When she died, I asked for little from my sister, who had cleared out my Mother's apartment. Sister lived less than a mile away; I lived clear across the country away. I managed to get my Mother's antique recipe box, which originally was a Land-O-Lakes butter tin. Regular index cards just fit in it; many are handwritten, the recipes containing her secrets well-kept, only telling ingredients and cook times. Some are clippings from aging newspaper articles. One of my favorites, which she called "Cherry Bubble Cake", is in there in original and revised form. The revision uses 1/2 sugar & 1/2 Splenda. The fruit called for are canned tart cherries. Today I used the revision, revised to contain NO sugar, only Erythritol, which we have a 3 lb. bag of. Cherries were in a 12 oz jar from our 99-cent store, @Chrissy Cross product of Hungary! It's easy to make, a delicious blend of fruit contained within cake dough. It's brown color comes from a teaspoon of Cinnamon; 2 eggs, 2 cups of flour, 8 tablespoons of light margarine (Mom used only butter!), 3 teaspoons of baking soda. Here's how it turned out: Since she's been gone, I've realized many times how grateful I am that she encouraged me as a kid to learn as much about her cooking as I wanted to. I took advantage of that, even though other kids thought it was "sissy"! Frank
Thanks for reminding ding me about the tart cherries, @Frank Sanoica. Very popular in Hungary and that is what's always used in cooking or baking. There is even a cold sour cherry soup...I don't like that though.
Here is a recipe for cold sour cherry soup...it's in Hungarian and I understood every word. Even if they use a lot of slang since they are young...
@Hal Pollner You bet I am! My first wife made them and they tasted wonderful! She of course was full-Polish; my Mother made a similar stuffed cabbage, but hers was Czech! Frank
Frank, my first wife was of Polish descent too (Pulaski), but she didn't inherit any of the Old Country cooking skills from her parents, who also had no Old Country cooking skills! Hal
@Hal Pollner Your spelling of the word may be correct......not really sure, but they pronounced it "go-wump-key". How could anyone of Polish descent NOT have some of the old cooking skills? Aristocrat, perhaps? Frank