Woah Nellie!

Community cookbooks are full of surprises and tasty treats, like this month’s ‘Pumpkin Crunch Cake’

by Mary Jo David

I may not be the greatest cook, but I’m a great cookbook enthusiast! Until my collection threatened to overtake our home, I was always an avid collector of cookbooks and recipes. The Woah Nellie assignment has been more fun than work for me, especially lately since changing focus to trying recipes I’ve found in community cookbooks.

I began with Waterloo and then Gregory. This month Fowlerville makes the list, thanks to a “Book of Favorite Recipes” compiled by the St. Agnes Altar Society in Fowlerville. I found this treasure at the Pinckney Friends of the Library Book Sale this year. The recipes are from 1981, so not quite the vintage of Nellie Maxwell recipes, most of which were 100 years old. But these are just as special to the community who collected them and compiled them—lovingly I’m sure—into a cookbook for the Fowlerville community almost 45 years ago.

Much of the fun of a community cookbook is reading beyond the recipes to all the extra pages that give the cookbook its girth. In this book, someone in the Altar Society included a “Cooking a Husband” essay from a previous St. Agnes cookbook from 1910. It used quite the play on words throughout, but my favorite part was:

“In selecting your husband you should not be guided by the silvery appearance, as in buying mackerel, nor by the golden tint as if you wanted salmon. Be sure to select him yourself, as tastes differ. Do not go to market for him, as the best are always brought to your door. …Tie him in the kettle by a strong silk cord of comfort … They are apt to fly out of the kettle and be burned and crusty on the edges, since, like crabs and lobsters, you have to cook them while alive.” 😮 

Another page of the cookbook featured fillings for making a sandwich. The most unusual combination was titled “Studded Peanut Butter Sandwich.” It called for mixing peanut butter and … hmmmm … diced, crispy bacon!

Once I tore myself away from these introductory pages, it wasn’t hard to pick a recipe for this month. As it was the first day of autumn, I landed on “Pumpkin Crunch Cake,” submitted by Julie Krisko (do you think that was her real name?), and decided to give it a try.

This recipe is made from a base of yellow cake mix and canned pumpkin, two ingredients that have both been impacted by shrinkflation over the years—getting less for more money. You’ve probably heard you can find anything on the internet, and it’s true. By doing a couple quick searches, I learned that a standard can of pumpkin in 1981 was 16 ounces and a standard cake mix was 18.25 ounces.

I didn’t concern myself with today’s canned pumpkin only being 15 ounces; I just added a bit more water to the recipe. But today’s cake mixes are only 15.25 ounces, and there’s no telling what that shortfall of 3 ounces could do to my baking results. That’s where my handy-dandy kitchen scale comes in. I opened an additional yellow cake mix and measured out 3 ounces to add to get to the 1981 amount of 18.25 ounces of cake mix. Don’t worry, that extra cake mix won’t go to waste. I often make old recipes that require me to “measure up” like this. So I keep the unused mix well sealed in my pantry for the next time.

This recipe uses a layer of crumb topping in between the batter and again on the top of the batter. I love dessert recipes that call for a crumb topping, so the only other change I made to this recipe was to increase the crumb topping by half. I figure if a crumb topping is good, more is better, and I think I was right.

The recipe, as written, is pretty straightforward. I did reverse the order to make up the crumb topping and set that aside before mixing the cake batter, but that is just a matter of preference. I also whisked together the cake mix and the pumpkin pie spice before adding the wet ingredients for the cake batter. The baking time of 45 minutes was perfect in my oven, although we all know ovens vary. So to be cautious, I started checking it for doneness at 40 minutes. Once a toothpick inserted in the center came out clean, I knew it was done.

This time, I expanded my taste testers beyond just my resident, taste-testing husband to include neighbors and my youngest son and his wife. All gave the recipe rave reviews. My husband even suggested adding it to our Thanksgiving menu. Speaking of Thanksgiving, before we know it, it’s going to be time to cook my husband…ooops…I mean my turkey … ooops … I mean the turkey?!! J