Nancy Mularkey
Betty’s Coffee Cake
by Nancy Mularkey
As the mother of seven children, Betty had a practicality and an efficiency that belied the amount of her love. She was an early riser, an original multi-tasker, organizing multiple requirements daily. She knew exactly how to orchestrate the day’s errands based on the most efficient driving routes and the least amount of time spent. She bought groceries in bulk on Thursdays because that was the day the grocery store advertisements came out in the paper. She bought Christmas presents in September. She loved to read, and she had a house full of books with a bookcase in every room – all organized according to the Dewey decimal system. The year she had children in four different schools, she created a car pool plan that the other mothers cloned.
My Mom was also low key and accepting of life. One year, during her turn to host the monthly luncheon at our home for the women of the Junior League, our pet baby goats, Samantha, Curtsinhouser, and Sue, decided to explore the League president’s Cadillac as she was trying to get out of her car. My brother and I were called in as the physical handlers, and we cajoled them with Frosted Mini-Wheats back to their pen. That afternoon when I asked my Mom if she would be “kicked out” of the Junior League, she smiled and calmly said, “That’d be one way to streamline my schedule, wouldn’t it?”
When my sisters and I had boy issues, she was full of practical advice. When Leslie broke up with Allen, Mom announced, “Get in the car. We’re going to buy lipstick and get your hair cut; you’ll feel better.” Once, when my sister and I timidly asked if we could go buy bras because we would be taking gym class and changing with other girls in the locker room, her practicality broke through with, “Sure- if it doesn’t pop up and hit you in the chin.” (She also had a sense of humor.)
My Dad created the “Chore Board” for her with her children’s rotating names, seven days a week and six chores: feed the dog; set the table; clear the table; wash the dishes; empty the trash; feed up at the barn. On your birthday, you didn’t have to do your chore. Most of us dreaded doing the dishes because cleaning up for nine people took at least an hour, even with a dishwasher. I personally hated emptying the trash more than doing the dishes, because it involved a “trash shed” with lots of indefinable critters. Notice “cooking dinner” was not on the chore board. Perhaps my Mom never viewed cooking as a chore; perhaps she didn’t want to share this particular time of her day; perhaps she somehow knew that teenagers experimenting and ruining a meal for nine of us could become expensive and, well- we’d be hungry! But my mother loved to cook…Deviled crab, cheesecake, lasagna, zucchini squares, you name it, she created a recipe and it was good.
So we didn’t cook while growing up. Within the first year of my marriage, my husband developed a 15-minute standup comedy routine of cooking stories sure to bring tears of laughter to anyone’s face: enough beef stew to feed his infantry platoon (I tripled every recipe since my Mom routinely tripled everything); Cornish hens that bled on the plate when you cut into them (How was I to know cooking with gas meant the gas could run out?); tuna fish sandwiches with granules of dog food mixed in (I’m still not convinced this actually happened). At any rate, we survived our first year of marriage and have somehow made it through 34 years, and since we’re both a tad heftier, I think the cooking thing has solved itself.
So we didn’t cook growing up. But we did bake for Christmas. My Mom would announce the baking day so that my three sisters and I would wear our clean, but ratty jeans and t-shirts. She set up stations before we had even gotten out of bed. Kathy was supreme at sugar cookies, complete with sprinkles and creative decorations, with just the right balance of crispness and chewiness. Carol pitched in wherever she was needed, but was especially talented at keeping supplies organized and surfaces prepared, and the general area clean and sanitized. Leslie always found additional recipes that we hadn’t yet tried, and as she became older and was able to drive, she’d bring new, unusual ingredients home from the store and present them one at a time out of the paper bag so we could guess at what we would be baking. And I helped as a jack-of-all-trades – or did the dishes.
Every year, the staple of Christmas baking was Mom’s coffee cake. She would bake them as gifts for friends and neighbors, set each on a paper plate lined with aluminum foil, cover each with Saran Wrap, top it with a bow, and tag it, “Love, the Creech’s.” One year she made 24 cakes. She had two ovens, so we developed a whole assembly line of mixing, pouring the batter into the circle pan, adding nuts, timing, taking out, cooling, inverting, placing on the plate, cooling again, wrapping, and topping with bow and tag. Then Leslie and I drove them to our neighbors’ houses. And we made two cakes for us at home - one with nuts and one without nuts- that Omie and Grandaddy would eat with their coffee on Christmas morning, watching as the children opened presents.
Yes, I have incorporated Betty’s coffee cake into my adult world. My own children know it’s a special occasion when they smell it in the oven. I do make it at Christmas, and my daughter bakes it as well. The blue index card on which Mom originally wrote the recipe for me, has become so faded you can’t read any words, but of course, it’s okay because I’ve memorized it.
But I really haven’t told you very clearly about the love. The cake should really be called Betty Jean Frost Baldwin Creech Watkins Mirmelstein Alford cake, or BJFBCWMA cake. You see, my Mom, that practical lady who gave so much of self in rearing her children, was widowed five times. Yes, we adult children made jokes: “That Crandall (husband #5) is the bravest man I know”; “Mom, are we invited to this wedding?” (not always a guarantee); and “ I wonder what this husband’s children think of us?” But after all the jokes, and all the memories, and all the good times, as my youngest brother sincerely put it, “How many people do you know who have loved thoroughly and completely, and lost thoroughly and completely, and are willing to love and lose again, and again, and again, and again?
