Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by 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

 

A mother’s love on a daughter’s birthday February 10, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 9:47 AM
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HOW CAN IT BE that I already have a daughter who’s 25? Where did the days, weeks, months, years go?

It seems like only yesterday when I welcomed my sweet baby girl and discovered the depth of love I held in my heart for this child of mine. Yesterday was February 10, 1986.

It really is true that, until you become a mother (fill in “father” here if you’re male), you cannot comprehend such love. There is much to be said for experiencing parenthood. I don’t think you can ever define the personal shift to parenting in words.

Thinking back on my first pregnancy and then my daughter’s birth, I remember, especially, how much my mother-in-law wanted a granddaughter. She had already been blessed with one granddaughter and then four grandsons in a row. Betty figured it was time for another girl.

She got her granddaughter and then another and another and another and another and another. If you’re counting, that’s six granddaughters in a row.

As for my husband and me, we honestly did not care whether we had a boy or a girl, as long as the baby was healthy. But, my gut instinct told me my unborn child was a girl. I was right, of course, as I was in guessing the gender of my other two children, although I didn’t have the boy figured out until my husband and I were en route to the hospital.

By the time my son was born, one day short of eight years after my eldest, my mother-in-law wanted a grandson. She got her wish, but never lived to see my baby boy. She died, at age 59, of a heart attack nearly four months before his birth.

Every year on the February birthdays of my oldest and my youngest, I think of their Grandma Helbling and how she got her wishes. I got mine too—three beautiful, healthy, wonderful children (the third was born in November 1987) who have given me love and joy beyond measure, and, yes, the occasional stress and maybe even some of my gray hair.

I love my trio with a mother’s love that cannot be defined in words, but can only be felt by the heart.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, oldest daughter of mine!

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Poetry and cheesecake October 1, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:01 AM
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My daughter's homemade chocolate cheesecake, my birthday cake.

I FELT JUST LIKE a queen, waiting patiently at the dining room table to be served a slice of decadent chocolate cheesecake.

I must say, it’s a wonderful feeling to be on the receiving, rather than the giving, end. And that’s how it is now when I celebrate my birthday.

On Monday, a day after my birthday, my daughter drove down from Minneapolis for an appointment and later dinner out with me, her dad and her brother. But afterward, ah after that meal, I really enjoyed the celebration.

My first-born had baked a from-scratch, all-chocolate cheesecake. She clued us in that the recipe called for melted peanut butter chips mixed into the chocolate batter. But she scorched the peanut butter chips and had to substitute chocolate chips. That produced some gentle teasing about a many-years-earlier chocolate pudding cake disaster.

Clearly, she’s learned a thing or two about cooking and baking as the cheesecake was pure chocolate perfection.

As much as I enjoyed the rich creamy dessert, even more I appreciated that my daughter chose to make a cheesecake. She knows it’s my favorite dessert.

Then I opened my gift from her and appreciated even more that my eldest had chosen items perfectly suited for me. She didn’t buy just any old thing just to give me a present. Rather, she shopped at a south Minneapolis antique store—one with lots of antlers and a place she nearly walked out of due to all those antlers on the walls.

Inside the antique shop, she found a slim volume of poetry, Minnesota Skyline, published in 1953. The book wasn’t priced, she said, and clerks discussed, in front of her, the price she should pay.

Minnesota Skyline, a vintage poetry collection I think worthy of reprinting.

I flipped through the pages and knew I would enjoy this collection with poems like “Wind in the Corn,” “Pioneers of Southern Minnesota,” and “Spring on the Prairie.”

I haven’t had time yet to indulge in the anthology. But that evening, after I opened my daughter’s gift of poetry, I read aloud a verse from “Delano on Saturday Night” by Margaret Horsch Stevens of Montrose:

Men, bent, with toil, feel younger in the glare

Of lights, exchanging jokes and arguments;

And women brighten as they meet and talk

Of recent births, and brides, and home events.

We laughed as we pictured families gathered in downtown Delano on a Saturday night in the 1950s. How times have changed.

After that impromptu poetry reading, I pulled four slim yellow trays from my birthday gift bag. Once again, my daughter had selected an ideal present for me. I collect vintage metal trays and these were unlike any I have or any I’ve seen. For now I’ve propped two atop a shelf—art leaning against a wall.

My daughter gave me four vintage metal trays for my collection.

There’s something to be said for aging, when you can see your children as grown adults, who are caring and loving and giving and who know that you love poetry and cheesecake.

My husband also remembered my birthday with a colorful daisy bouquet.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

The Lund Press, Inc., of Minneapolis published Minnesota Skyline.

 

A birthday treasure September 26, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:42 AM
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TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY. I need to think for a minute exactly how old I am. Take 2010 minus 1956 and you get 54. Yeah, that would be right.

Funny how the years pass and you lose count after 40, or 50. Where did time go?

I bet my mom wonders that, too, today. How could her second-born of six already be “that old?” Yeah, how?

Birthdays back when I was growing up aren’t like birthday celebrations today. Years ago, we gathered with extended family—grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins—a whole houseful crammed into a farmhouse. Pans of bars. Red Jell-O. Summer sausage sandwiches. Homemade dill pickles. Coffee brewing in the kitchen. Bottled pop and Schell’s beer.

And when we left for home around midnight, we wished the birthday girl, or boy, “many more birthdays!” Tradition. Sweet words, sweet wishes.

Because my birthday fell the day after my parents’ wedding anniversary, I seldom “had company” on my birthday. The relatives would come the night before to celebrate the anniversary, then forget all about my special day.

But my mom made my birthday memorable by baking an animal-shaped cake, chosen from a slim book of cake designs. There was no present from my parents—they didn’t have the money for a gift—and I didn’t really know I should expect one. My animal-shaped cake was enough, although my godmother always sewed an outfit for me. She knew I needed new clothes more than anything.

One year my Aunt Rachel gave me a greeting card with an adjustable green-stone ring tucked into a treasure chest. An emerald in my eyes. I slipped the ring onto my skinny girl finger. I wore the ring every day, all the time, until one day I lost it.

Of all the birthday cards I’ve received in my life, I remember that one and how I cried when the mock emerald became buried treasure in our farmyard.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling