{Skippy's Apricot Cake}

When I was a kid, my Mom used to sing the song, MacArthur's Park, to me at bedtime. It was a really strange song about cake being left out in the rain (a metaphor for love, I think), but I used to love to listen to her voice singing it. She got the solo in high school because she was the only one that could hit the really high note in the middle of the song. Dang, I love that about her.

Although my Mom can certainly sing about a cake, she never was a baker. That's my love. I've always adored how you can take a recipe of simple ingredients, stir them in the right order, and out pops this masterpiece you've created. Cakes, cookies, scones, muffins, bread. Almost everything tastes good right out of the oven. I love it all, especially if it is a family recipe passed down for generations and baked with love.

I have been devouring this cookbook, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, which walks you through whether you should buy it or make it homemade. I've made three batches of homemade yogurt that is to die for, but that's a topic for another blog. I was also pleasantly surprised to find a cake recipe tucked in the afterward section of this cookbook. It is a recipe her Mom loved to make growing up and the author found six, handwritten copies in her mother's recipe file. She says, "The cake is a wonder, the recipe a treasure.....it clearly wasn't the brainchild of my great-aunt Skippy, though in our family she got all the credit."

This cake is baking in my oven right now. It will be ready in exactly 10 minutes and then I am ready to try it for myself. I'm giddy. Family recipes do that to me. If you're the same, I'm jotting the recipe down below.

Skippy's Apricot Cake

1 box Duncan Hines Lemon Supreme cake mix

1 cup canned apricot nectar, such as Kern's

3/4 cup neutral vegetable oil

1/2 cup granulated sugar

4 large eggs

Glaze: 1 cup sifted confectioners' sugar + 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350. Grease your Bundt pan or 9-inch tube pan. Stir together cake mix, nectar, oil, and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Pour batter into pan. Bake for 50 minutes. Just before baking time is up, mix together the glaze ingredients. When cakes comes out of oven, immediately turn it over onto a cooling rack positioned over a cookie sheet or large newspaper (anything that will spare you having to scrub your counter later). Pour the glaze on top of cake while it is hot out of the oven. The glaze will melt and flow down the sides of the cake and harden into an irresistible lemony glaze. As my mother wrote on each copy of her recipe: "Makes 12 large slices, 24 lady slices."

Happy baking, friends.

"MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark, all the sweet green icing flowing down. Someone left my cake out in the rain. I don't think that I can take it, 'cause it took so long to bake it, and I'll never have that recipe again. Oh, no."

{Autumn Bliss}

In honor of the season finally changing today (not by the calendar, by the way, but by the first chill in the air), I tried a new autumn recipe tucked away in a dusty, old cookbook. It was simple, but delicious. While I may be the only one in my house that celebrates change with baked goods and giddiness, I'm sharing the recipe with all of you. You never know when you might need something delicious and new in your life. Happy autumn, friends!

Apple Crunch Muffins

courtesy of Celebrate Autumn Cookbook

1 1/2 cup sifted flour

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 cup shortening

1 egg, slightly beaten

1/2 cup milk

1 cup Granny Smith apples, diced

Topping: 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup chopped walnuts, and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (mix together)

Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in mixing bowl. Cut in shortening until fine crumbs form. Combine milk and egg. Add to dry ingredients along with apples. Stir just to moisten. Spoon batter into muffin cups, filling 2/3 full. Spring with brown sugar topping. Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Makes 12.

Supper Cake

I love to bake. This obsession with making sweet things started when I was 10 and I discovered I could read all the recipes in my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook. I would bake a recipe until I had it perfected. This may sound super sweet on the surface, but it often became an exhausting endeavor of perfection. I made Mrs. Crocker's russian tea cake recipe over 50 times one summer until every ball was the same size, each coated with the same amount of powdered sugar.

That same summer, my grandma got sick with cancer. The worse I felt about her illness (the surgeries, the hospital rooms, her hair falling out), the more I baked and baked and baked. It felt so good to take also those random ingredients that meant nothing by themselves, and measure and mix them into something that came out amazing. While my mom may have found this new-found hobby somewhat extreme, my grandma loved it. She began sharing every recipe she knew and I absorbed it with eagerness and love.

The one recipe I loved to make more than anything was her supper cake. It was a recipe they made a lot during the Depression because it took very few ingredients and only needed 20 minutes to bake, almost the exact time it took a farm family to finish a meal. You sprinkle the cake with cinnamon and sugar and then eat it warm with gusto. It only took me two tries (with my grandma watching, of course) to make it perfectly. After that, I was in total charge of supper cake.

I still make supper cake for my boys. When I pull out my grandma's recipe, the memories of us in her kitchen are so strong, I can almost feel her standing there as I mix it. It is a memory of joy, but also sadness. She lived only a year more after that summer. While her cake is delicious, it serves as a reminder to me of the importance of passing on the sweet things in life--to our families, our friends and even those who may only sit a few minutes in our kitchen.

Life is short. If we are only given 20 minutes, why not bake something wonderful and think about those we love?

Supper Cake

courtesy of Marie Haller Boehmer

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup shortening

1 egg, beaten

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 cup milk

1 cup sifted flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

Topping: 1 TBS. butter, 3 TBS. sugar, 1 tsp. cinnamon

Combine sugar and shortening, mixing until fluffy. Add egg; beat well. Add vanilla and milk. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt, add to wet mixture, and beat smooth. Bake in greased 9-inch round pan, or 8-inch square pan, at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven. Immediately spread butter on top, then sift sugar-cinnamon mixture over top. Serve warm.