So when you enjoy Betty’s coffee cake, or BJFBCWMA cake, think of all that love. And be sure pass it on.
by Nancy Mularkey
As the mother of seven children, Betty had a practicality and an efficiency that belied the amount of her love. She was an early riser, an original multi-tasker, organizing multiple requirements daily. She knew exactly how to orchestrate the day’s errands based on the most efficient driving routes and the least amount of time spent. She bought groceries in bulk on Thursdays because that was the day the grocery store advertisements came out in the paper. She bought Christmas presents in September. She loved to read, and she had a house full of books with a bookcase in every room – all organized according to the Dewey decimal system. The year she had children in four different schools, she created a car pool plan that the other mothers cloned.
My Mom was also low key and accepting of life. One year, during her turn to host the monthly luncheon at our home for the women of the Junior League, our pet baby goats, Samantha, Curtsinhouser, and Sue, decided to explore the League president’s Cadillac as she was trying to get out of her car. My brother and I were called in as the physical handlers, and we cajoled them with Frosted Mini-Wheats back to their pen. That afternoon when I asked my Mom if she would be “kicked out” of the Junior League, she smiled and calmly said, “That’d be one way to streamline my schedule, wouldn’t it?”
When my sisters and I had boy issues, she was full of practical advice. When Leslie broke up with Allen, Mom announced, “Get in the car. We’re going to buy lipstick and get your hair cut; you’ll feel better.” Once, when my sister and I timidly asked if we could go buy bras because we would be taking gym class and changing with other girls in the locker room, her practicality broke through with, “Sure- if it doesn’t pop up and hit you in the chin.” (She also had a sense of humor.)
My Dad created the “Chore Board” for her with her children’s rotating names, seven days a week and six chores: feed the dog; set the table; clear the table; wash the dishes; empty the trash; feed up at the barn. On your birthday, you didn’t have to do your chore. Most of us dreaded doing the dishes because cleaning up for nine people took at least an hour, even with a dishwasher. I personally hated emptying the trash more than doing the dishes, because it involved a “trash shed” with lots of indefinable critters. Notice “cooking dinner” was not on the chore board. Perhaps my Mom never viewed cooking as a chore; perhaps she didn’t want to share this particular time of her day; perhaps she somehow knew that teenagers experimenting and ruining a meal for nine of us could become expensive and, well- we’d be hungry! But my mother loved to cook…Deviled crab, cheesecake, lasagna, zucchini squares, you name it, she created a recipe and it was good.
So we didn’t cook while growing up. Within the first year of my marriage, my husband developed a 15-minute standup comedy routine of cooking stories sure to bring tears of laughter to anyone’s face: enough beef stew to feed his infantry platoon (I tripled every recipe since my Mom routinely tripled everything); Cornish hens that bled on the plate when you cut into them (How was I to know cooking with gas meant the gas could run out?); tuna fish sandwiches with granules of dog food mixed in (I’m still not convinced this actually happened). At any rate, we survived our first year of marriage and have somehow made it through 34 years, and since we’re both a tad heftier, I think the cooking thing has solved itself.
So we didn’t cook growing up. But we did bake for Christmas. My Mom would announce the baking day so that my three sisters and I would wear our clean, but ratty jeans and t-shirts. She set up stations before we had even gotten out of bed. Kathy was supreme at sugar cookies, complete with sprinkles and creative decorations, with just the right balance of crispness and chewiness. Carol pitched in wherever she was needed, but was especially talented at keeping supplies organized and surfaces prepared, and the general area clean and sanitized. Leslie always found additional recipes that we hadn’t yet tried, and as she became older and was able to drive, she’d bring new, unusual ingredients home from the store and present them one at a time out of the paper bag so we could guess at what we would be baking. And I helped as a jack-of-all-trades – or did the dishes.
Every year, the staple of Christmas baking was Mom’s coffee cake. She would bake them as gifts for friends and neighbors, set each on a paper plate lined with aluminum foil, cover each with Saran Wrap, top it with a bow, and tag it, “Love, the Creech’s.” One year she made 24 cakes. She had two ovens, so we developed a whole assembly line of mixing, pouring the batter into the circle pan, adding nuts, timing, taking out, cooling, inverting, placing on the plate, cooling again, wrapping, and topping with bow and tag. Then Leslie and I drove them to our neighbors’ houses. And we made two cakes for us at home - one with nuts and one without nuts- that Omie and Grandaddy would eat with their coffee on Christmas morning, watching as the children opened presents.
Yes, I have incorporated Betty’s coffee cake into my adult world. My own children know it’s a special occasion when they smell it in the oven. I do make it at Christmas, and my daughter bakes it as well. The blue index card on which Mom originally wrote the recipe for me, has become so faded you can’t read any words, but of course, it’s okay because I’ve memorized it.
But I really haven’t told you very clearly about the love. The cake should really be called Betty Jean Frost Baldwin Creech Watkins Mirmelstein Alford cake, or BJFBCWMA cake. You see, my Mom, that practical lady who gave so much of self in rearing her children, was widowed five times. Yes, we adult children made jokes: “That Crandall (husband #5) is the bravest man I know”; “Mom, are we invited to this wedding?” (not always a guarantee); and “ I wonder what this husband’s children think of us?” But after all the jokes, and all the memories, and all the good times, as my youngest brother sincerely put it, “How many people do you know who have loved thoroughly and completely, and lost thoroughly and completely, and are willing to love and lose again, and again, and again, and again?
So when you enjoy Betty’s coffee cake, or BJFBCWMA cake, think of all that love. And be sure pass it on.