor's feelings: Complicated cakes mean lots of dishes to wash. Joe doesn't worry about that sort of thing at all. He just stacks them in the sink for his wife to wash!

I hasten to add, however, that nothing is really complicated the way Joe bakes. Uninhibited by what a good baker "ought to do," he goes ahead and does things in simple but unheard-of ways.

JOE WILL whip up an angel food cake at the slightest excuse. The evening I visited him he said, "Come on out in the kitchen and I'll show you how easy it is to mix up a cake."

Expecting a sort of dry-run, without the actual cake-making, I went out in the kitchen. But Joe broke eleven egg whites into a bowl, whipped them with a wire whisk for a few minutes, added a few careless amounts of sugar, cream of tartar and flour, and had the cake in the oven before I got the recipe written down.

You would have had a hard time convincing me that the cake would turn out, if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes! It takes me a whole day to get up courage enough to make a cake, and Joe "threw" it together in ten minutes.

"Actually he isn't as careless as he seems," Joe's wife said. "The amounts may be a little rough, but he's pretty fussy about how he puts it together. He does the mixing by hand—won't even let me keep a mixer in the house."

"Mixers!" said Joe disgustedly, in his best "Strike three! Yer out!" tone. "No wonder women can't make decent cakes when they use those things!

Joe uses an old-fashioned wire whisk, and beats the egg whites only until they form a very weak peak. They don't really stand up in a peak at all. The danger in using a mixer is that you beat the whites too stiff and dry. That's Todor angel-food trick number one.

Trick number two is the eggs. "The fresher they are, the higher and lighter the cake will be," explains Joe. "If you can get them directly from a farm, or from a farmer who comes to your door, they'll be really fresh."

Trick number three is in taking the big air holes out of the batter after it is in the pan. "Just run a knife around the pan several times, gently and quickly," says Joe. "Don't stir it—just cut through it. This will take out the air bubbles that might give you holes as big as a walnut in the finished cake."

Trick number four is in putting the cake pan on the lowest shelf of the oven and using only 350° instead of the 375° called for in most angel food recipes.

NOW THAT you know the tricks, here's the recipe, in the exact amounts Todor uses, not the amounts his original recipe called for:

11 large egg whites
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ teaspoons cream of tartar
1 cup cake flour
1½ cups sugar.

Put salt and vanilla in egg whites, beat until they just form a weak peak. Add the sugar a little at a time, folding it in. Fold in cream of tartar. Fold in sifted flour. Put in ungreased tube cake pan. Bake in 350° oven 45 minutes.

This cake, made according to Joe's directions, could not possibly fail, unless you forgot to put in the cream of tartar which makes it rise. Even that, however, is not necessarily a tragedy when you're Joe Todor.

"One time when we were visiting at the home of friends," Todor recalls, "I was asked to make a cake, and I forgot to put in the cream of tartar. After the cake had been in the oven about ten minutes, I thought of it. While the women were still clucking and moaning about wasting all those ingredients, I took the cake out of the oven, sprinkled the cream of tartar over the top of it, and shoved it in with a knife. I put it back in the oven to finish baking, and it turned out as well as any other cake I ever made."

His wife shook her head and muttered something about "fools who rush in where angels fear to tread."

The ingredients for that cake seldom cost over 40 cents. In fact, the week I interviewed Todor, Milwaukee egg prices were such that it cost Joe only about 32 cents including electricity as well as all of the ingredients. And yet Joe's angel food cakes sell for $1 unfrosted, or $1.25 frosted. That makes angel food a really profitable item!

On special occasions, Todor often has so many cake orders that he couldn't possibly make them all in one day. In such a case, he makes them ahead of time and freezes them in his deep-freeze.

"That shrinks them a little," he says, "but it improves their flavor a lot."

ANOTHER FAVORITE concoction of Todor's is his chocolate fudge. He started out with a standard fudge recipe given to him by his brother-in-law and experimented with it until it was exclusively a Todor creation. Joe usually makes a recipe only once the way it is written. After that, he's strictly on his own. Umpires must get pretty tired of doing things according to the rules.

