Category: Cookies and cakes

Carol’s Pumpkin Crack

The wife of one of Jerri’s nephews brought crack to the family feast we shared recently. At least, that’s what she said it was when I asked. It turned out to be a moist pudding-type cake loaded with flavor.

Here is Carol’s explanation of how she came to make crack.

“I first served this dessert at a church leadership event.  As the meeting went on during the evening, I noticed that several folks kept returning to the buffet to get ‘just a few more bites.’  Someone later joked that it was addictive—once you start, you can’t stop. Thus the name, Pumpkin Crack.  Now I get a lot of requests to bring Crack to our get togethers.  Enjoy!”

Amen!

INGREDIENTS:
1 15 oz. can pumpkin
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
2 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/4 tsp. allspice
1 box regular yellow cake mix
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 scant cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

PROCEDURE:
Preheat the oven to 350º. Grease a nine by thirteen-inch baking pan and set it aside.

Put the pumpkin, condensed milk, eggs, sugar and spices into a mixing bowl. Using a hand or electric mixer, beat the mixture until it is smooth and everything is blended together.

Pour the pumpkin mixture into the pan. Sprinkle about a third of the cake mix over the top. Use a circular motion to swirl the mix into the wet ingredients with a knife. Sprinkle the rest of the dry cake mix on top so it covers the batter evenly. Dribble the melted butter over the mix, and sprinkle the chips over the top.

Cover the pan with foil. Place the cake on a center shelf in the oven, and bake it for twenty-five minutes. Remove the foil and bake for another fifteen to twenty-five minutes, or until it has begun to brown around edges. Stick a toothpick near the middle of the cake. If it comes out clean, the cake is done.

Remove the cake from the oven and allow it to cool completely before cutting and serving. Or you can jab a spoon into it, put it on a kitchen counter or buffet table and let guests take as much as they want. This option makes it easier for people to come back for more.

NOTES: You can substitute two and a half teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice for the individual spices. Use a plain yellow cake mix, not one with pudding in the mix.

Betty Stucky’s Raisin Bars

One year Jerri’s mother gave her a cookbook compiled by the Farm Bureau Women of Butler County, Kansas. Jerri grew up in Butler County, which is the largest county in Kansas and larger than the state of Rhode Island.

Butler County doesn’t have quite the same population density as Rhode Island, of course, but there are several thousand people living there in a couple dozen cities and small communities or on farms and ranches in the Flint Hills, famous as the largest remaining region of tall grass prairie in the United States. The Kansas Turnpike leads you over the Flint Hills, which extend from northern Kansas down into Oklahoma, but the highest point in the Flint Hills is in Butler county at 1,680 feet above sea level.

I don’t know if it was the high point or not, but Jerri drove me a half mile from her home in Rosalia one evening to show me the lights of El Dorado, thirteen miles to the west, from a hill that was at least twenty feet high.

I now look forward to our Kansas trips because they take us through the Flint Hills. If you plan a visit to Kansas, I recommend April or May when the hills are green. That’s the best time to enjoy viewing the thousands of beef cattle grazing on the slopes, the cottonwoods and osage orange trees along the streams and the ranch houses miles away in the valleys below you.

The Farm Bureau women were an important part of Butler County society when Jerri was growing up, and she recognizes many of the names in the cookbook. One of them is Betty Stucky, because she and her husband bought the farmhouse that Jerri’s family moved to from Moundridge, Kansas when her father decided to raise beef cattle instead of farming wheat.

Her family moved into Rosalia after a couple of years, but her father continued to graze cattle until after we were married. Jerri remembers the “farm” clearly because she would tag along with her brothers who drove out daily to milk the cows when she was six or seven years old.

The family renting the farmhouse at that time had a daughter about Jerri’s age that she liked to play with. One time when she was playing with Ruth Ann, Jerri deliberately stayed out of sight when her brothers finished the chores. They drove home five miles only to be sent back by their mother with instructions to find their sister.

After her first success, Jerri repeated the strategy a few more times. It ended when she told a friend at school how she managed to stay later at Ruth Ann’s. The friend told her father, who was the preacher at their church. He told Jerri’s mother and father, and such shenanigans ended shortly.

Jerri has made these bars many times, often for potlucks or funeral lunches. She likes it because you use only one pan to mix the batter, so if you like to wash cooking dishes, skip this recipe.

But they do taste good.

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup raisins
1 cup water
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. cloves
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

PROCEDURE:

Put the raisins and water into a two-quart saucepan and bring it to boiling. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the shortening. Cool the mixture to lukewarm. Preheat the oven to 350º and grease a 15 1/2 by 10 1/2-inch baking pan while the raisins are cooling.

Beat the sugar and egg into the lukewarm mixture.

Sift the dry ingredients together and beat them by half-cupfuls into the raisin mixture. Stir in the vanilla and chopped walnuts.

Pour the batter into the greased pan and bake on a center shelf for twelve minutes or until done. Test for doneness by pressing gently near the center of the pan. If the surface springs back up, the bars are done.

Cool to room temperature, dust lightly with powdered sugar and cut into bars.

This recipe makes about four dozen bars.

NOTES: Betty noted that you can frost the bars if you wish.

We don’t own a 15 1/2 by 10 1/2-inch pan, so Jerri bakes them in a regular 9 by 13-inch cake pan. This produces thicker bars, so you will have to bake them a few minutes longer. Incidentally, Jerri added the vanilla to the original recipe.