Table of Contents > Recipe and Essay Pork Cake

Cooking Time: PT1H

Cooking Method: bake

Category: dessert

Cuisine Type: American

Servings: 10-12 servings

Related: dbPedia entity

Ingredients:

  • 1 1/2 lb. ground fat pork, 3 cups boiling water, 3 cups sugar, 2 cups molasses, 1 Tbsp. cinnamon,1 Tbsp. cloves, 1 Tbsp. salt, 1 Tbsp. soda dissolved in water, 1 lb. raisins, 1 lb. currants, 1/4 cup citron, 1/2 cup candied cherries, 1 1/2 cup nuts, 8 cups flour (put 2 on fruit and nuts)

Directions:

  1. Pour water over pork, add sugar, molasses, spices and salt.
  2. Beat well.
  3. Add soda, half of flour and fruit, mix well.
  4. Add rest of flour.
  5. Bake 1 hr. in greased loaf pans at 350 degrees.
Pork Cake

Table of Contents > Recipe and Essay Because of Grandma D

While sitting at the kitchen table before a family Sunday dinner, Kathy Biehl (nee Driskell) describes her mother, Dorothy--or Grandma D., as she became known--as having "always been a good cook." Dorothy (1913-2006) and her two siblings, Henry and Madeline, were American-born children of German immigrants, Anna and Christian Hoffman, who migrated to Montana by way of Minnesota and homesteaded near Cut Bank during the 1920s and early 1930s.

Today, Dorothy's many grandchildren can only imagine her as a young girl, walking to school with only a lard sandwich for lunch, "and if it was a good year in the garden, . . . onions on their sandwiches." When Grandma D. was older, it was easy to excuse her penny-pinching ways as charming rather than a symptom of necessary frugality. The scarcity of food on their Dust Bowl homestead was simply not discussed at Grandma D.'s house. Seated at her kitchen table, heaped with Thanksgiving fixings, it was nearly impossible to envision her and her siblings going on long walks hunting for chokecherries and huckleberries, rabbit, sage hens, and the occasional venison. Now, bread, noodles, and potatoes, I can envision and will forever associate with Grandma D. Being true to her German heritage, Anna Hoffman made a great deal of bread for her family, with home-churned butter; spaetzle, dough put through a strainer and then boiled and served with butter or gravy; and boiled potatoes mashed with caramelized onions.

Dorothy married Gordon Driskell on February 9, 1937, and the couple strove to make a living for themselves in and around the Great Falls area. Dorothy worked several food-related jobs to support her six children and to feed those children still at home when she was widowed in September 1961. Though she worked long hours in strenuous jobs, Dorothy managed to create meals that brought her family together, and she enjoyed trying new recipes found in cooking magazines and newspapers.

"She loved anything she could bake - pies, cakes, cookies, breads, donuts. She used to bake all the time." Kathy remembers Grandma D. baking more than cooking and describes the nut-crusted cinnamon rolls her mother made from scratch; home-made pulled taffy made from molasses or vinegar and the wax paper she wrapped the pieces in; and the kind of fudge you made by beating it with a spoon. "She had a sweet tooth," Kathy says with smile. Grandma D. also encouraged her young daughters to bake, providing them with their own dollop of dough when she was making bread. They rolled it out, sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar, and baked it themselves.

Grandma D. passed away in 2006 at the age of 93, yet her culinary tradition lives on through her daughters, Patricia, Audrey, Kathy, and Karen, who all find the same excitement in trying a new recipe. Having tasted all four of these ladies' cooking, I can attest that they indeed share a certain culinary prowess, one they undoubtedly inherited from their mother, Dorothy, who made the best molasses crinkles in the world. Indeed, as Kathy stated so perfectly, they all cook, "and it's because of her."