"I like my fudge with lots and lots of nuts, and plenty of melted marshmallow in it," Joe explains.

Here is his fudge recipe for you to try for your own pleasure or for a paying hobby:

2 packages Hershey's chocolate bits
6 marshmallows
1 can Eagle Brand sweetened condensed milk
¼ pound powdered sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla
Dash of salt
1 cup pecans or walnuts in halves or large pieces

Melt the chocolate and marshmallows over hot water in a double boiler, add the rest of the ingredients, and heat and stir for ten minutes. (Joe stirs constantly the whole time to whip lots of air into the fudge.) Then put the mixture into a buttered pan. It will be so thick with nuts that you'll barely be able to smooth it out. Then refrigerate the fudge overnight before cutting. If you can wait, it is better to let the fudge cool at room temperature for a couple of days before cutting. That improves the quality and makes it easier to cut.

"That fudge will stay soft and good-tasting for six months after it's made," Todor asserts.

Joe took samples of his fudge to work with him (he is a production control clerk in a factory) and passed them around to his fellow workers.

"Everybody who ate it said, 'YOU made this? Go on—you're kidding! Make me some, will you?' So I had to make some for all of them," explains Joe with a grin. "After a while, it got too expensive passing it out, so I started selling it. That fudge is the most profitable candy I make."

It costs $1.10 to make one batch of fudge (about two or two, and a half pounds) and Joe sells it for $1 a pound. It takes only ten minutes of his time to make, and is a "can't fail" recipe.

JOE'S LATEST candy, brandy-soaked chocolate-covered cherries, didn't even have a recipe to start with. It's an original creation which he is working to perfect. If a mere housewife may put in her two cents' worth, I'd say he has already perfected the concoction. Not even a Cordon Bleu cook could improve on it!

Here's how the confection is made: Todor soaks modified cherries (otherwise called maraschino cherries) in brandy, whiskey or wine for four or five days. Then the cherries are drained and dropped into a pan of warm dipping chocolate, heated in a double boiler. The cherries are rolled around in the chocolate until completely covered, and then lifted out on a two-pronged fork which lets the excess chocolate drip away between the tines. After allowing the candy to harden slightly on a piece of waxed paper, Joe swirls the tops with a toothpick, and then refrigerates it until the chocolate is set.

The resulting candy is professional-looking and extremely toothsome.

"I'm going to work at that recipe," says Joe, "until I can sell the chocolates for about 5 cents apiece. Right now I would have to sell them for 8 cents each in order to make a fair profit, and I I doubt if I could sell on a large scale at that price. I'd like to get into mass production on them—they're so quick and easy to make that the time involved is negligible. If I can cut my costs I'll make a fair profit even at the 5-cent price."

The cost reduction may come about in several ways. Right now Joe is experimenting with fresh cherries, which are inexpensive and readily available during the summer months. He plans to buy them at their lowest price and freeze them until he needs them.

Joe has already cut costs somewhat by using a different type of liquor than the kind he used at first. He started out with an expensive twenty-one-year-old brandy, but found that even an inexpensive "bar whiskey" tastes as well in the finished candy.

"It's really the alcohol content that soaks into the cherries," he said, "and the cherries themselves add the flavor."

Wine is also inexpensive, but Joe doesn't feel that it tastes quite as good, "For some people it might be just right," he concedes, "but I prefer to make things the way I like to eat them."

Joe could also cut the cost of the candy per pound by increasing the thickness of the coat of chocolate. The dipping chocolate, which contains a small amount of wax to aid in hardening, is much less expensive by weight than the liquor-soaked cherries. It will take some experimenting, however, to find just how thick the chocolate can be without impairing the cherry flavor.

"I could also cut the cost by surrounding the cherries with cream fondant, such as most candy makers use in chocolate covered candies," explains Joe, "but the cherry flavor is dissipated into the fondant, and just doesn't taste right."

