Pass the sugar

Not long ago, we asked readers to share cherished recipes passed down from their mothers and grandmothers as a Mother’s Day tribute.

We didn’t say what kind of recipes readers should submit. Could have been casseroles. Or pork chops. Or sandwiches.

But guess what just about everybody offered up as their warmest, most comforting, most-longed-for childhood dish? You probably won’t have to think too hard.

Think dessert.

Nothing like pounds of butter, cups of sugar and a little chocolate to stir up warm, fuzzy memories.

Bill Wilson, a 60-year-old Spokane resident, fondly recalls his stepmother’s cake.

“She called it a Depression cake,” Wilson writes in an e-mail. “But I was never depressed whenever she made it.”

His stepmother, Ann Wilson, who died last year, was not a standout cook by any means, he says. “She had a hard time boiling water,” Wilson jokes.

But her moist cake (packed with nearly a full cup of oil) was always a hit. She even sent Wilson the cake – in three different packages – while he was stationed in Vietnam. (She figured he’d have the greatest chance of receiving at least one cake that way.) But all three cakes made it to him.

“It lasted precisely 10 minutes after being opened,” he writes. “Had lots of help sampling it.”

The cook in the mess hall even took the recipe and multiplied it to feed 210 Marines, Wilson says.

The Brass sisters, Marilynn and Sheila, consider themselves culinary historians. Not only have they unearthed and preserved the wonderful recipes from their childhood, they are on a quest to learn the stories behind the old, handwritten recipes they find at yard sales and flea markets.

The 60-something sisters, who live in Boston, compiled those sweet treats in “Heirloom Baking With the Brass Sisters” (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2006).

“Every recipe has a story behind it,” Marilyn Brass says. “And they’re good stories.”

There’s Marta, the woman who walked over the Hungarian border during the revolution in 1956 with little more than her husband and her recipe for hazelnut cake.

There’s Bessie, a young bride who immigrated to Canada from Poland. She finally taught herself to read English at the age of 75, while her grandchildren munched on her homemade jam-and-raisin-filled cookies.

And there’s Mrs. Marasi, who always kept a jar of her famous biscotti on hand for company.

“These women are really members of our extended family,” Marilyn Brass says.

The Brass sisters’ own mother, Dorothy Katziff Brass, instilled the two women with a love of cooking and of preserving the past.

Dorothy Brass cooked on a black cast-iron stove with green enamel trim. Thing was, the oven was on a slant and could not be leveled.

“Every cake my mother made came out at an angle,” Sheila Brass says.

So, she would simply spackle up the cake with frosting and even it out with layers and layers of more frosting on the sloping side.

“The cousins got wise and they would always ask for the piece of cake with the extra inch of frosting,” Marilyn says.

Sandii Mellen’s favorite recipe from her mother was actually her least-favorite one growing up. Mellen’s mother often made Rhubarb Bread Pudding for her father, when the family lived in Wisconsin.

“All of us kids (there were six of us) wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot pole,” Mellen, who lives in Sandpoint, says via e-mail. “It wasn’t until I became an adult and tried it that I could see why my dad loved it so much.”

Mellen’s mother, Joyce Kluge, has retired to Tennessee. Her father died about two years ago. Mellen keeps making the bread pudding, though, and thinks of him each time she does.

Too many times, though, these heirloom recipes die with the cook. The Brass sisters hate to see that happen.

“When you get together at the holidays, do a gentle interrogation of the elders,” Marilyn says. “They’re not going to be around forever. We want to keep those stories.”

If your mother or grandmother says she doesn’t really use a recipe, that she measures in handfuls and pinches, ask her to make the dish while you watch and transcribe, she says.

Then find a good place to keep all of those recipes safe and in one place. The sisters even included an envelope at the back of “Heirloom Baking” to stash them.

That way, those treasured dishes can be passed along from generation to generation just as the Brass sisters’ mother did for them.

“By baking with her, she transferred her love of family to us, and of good food and good times,” Marilyn says.

Brown Sugar Brownies

From “Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters”

The Brass sisters grew up eating these brownies, made by their mother, in the 1950s. The brown sugar keeps them extra-moist, they say.

1 cup cake flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup cocoa (American, not Dutch-processed)

1 ½ cups butter

10 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

2 ounces bitter chocolate, chopped

2 cups sugar, sifted

1 cup brown sugar

6 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

Set the oven rack in the middle position. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Cover the bottom and sides of a 9-by-13-inch metal pan with foil, shiny side up. Coat the foil with butter or vegetable spray.

Sift together cake flour, salt and cocoa.

