Home Made Love: Gamma Bettye's Shush Cake

By MARI and LILA CHILES

This is our Gamma Bettye's recipe for her Southern Lemon Pound Cake. It's thick and delicious and full of lemony goodness! Here’s the thing, though: You have to be very quiet when you’re making this cake so that it won’t fall and be flat when it’s finished cooking. Flat cake is not cute. It's still tasty. But not cute. And when we say you have to be quiet, we mean really quiet. Mommy won’t even let us open the refrigerator when this cake is cooking—that’s how quiet it has to be. If you can’t handle this, we suggest that you go out and play now.



Here are some things we like to play when we’re making shush cake: We like to play on the swing set and climb in trees; we like to play on our scooters; we like to play hide-and-go-seek; we like to play soccer and football and basketball; we like to ride our bikes, and; we love to write on the driveway with chalk.

Oh, and we take our dog Teddy with us so he can be quiet, too.

This pound cake is really easy to make, and the best part is that Mommy lets us lick the bowl after she pours the batter in the round cake pan. Quietly? That's the best part. The cooked cake is really perfect for a special dessert for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but you don’t need to eat it just on special occasions—having it on a Wednesday night is just fine, too, especially with a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

Ingredients:
3 sticks butter
1 stick margarine
2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
6 eggs
½ cup milk
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
2 tsp lemon extract
No-stick spray with flour
(Note: You’ll also need a round cake pan with a tube in the middle.)

Directions:
Use the mixer to mix all the ingredients together in the order given; spray a round cake pan with the no-stick flour spray, then spoon the batter into the cake pan. Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour and 25 minutes.