A coffee cake from Dad's grandmother's recipe files, named by the kids for the crispy corners they fought over. Still the favorite.
Some family treasures are land. Some are a coffee cake.
The recipe came out of Dale's grandmother's files, and Marie — who kept the dairy's books, did the taxes, nursed the sick, and fed whoever walked in — formalized it and taught it to everyone. The kids loved breaking off the crispy corners so much they named it: Corner Cake. The album calls it, without argument, “a favorite of all generations.”
A favorite of all generations.— the family album, on Corner Cake
Marie's kitchen kept its own traditions running for seventy years. Popcorn-ball figures at Easter, Halloween, and Christmas — they replaced the cut-up cakes traditional for birthdays, and the grandkids helped shape the Easter Bunny ones. Angel food cakes from the endless supply of dairy eggs, baked on the old wood stove while Grammie Jessie came in from town to use the electric one. Pinochle and bridge after supper — sometimes both in the same day.
And the family swears that if you mentioned a favorite recipe you hadn't had in a long time, it would appear the next morning — as one of the cousins wrote — “like magic.”