Mom's Favorite Dessert

It’s almost time for our dinner group—nicknamed The Grub Club, about which I have written before—to meet again. One time the theme for the dinner was "your favorite recipe of your mom’s." Each couple is responsible for one of four courses—appetizers, first course, main course and dessert. We rotate in order of the courses with the hosts naming the theme and providing the main course. It was our turn for dessert.

It’s an appropriate theme for me because my mom loved to cook almost as much as I do and her birthday is coming up on August 19th. She would have been 100 years old. As it was, she was 95 when she died.

The trouble came in choosing just one dessert recipe since I have a lot of favorites. I finally narrowed it down to two and then, since I couldn’t choose, I decided on both. Nobody can complain about two desserts, can they?

I have come across many recipes for these two desserts over time—especially in my old fashioned cookbooks. Never have I found a recipe made exactly the same way she made these, however. There’s always a different twist.

The first recipe is for Poppy-seed Cake. You probably have heard of it—maybe made it—certainly you’ve eaten it. It is basically a layer cake with poppy seeds in the batter baked and then put together with a custard filling and frosted with chocolate. It’s almost always delicious. Some recipes are bundt-cake style with a lemon flavoring and lots of poppy seeds. My mom’s, however, was different because she made the cake in a rectangular pan (9x13); put the custard on the cooled cake and the chocolate on top of the custard. There is something about the way the custard and chocolate frosting co-mingle that just makes the cake even more delicious. Interesting, because none of the components is changed, just put together differently.

In one community cook book, Favorite Recipes of Lutheran Ladies, Desserts, put out by First Saint Paul’s Church in Chicago Illinois in 1967, I found 6 completely different recipes for poppy seed cake, not one of them even close to my mom’s. So here it is in both the original way and the short-cut method. Either is good, but the long method is better.

Isis Dean’s Poppy Seed Cake

¾ cup butter
1 ½ cups sugar
¾ cup poppy seeds, soaked in ¾ cup milk for 2 hours
2 cups all purpose flour
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt
4 egg whites, beaten until stiff, but not dry

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, approximately 5 minutes. Sift dry ingredients and set aside. With mixer running, add dry ingredients alternately with poppy seed milk mixture. Fold stiffly beaten egg whites into batter and pour into a 9 x 13, well greased (or sprayed) cake pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Cool completely.

Filling

4 egg yolks
1 ½ cups milk
¼ cup flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix sugar and flour together in top of double boiler. Add milk, stirring until well blended. Beat egg yolks lightly and add to saucepan, stirring well. Cook in double boiler, stirring constantly until thick. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Cool completely in refrigerator.

Frosting

3 1-oz. squares unsweetened chocolate
½ cup heavy cream
3 cups powdered sugar
2 Tbsp. butter

Heat chocolate and cream together over double boiler or very low heat. When mixture is smooth and chocolate melted, remove from heat and add butter, then powdered sugar, beating to incorporate until spreading consistency.

To assemble:

When cake and custard are completely cool, spread custard on top of cake. Then spread frosting directly on top of custard.

Short method:

Use a white cake mix and use the milk poppy seed mixture in place of the water. Use ¼ cup more milk than in long method.

Use instant vanilla pudding mix, substituting one cup half and half for one of the cups of milk called for on package.

In the same Lutheran dessert cookbook, I found 6 raisin pie recipes. Four of them used sour cream. All the sour cream recipes were one-crust pies topped with meringue. That is the type of sour cream-raisin pie you usually get in a restaurant when it’s on the menu. My mom’s pie follows and it is a two-crust pie with no meringue.

Pastry for double crust 9-inch pie
1 ½ cup sour cream
1 ½ cups raisins
2 eggs
1 ½ tsp. cinnamon
1 ½ tsp. lemon juice
1 ½ cup white sugar

Mix all ingredients except pastry together and beat with a whisk until well blended. Pour mixture in pastry that has been rolled out and fitted in 9 inch pie plate. Cover with top crust. Vent. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes; at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.