Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

I’ll take laughter & giggles with a cinnamon roll, please January 13, 2026

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The iconic Pillsbury Doughboy on signage in small town southern Minnesota. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo September 2025)

IF LAUGHTER IS GOOD MEDICINE, then I need a mega dose right now to ease the stress I feel these days.

Last Friday evening I got a large dose of laughter while attending the Little Fish Improv Comedy Show at the Paradise Center for the Arts. It felt good to laugh, to mostly forget about reality. That would return soon enough, in fact the next afternoon as I stood protesting on a street corner near the Paradise in downtown Faribault.

But Friday evening I laughed. I relaxed. I smiled, consciously aware of my face lifting into a smile throughout the performance. Afterwards I thanked the performers for the much-needed laughter and diversion during an extremely difficult week in Minnesota.

The entire sign, which I could only photograph through trees, vegetation and shadows. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo September 2025)

Now days later, when I really need a second dose of laughter, I remember photos I took in small town Dennison several months ago. They are of a Pillsbury Doughboy sign leaning against a shed along the main highway that runs through this southern Minnesota community.

The Pillsbury Doughboy is much older than the 25 years stated on this vintage sign. He is nearly 61 years old with a birth date of March 18, 1965. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo September 2025)

The Pillsbury Doughboy, spokesman for Poppin’ Fresh refrigerated dough products since 1965, is a memorable and much-beloved marketing figure. Poke his tummy and he giggles. Everything about this character in the white chef’s hat, scarf tied around his neck, makes me feel good. Smile. Laugh.

Not only that, but just the thought of popping open a tube of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls elicits joyous anticipation. I can imagine the scent of cinnamon wafting from a hot oven as the rolls bake. I can taste the sugary sweetness of a still-warm roll drizzled in icing. Yum.

This is what I need now to counterbalance the angst that is part of life today in this country. I need, not to forget, not to give up, but to counterbalance the craziness with that which is good. A warm cinnamon roll. A night out at a comedy show and cocktails afterwards with dear friends. And most of all, laughter.

TELL ME: What are you doing to counterbalance any stress you may be experiencing due to what’s unfolding in your community, your state and America? What makes you smile, laugh, giggle?

I also direct you to a Cinnamon Roll Casserole recipe posted by my friend Sue, a food blogger. Click here to see that recipe.

 

Brownies & a book November 15, 2024

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Blonde brownies baked this morning. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted photo November 2024)

I HAVE A LOT ON MY MIND, as I expect many of you do. So this morning I baked blonde brownies. Nothing healthy about this sweet treat. Nothing healthy at all. The brownies are loaded with sugar. Two cups of brown sugar, to be exact. But on this day I don’t care.

(Book cover sourced online)

Today I’m continuing to read A Fever in the Heartland by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author Timothy Egan. If ever there was a book that opened my eyes to American history, this is it. I’ve had to read this book in doses given the heaviness of the topic. Every. Single. Person. Should read this book. The content is relatable to today in many aspects. And that, my friends, is beyond frightening.

Lastly, it’s Friday. The sun is shining brightly. Laundry is drying on the line. And I’m waiting for a friend, who just lost his dog, to stop over for a brownie.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone! Take a walk. Meet a friend. Defiantly bake brownies.

© Copyright 2024 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Birthday cake nostalgia February 9, 2023

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Chocolate Crazy Cake. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo 2010)

WHEN MY ELDEST DAUGHTER asked me to bake Chocolate Crazy Cake iced with peanut butter frosting for her upcoming birthday celebration, I was delighted. I’d offered to make her birthday treat, but expected Amber to choose a simplified version of cheesecake or Chocolate Tofu Pie. So when she picked Crazy Cake, I was nostalgically surprised. This is the recipe my mom used for my birthday cakes when I was growing up. And it is the same recipe I used when baking cakes for my three kids.

Although Amber never asked me to craft the cake into a shape like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, snowman or Garfield the cat as I did when she was a child, I considered it. In the end, I’m going with a basic rectangular frosted cake. Maybe I’ll add sprinkles for the grandkids.

