Cake From a Special Lady For a Special Lady

I have a special book which is full of my special recipes.    Carefully cut out and saved -- some from pre-marriage days, others from my mothers and my aunts.    Some clipped from The Kansas City Star and others from magazines over the years.     Most are tried and true recipes -- not just clippings -- and many of them were garnered at pot lucks over the years when I tasted something so good that I just had to have the recipe and I'd ask around the (office)(church)(meeting) until I found the person who brought it and would pester them until they gave it to me!

Once I acquired the recipe, I made it at Linderhof . . . and sometimes quite often.    These are my "go to" recipes often when I want to make something that I know will be good.   Not only good but a crowd pleaser as well.

A long time ago, when I was the newbie in my office, we had a Christmas potluck.    There was a delightful cake and I couldn't rest until I found out who brought it and got the recipe for it!

It was the lady down the hall . . . and when I asked, she brought me a typed index card . . .

In early marriage, I had a box and recipe cards (didn't everyone) but I've since graduated to  a three ring binder and tape the recipes in -- straight as I cut them out of the magazines.    My old "card files" were also taped onto the pages of my binder -- as I originally wrote them.

With the recipe on it.    She then told me the icing.    Which I wrote on one of my recipe cards and since the card said "from the kitchen of". . . I wrote her name.

It was a cake we enjoyed a lot in early married years.    And every time I made it, I always thought of the lady who gave me the recipe.

And a couple of weeks ago, Shirley Ann and I got to celebrate the 100th birthday of the "cake lady"!     I told her how much I enjoyed her oatmeal cake and that I always thought of her when I made it.

Her reply, "I'd like a piece"!!!!

It makes an 8 inch square cake -- but often old recipes do.

And so the following week, I made a cake . . . and I didn't take her a piece but the whole cake!

Shirley Ann and I shared the cake with her and what was left we left with her.    So she could enjoy it for dinner than evening and perhaps with coffee the next morning.

The cake is good but the "frosting" makes the cake.

It's a good cake.   A moist cake.     And I was so glad that she shared her recipe with me all those years ago.

Thelma at her home with her cake!

Besides sharing cake, we had a nice visit.    We talked a lot about the "good old days" at work, about how every summer for many years, I'd come out to her farm and her husband would have bushels of fresh picked sweet corn for me to load and take home to freeze for the winter and about the big sack of plums that she gave me one year because she didn't have time to mess with them and they were the best jelly I ever made -- I was so sorry to empty the last of the jars.

I promised I'd be back and I will and next time I will bring another cake . . . and we  can share cake and conversation once again.