Melt butter, bittersweet chocolate and bitter chocolate in a large metal bowl set over a saucepan of slightly simmering water, stirring occasionally until smooth. Remove bowl from pan. Sift in sugar, add brown sugar and whisk to combine. Blend in eggs one at a time. Stir sifted dry ingredients into batter. Add vanilla.

Pour batter into pan. Bake about 40 minutes, or until top seems firm and tester inserted in middle comes out fairly clean. There may be a few cracks on top. Do not over-bake. Cool in pan on rack to room temperature. Place pan in the refrigerator for three hours or overnight to chill, for easier cutting. Remove cake from pan and foil and place on cutting surface. If you prefer, trim the edges using a wide knife or cleaver (reserve the scraps). Cut into 1-inch squares, wiping knife or cleaver as needed. Store brownies in layers between sheets of wax paper in a covered tin.

(You can use the reserved edges as ice-cream topping.)

Yield: 40 to 50 1-inch brownies

Approximate nutrition per serving: 170 calories, 9 grams fat (5 grams saturated, 47 percent fat calories), 2 grams protein, 22 grams carbohydrate, less than 1 gram dietary fiber, 42 milligrams sodium.

Graham Cracker Fudge

From “Heirloom Baking with the Brass Sisters”

The sisters found this recipe in a manuscript cookbook from the North Shore of Massachusetts.

4 ounces bitter chocolate, chopped

2 cups sugar

1 cup evaporated milk

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon butter

2 cups miniature marshmallows

2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1 cup walnuts, toasted and coarsely chopped

Line an 8-by-8 inch pan with foil. Butter the bottom and sides of the pan generously.

Combine chocolate, sugar, evaporated milk, salt and vanilla in a large saucepan. Cook slowly over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until mixture begins to boil. Boil 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Remove pan from heat. Fold in butter and marshmallows. Allow to cool 25 minutes. Fold in graham cracker crumbs and walnuts. Pour into foil-lined pan. Let stand until cool and set. Cut into pieces. Store between sheets of wax paper in a covered tin.

Yield: 64 pieces

Approximate nutrition per serving: 72 calories, 2.5 grams fat (30 percent fat calories), 12 grams carbohydrate, less than 1 gram protein and dietary fiber, 37 milligrams sodium.

Depression Cake

From Bill Wilson’s stepmother, Ann Wilson

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups white sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

¾ cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons white vinegar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups cold water

Sift dry ingredients together into a 9-by-13-inch ungreased cake pan. Make three wells. Pour oil into one well, vinegar into second, and vanilla into third well. Pour cold water over everything, and stir it up with a fork.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 40 minutes, or until a broom straw (that’s what she used), or toothpick, inserted, comes out clean.

Yield: About 12 servings

Approximate nutrition per serving: 370 calories, 14 grams fat (1 gram saturated, 34 percent fat calories), 4 grams protein, 59 grams carbohydrate, 2 grams dietary fiber, 405 milligrams sodium.

Puff Pudding

From Judy Layton’s mother, Annabelle Wakeley, by way of the Grape-Nuts cereal box

1 teaspoon grated lemon rind

4 tablespoons butter

½ cup sugar

2 eggs, separated

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons flour

¼ cup Grape-Nuts cereal

1 cup milk

Heat oven to 325 degrees.

With electric mixer, cream butter, sugar and lemon rind together. Add egg yolks and beat until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Stir in lemon juice, flour, Grape-Nuts and milk (the mixture will look curdled).

In another bowl, beat egg whites until stiff, about 3 minutes. Fold egg whites into the batter and pour into a greased 1-quart casserole dish. Place casserole in a shallow pan of hot water and place in a preheated oven for 65 to 75 minutes or until top springs back when lightly touched. Serve warm or cold, refrigerating any leftovers.

Yield: 6 servings

Approximate nutrition per serving: 211 calories, 11 grams fat (6 grams saturated, 45 percent fat calories), 25 grams carbohydrate, less than 1 gram dietary fiber, 80 milligrams sodium.

Rhubarb Bread Pudding

From Sandii Mellen’s mother, Joyce Kluge

3 eggs, beaten

1 ½ cups sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 tablespoons butter

2 cups diced bread (any kind)

3 cups diced rhubarb

3 cups milk

Mix eggs, sugar, cinnamon and butter together. Add rest of ingredients and pour into a greased 13-by-9-inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for one hour. Chill. Can be topped with vanilla ice cream, if you like.

Yield: 6 servings

Approximate nutrition per serving: 509 calories, 13 grams fat (6.5 grams saturated, 23 percent fat calories), 85 grams carbohydrate, 2 grams dietary fiber, 415 milligrams sodium.