For his eighth birthday, Caleb’s sisters created a PEEF cake for their brother. PEEF is a fictional bear featured in books written and illustrated by Minnesotans Tom Hegg and Warren Hanson. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

February brings not only Amber’s birthday, but also that of her brother, just one day shy of eight years younger than her. Their sister, sandwiched between, is 21 months younger than Amber. Yes, I was a busy mom. I baked a lot of Chocolate Crazy Cake birthday cakes through the years, cutting them into designs typically fitting the birthday child’s interests.

A blogger friend gifted me with a copy of the cake design booklet my mom used when crafting birthday cakes. (Minnesota Prairie Roots copyrighted file photo)

My mom used the Baker’s Coconut Animal Cut-Up Cake booklet as her guide to creating animal-shaped cakes for me and my five siblings. Her handcrafted designs defined our birthdays because we didn’t receive gifts. Finances didn’t allow and the adage of you can’t miss what you never had certainly applies. My kids got gifts along with personalized homemade cakes. If I were to ask them, they would likely remember the cakes I made and not the gifts received.

Birthdays always cause me to feel reflective as in how the heck are my kids already adults and x number of years old? It seems like only yesterday that I was planning birthday parties with their classmates, mixing up Chocolate Crazy Cake and lighting candles.

And now here I am, looking through my stash of church cookbooks for a cherished cake recipe. I’m feeling all nostalgic, wishing there was a way to ship a Chocolate Crazy Cake birthday cake to Caleb in Indiana.

Chocolate Crazy Cake*

3 cups flour

½ cup powdered cocoa

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 cups cold water

¾ cup vegetable oil

2 Tablespoons vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Stir the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Then add the liquids and mix. Pour into a 9 x 13-inch cake pan and bake for 30-40 minutes at 350 degrees.

#

Recipe source: The Cook’s Special 1973, St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Vesta, Minnesota

The recipe is listed as “Wacky or Chocolate Cake” in the church cookbook. I’ve always known it as “Crazy Cake.” Why is it called “wacky” or “crazy” cake? I don’t know.

Copyright 2023 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Angels we have seen on high December 15, 2017

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YEARS HAVE PASSED since I thought about this observation: The angels are baking cookies.

 

Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo 2014.

 

But when a family member recently noticed the gold and pink tinge of the evening sky, she suggested the cherubs were busy baking Christmas cookies.

Unless you’re a Helbling family member, you’ve likely never heard this comparison of the sunset, or sunrise, to angelic bakers. It’s an interpretation attributed to my late mother-in-law, passed on to her children and then to her grandchildren.

Many times while they were growing up, my three kids directed me to look outside, to see the fiery sky, to see the angels baking cookies. It is a sweet part of family lore passed from one generation to the next.

This time of year, traditions and stories seem more important than ever. What are some of your family stories and/or traditions? I’d like to hear.

© Copyright 2017 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

A new spin on carrot cake, four-year-old style March 9, 2017

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WHEN MY GREAT NEPHEW Landon turned four last week, he asked for a carrot cake. What preschooler chooses that flavor of birthday cake? A kid who loves vegetables and, as far as I have observed, every food. I’ve even watched Landon eat an ear of raw sweetcorn just pulled from the stalk.

His mom, Amber, makes one delicious carrot cake. She bakes and cooks from scratch. No boxed mixes or convenience foods for her or her family. Or guests. Lucky me.

I could end this story here by singing praises about the carrot-cake-baking mom and the boy who loves carrot cake.

Landon, with help from his nearly two-year-old sister Evelyn, sticks raw carrots into his carrot cake. And, yes, he chose to wear a Halloween shirt at his birthday party. When you’re four, you can do that.

But Landon is Landon and he took this carrot cake thing a bit further. As Amber finished prepping his birthday meal of spaghetti and meatballs, Landon pulled a chair up to the kitchen counter. He then reached into a container of raw carrots, celery, radishes and peppers and pulled out the carrots. As we watched, Landon poked the carrots, like candles, into his birthday cake. How’s that for a veggie loving four-year-old?

© Copyright 2017 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

The best roll-out cookie recipe ever February 16, 2014

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I’VE ALWAYS ENJOYED BAKING.

Tempting sweets...

Tempting sweets…

But now that the kids are grown and gone, I seldom bake. I don’t need sweets in the kitchen to tempt me.

This past week, though, I baked three days in a row as I’d been asked to bring treats for fellowship hour at church this morning.

I pulled out my vintage heart shaped cookie cutter.

I used my vintage heart-shaped cookie cutter.

