This feature story was written by Nancy Wilson and first appeared in the September/October 2016 print edition of Louisiana Kitchen & Culture.

   I received many gifts from my mother, but none sweeter than my love of cake. It is a gift that was passed to her from her mother, Mam Papaul, who received it from her mother, whom we called Mémère. There was always cake for birthdays, holidays, and Sunday dinners. Each family member had a favorite cake of choice for one’s birthday.

   These ladies were cake makers in the real sense of the word: All cakes were made from scratch. In that era, cakes were leavened with baking powder or a combination of baking soda and an acid; just a bit earlier, cakes were leavened with yeast. Eggs came from the chicken yard out back, and butter was the shortening of choice. My grandmother had the luxury of an electric mixer, but Mémère often could be seen sitting on the back porch on her rocker, creaming the butter with sugar and eggs by hand.

Ladies made hundreds of cakes for each church bake sale. Silver (white) cakes, gold cakes, chocolate cakes, and jellyrolls were the extent of the repertoire of cakes for this annual event. The traditional fillings were fruit preserves and jellies, store-bought or homemade. Store-bought preserves came in “jelly” glasses, which we repurposed as our everyday glassware; the varied designs included apples, blackberries, peaches, pineapples, and strawberries.

   For family consumption, cakes were made on Sundays and special occasions, never during the week. Our specialties included angel food cakes, devil’s food cakes, pineapple upside down cakes, traditional yellow cakes with pecan chocolate frosting, chocolate with coconut filling and divinity frosting, and white (almond flavored), gold (vanilla flavored), and jellyroll cakes with fruit preserve fillings.

Both my mom and grandmother developed a reputation as the go-to people for birthday and wedding cakes in my hometown. They were happy to oblige, and by the time I got into high school, my mom had developed a thriving business.

  As the years passed, my sister and I added to the family favorites, including “dump” cakes, pudding cakes, Jell-O cakes, carrot cakes, spice cakes, vanilla wafer cakes, tomato soup cakes, red velvet cakes, Hershey Bar cakes, gingerbread cakes, and microwave Coke cakes to name only a few.

  The success of the old-fashioned cakes was due to taste, not necessarily appearance. Today, cakes can be as simple as a sheet cake decorated with a border and a personalized greeting and as fancy as a fondant-covered cake decorated with handmade pastillage ornamentation. You may prefer to make cakes from scratch, but a busy working person and parent may want to try some shortcut cake. Any of these recipes can be impressive cupcakes for a delicious portion-controlled dessert, and good commercial cake mixes are available for many of the basic flavors. Today, the word “homemade” usually means that the cake was made at home, but not necessarily completely from scratch. Important note: We prepared all but two of the recipes in this feature as cupcakes for easy transportation. After our photo shoot, we took the cupcakes to volunteers who were working tirelessly to gather up food and supplies for fellow Louisianians displaced by the floods various parts of our state experienced in late August 2016. Thus, the photos don’t always match the method; if you’d prefer to make cupcakes, the baking times will be slightly less.