Come by for a piece of Aunt Suzie's yellow cake

Aunt Suzie's 1-2-3-4 cake

1 cup shortening (or butter) 1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups sugar 2 tsp. baking powder
3 cups flour 1 tsp. salt
4 eggs 1 cup milk

Mix flour and baking soda in bowl and set aside. Cream shortening, salt, and sugar. Add eggs. Add vanilla. Add flour and baking powder mixture. Add milk. Bake in greased and floured tube pan at 325. Bake for 1 hour, or until cake springs back when touched lightly.

A few weeks ago I was thinking about the yellow cake my Aunt Suzie used to make, and Shazam! Just like that, through the magic of the Internet I had the recipe! (Thanks to my cousins on Facebook...) Turns out, it's a 1-2-3-4 cake, which dates back to the 19th century, according to Susan G. Purdy, author of Pie in the Sky, a high altitude cookbook.

Today I made the cake in honor of Easter, Bob's upcoming birthday -- and in honor of Aunt Suzie, whose real name is Clara Collison Leister but everybody calls her Suzie, or just Suze. I hope to visit her and all my Maryland cousins, second and third cousins this summer. And if she knows I'm coming, she might make this cake...

When I think of Aunt Suzie's kitchen back in Pasadena, Maryland, I think of this yellow cake iced with chocolate, I think of a big bowl of homemade potato salad, and I think of a pitcher of sweetened iced tea in the refrigerator. They always had iced tea, year-round. Oh, and I remember her crab cakes, oh yeah. (We'll have to blog that one later.) I can hear her yelling at barking, tail-wagging Baron who always came crashing through the screen door behind us.

There are many variations to the 1-2-3-4 cake, and I adjusted mine for altitude, since I baked it at 7,000 feet. I was going to ice it with chocolate like I remember Aunt Suzie's cakes being iced. Then I found half a bag of coconut in the cupboard and half a package of cream cheese in the 'fridge, so I decided on a butter-cream cheese icing sprinkled with toasted coconut instead. And in the middle of the two layers I put raspberry jam that I made last year when raspberries were super cheap at City Market. (Not to get too Martha Stewart on you.) Actually, I have only made jam once in my life, not counting when my mother made me help her.

My mother used to make jams and jellies every year out of all kinds of fruits growing on our farm; like elderberry, blackberry, and rhubarb. Delicious, but so time consuming! I mean why make jam, right? It's so cheap to buy. And why bake cakes, especially from scratch?

Seriously, I'd rather be writing. Or reading. Or sailing. Or planning a trip to Paris. But once in a while I like to make something from scratch, the old-fashioned way, I don't know why. It's kind of like remembering with my hands. It feels like I'm honoring my forebears and the people in my life who mattered, and who still matter.

And then, I get to eat it. Which is how you can have your cake and eat it too.