I decided heart-shaped cookies would be perfect given the date. And so I pulled out my favorite roll-out cookie recipe, the one my mom used when I was growing up. It’s my go-to “sugar cookie” recipe.

This dough, though, far surpasses the bland taste of most sugar cookies.

Cream cheese is the secret savory ingredient.

Ready to put in the oven.

Ready to put in the oven.

I prefer to roll the dough nearly paper thin and to sprinkle with colored sugar before baking. I don’t want icing to mask the flavor.

Stacked on a pretty vintage plate.

Stacked on a pretty vintage plate.

I’ve never tasted a better roll-out sugar cookie.

A perfect Valentine's Day weekend treat.

A perfect Valentine’s Day weekend treat.

Cream Cheese Cookies

½ cup butter, softened
½ cup shortening
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 egg yolk
½ tsp. vanilla
½ tsp. salt
2 ½ cups flour

Cream butter, shortening, cream cheese and sugar. Add egg yolk and vanilla and beat. Add dry ingredients and mix. Chill covered or wrapped dough for several hours or overnight. Roll out on lightly-floured board and cut with cookie cutters. Bake 6 – 10 minutes, depending on dough thickness, at 350 degrees.

© Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

A chocolate cake tradition of love June 22, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 6:58 AM
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Homemade chocolate Crazy Cake frosted with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

THEY RAVED ABOUT the moistness of the cake. And three of them—all guys—forked up a second slice of the chocolate cake I’d made from scratch.

I almost said, “Ummm, guys, it’s the women who should have a second piece.” But I let them be, passing the cake pan around the table, plating more cake.

This is one moist, delicious chocolate cake.

Then, because I couldn’t help myself, I shared the story about this cake. They needed to hear it, to understand that they weren’t eating just any old cake but cake made from a special recipe.

This Crazy Cake, aka Wacky Cake, is the chocolate cake of my youth, the one my mom made every time she baked a birthday cake, I told my friends.

“We didn’t have much money, didn’t get birthday presents,” I explained as my friends savored each bite of chocolate cake. “So our birthday present was the cake, an animal cake my mom made.

She would pull out her cake book and let us pick the animal shape we wanted for our birthday cake—a lion, a horse, a duck, an elephant…”

“My mom had a book like that too,” my friend Jackie chimed in.

Mari, on the other end of the table, nodded her head. Likewise, her mother had a booklet that provided instructions for transforming round cakes and square cakes and oblong cakes into animal shapes.

By cutting the cake and decorating it with various candies and frosting, my mom transformed a plain chocolate cake in to a special animal-shaped birthday cake.

Those birthday cakes were magical. I never missed the birthday presents, never even knew I should receive gifts, because I had that cake, that special, special chocolate animal-shaped cake.

When I became a mother, I continued the tradition with my children. While I didn’t have an animal cake book, I had my imagination. I made a snowman, Garfield, Piglet, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, a horse (that looked more like a cow than an equine)…

Unlike me, my children got birthday presents, plenty of them. But I would like to think that the one they will remember is the annual gift of an animal-shaped birthday cake, a gift, really, passed down from their grandmother.

For in the passing down of that tradition, I’m honoring their grandma, my mom, who taught me that birthdays are not about prettily wrapped presents, but about love. And that love, for me, will always be symbolized by homemade chocolate Crazy Cake.

Chocolate Crazy Cake

3 cups flour

2 cups white sugar

½ cup cocoa

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

Mix the dry ingredients together and then stir in:

¾ cup salad (vegetable) oil

2 cups cold water

2 Tablespoons vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Pour into a 9 x 13-inch cake pan and bake at 350 degrees for 35 – 40 minutes.

When the cake is cool, whip up a bowl of this creamy Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

When cool, frost with:

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

6 Tablespoons butter, softened

½ cup cocoa

2 2/3 cups powdered sugar

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cream butter in a small mixing bowl. Then add the cocoa and powdered sugar alternately with the milk, beating to a spreading consistency. You may need to add an additional tablespoon of milk. Blend in vanilla. Spread on cake. Makes about two cups of frosting.

The recipe yields two cups of heavenly, finger-licking-good frosting.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Recipes from The Cook’s Special, 1973, St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church, Vesta, Minnesota, and Hershey’s Easy-Does-It Recipe #10