Aunt Eva’s Pound Cake
Left: My 5th birthday party at the Mallette St. house. Right: My 18th birthday at Lake Champlain, Vermont.
Left: My 2nd birthday at Fripp Island, SC. Right: My sister’s 3rd birthday parade at our old house in Carrboro, NC.
Various plays we put on with our neighbor friends. On the left I was portraying our neighbor’s stepdad, Snake, who smoked a lot. (I took creative liberties and substituted a pipe for cigarettes.) We also did several Babar plays.
“John was a very active Thespian” !!!!
Mom made her headpiece for the QM2’s “Roaring Twenties” party. (My daughter Luca on her left.)
Death and taxes, amiright?! Sadly, I’ve been neglecting my blog because my accountant isn’t interested in hearing about my childhood. My taxes are DUE. But, I’m being contrary and carving out a little time this morning to write anyway. My birthday was last Saturday. I’ve mentioned in previous posts some of the wonderful things Mom did to help us celebrate our birthdays. She made us very specific cakes (in my case one that looked like a hamburger and one that was branded with a Izod Lacoste alligator drawn in frosting). She gave us our own individual mini wheels of brie cheese that no one else could eat (genius!). Our childhood birthday parties involved parades around the backyard with musical instruments. There were lots of wonderful celebrations over the years. As we got older, the gifts evolved (usually into money!) and we were equally thrilled. (A few years ago I was addressing my daughter’s Christmas thank you notes and took a look at one of them. “Dear Uncle Bill, Thank you for the $20. You really understand me.” Oh, brother.)
Every time I write I blog post, I go through this large file of photographs I have on my computer to come up with a theme. When Mom was dying, I got out the boxes of photos from home and looked through them with her, snapping pictures of the pictures with my phone. I am so glad I did! I certainly had no idea I would be using them later. One thing I discovered is that this family is no stranger to costumes! If you know me and my husband now, you understand that we will dress up at the drop of a hat (or as my friend Lisa says, “Tuesday night at the Bean’s”). But, what I hadn’t put together was the solid costume lineage from which I came. Mom could make anything she put her mind to, so she (and the rest of us, by default) were good to go for any sort of theme day at school or costume party. Apparently Dad had a history as a high school thespian (how did I miss that?!), so he was no stranger to grease paint and dressing in drag (he once played the Mother of the Bride in a once well-known play called “The Father of the Bride”). My sister and I used to put on plays with neighborhood friends, so we were always scrounging around for material and clothes. (We performed the “life story” of one friend who had a stepdad named “Snake” and a mother who used to send us down to the Dunkin’ Donuts cigarette machine to buy her packs of Kools. Just a side note. Ah, the 70s.)
We had a toy chest full of dress up clothes: old things of Mom’s, bits of fabric, costume jewelry. And, we could always propose something to Mom and she would figure it out. One Halloween I wanted to be some sort of ballerina fairy and she made me this beautiful intricate crown and wand coated in glitter. She was also responsible for Elisabeth’s fortune teller on the right (those are probably Mom’s actual clothes!).
Halloween with our friends Lisa & Tasha Folda. Maybe 1978 or 1979? Apparently it was cold because I don’t think I’d normally rock a turtleneck under a tutu.
My sister and her Junior High friends created a medieval social & theater group called “The Club on the Greensward”. (!!!) I’m not sure what they did exactly, it involved the Renaissance and Shakespeare (my sister now calls it “Nerdsville”), but I do know that I was too young for it. Dodged that bullet, in hindsight! Sorry, Elisabeth. Once, they put on a performance in our backyard and my sister enlisted Mom to help with costumes. Evidently, Mom drove them to the store, helped select fabrics for their matching green tunics, created a pattern, and oversaw the girls’ sewing. What a supportive mother!
The Club on the Greensward. Chapel Hill, NC, 1982. My sister is on the far right with the pink striped shield. !!!
So, all of this birthday talk got me thinking about cake! We usually did a pretty normal (but delicious) yellow cake with cream cheese icing for our parties. But, Mom had a great pound cake recipe that she would also make for special occasions. She took one to a weekend we spent in the mountains one summer with our second cousins. My cousin Rich wasn’t supposed to eat sugar. We all awoke from a nap to find the cake missing (!) and one very hyper kid bouncing off the walls. Enjoy! (Maybe limit it to a slice or two.)
AUNT EVA’S POUND CAKE
Can be done in a food processor.
Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
Butter a bundt pan or tube pan VERY well, then flour lightly. Aunt Eva used to butter the pan then line the bottom with waxed paper and butter that. I don’t bother, but I am very generous with the butter.
1 carton sweet whipped butter
3 cups sugar
5 eggs
¼ tsp. baking soda
3 cups flour
1 cup sour cream
1 tsp. lemon extract and 2 tsp. vanilla extract
Mix in the order given. Cream butter with sugar, then add eggs one at a time, beating well in between. Add baking soda. Add flour and sour cream alternately, 1/3 at a time. Then beat in extracts.
Bake for an hour and 25 or 30 minutes.
A nice variation is to use 1 tsp lemon extract, 1 tsp vanilla ext., 1 tsp almond ext. and 1 cup toasted almonds.
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