Todor dislikes the cream fondant idea also because it is so difficult to work with. Adding fondant would increase the time it takes to make the candy, and part of the profit is in the speed with which Joe makes his concoctions. In fact, a lot of the fun in Joe's hobby is the fact that due to his simplified methods he can whip up a batch of candy in less time than it is taking you to read this article.

By not using fondant, however, Joe has found that the cherries tend to soften the chocolate, and his candy must be put in a cool place if it is to be kept for any length of time. That's no problem right now because the candy is always gone in, a couple of days. But if Joe Todor ever goes into mass production, with its resulting storage problem, that's one of the kinks he'll have to work out of it.

"I'm working on still another angle right now," Joe says. "I'm trying to devise a wooden pattern of some kind from which I can make a hollow chocolate shell. Then I could drop in the cherry, pour in the liquor, seal it, and the cherry would soak itself. That would eliminate the time it takes to soak the cherries."

WHATEVER JOE is experimenting on currently is greeted joyfully by his co-workers because he always tries out samples on them. His co-workers form the bulk of his customers, along with the many friends and acquaintances who have had samples of Joe's concoctions. He has no marketing problem once a person has tasted a sample. His is truly a hobby product that "sells itself."

"But," he adds, "you have to put it where it has the opportunity to 'sell itself.' In the long run, it pays to give away a great many samples, just to make people aware of how good the candy is."

Joe makes a practice of finding out the birthdays of his co-workers so that he can present them with cakes at the office. "I cut the cake, pass it around, and, while everybody is eating, I mention that I also sell cakes and tell the price. That frequently nets me several orders right then and there."

Joe's candy is marketed in several ways, and there are additional methods which could be used if he could handle any additional business. "Cakes are usually ordered for week-ends or special occasions," he says, "but candy is an everyday treat which people will buy at any time. I help make it an everyday treat by frequently bringing a box full of fudge or chocolate covered cherries to work and passing it around, while mentioning my selling price."

Another type of promotion, which is really publicity rather than advertising, is carried on in his company newspaper, for which Joe Todor is a reporter. He explains: "I start up 'feuds' with various men in the shop, declaring I'm the best cook in the place. We wrangle back and forth good-humoredly in the paper, and although I don't even mention that I sell my products, the news gets around and the whole 'feud' ends up by promoting a lot of orders for me."

Recently Todor has found another outlet for his candy—the neighborhood tavern. On New Years Eve he took boxes of his fudge and cherries to two near-by taverns where he passed out samples. "I got orders for ten pounds of fudge and several dozen cherries," Joe said, "and the proprietors agreed to stock my candy regularly, because all the customers were so enthusiastic about it. They will pay me my regular prices of 8 cents for a single-soaked cherry, 12 cents for a double-soaked cherry and $1 per pound for fudge, and they'll take whatever mark-up they like."

JOE'S BUSINESS, promoted only by the few simple methods mentioned above, has grown to such proportions that he has found it necessary to take in a partner, Joe Rosenberger, to help him make the candy.

Todor's sales average 100 cherries, twenty-five pounds of fudge, and three cakes per week, or about $40 worth, retail. On special holidays, such as Christmas, he may sell as much as forty pounds of fudge and 180 cherries in three days. At such times he would be swamped with work if it weren't for his partner's help.

"We still haven't explored all the possibilities of this business," says Todor. "I figure that if we wanted to invest in expertly designed packaging for the candy, we could sell with ease to the very exclusive shops which cater to the wealthy families of the city. The trouble with that is that it would probably bring us too much business, and we have all we can handle now."

Joe's five-year-old daughter, Linda, recently launched him in another direction by doing some experimenting of her own with peanuts and some dipping chocolate filched from her Dad. The result was some passable peanut clusters which Joe improved upon and is now offering for sale.

And what is Connie Todor's reaction to her husband's hobby?