I don’t see the mix anymore, so I make a doctored cake mix version of marble cake - remove some of the yellow cake batter, mix the removed batter with cocoa and I think a little powdered sugar, then swirl the dark batter into the yellow batter.
I make pineapple upside down cake once in a while. It’s so pretty.
I make a pretty similar red, white, and green salad most Christmases, and a red, white, and blue salad most Independence Days.
The lemon curd cake sounds something like lemon pudding cake. Baked Lemon Pudding Cake Recipe | Land O’Lakes
That could very well be it. I’ll have to make it some time; it looks delicious!
Thanks for posting the recipe! You just made my day (even after I got my second dose of vaccine six weeks early this afternoon)!
Regarding Rum Cake, my wife makes one 2-3 times a year, normally for family gatherings -
Or, if we’re pressed, we have make a fair approximation by tweaking ye olde yellow cake mix from the store, while still making the topping from scratch.
While most of our local groceries have in-house bakeries, I still see a decent number of local specialty bakeries open. I have noticed that a lot of them appear to have bespoke deals with local restaurants however, so they aren’t totally dependent upon their storefronts.
I looooove making bread pudding, but the calories prevent me from doing it more than twice a year or so. Generally my wife will bake a fresh challah or three, and one gets served at a family event or the like, one gets eaten at home, and one gets dried out to be made into bread pudding. I like to make mine with a few homemade candied pecans, raisins in rum, and of course, a rum chaser into the egg batter.
That makes sense. I miss general bakeries. As I understand it, supermarket bakeries mostly use frozen dough, and I think most of their cakes are simply thawed frozen cake layers. And don’t get me started on the vegetable shortening frosting. If there are exceptions to all this, I’d love to know!
There used to be a bakery near my parents’ house that made what I’ve since learned was an Italian rum cake. It was really awesome; always moist and really delicious.
I miss real, honest-to-God pound cake made with 100% butter and lots of eggs. The “pound cake” sold at my local supermarket has lots of sugar, glucose syrup, liquid eggs, water, guar gum, canola oil, and unspeakable chemicals, but no butter whatsoever. I guess this makes it “healthier.” 
When my daughter was growing up, I made pound cake every Christmas. I know what the real stuff tastes like, and that ain’t it!
I made a bread pudding for church yesterday. So easy to made and super good.
You guys have gotten me thinking of a Victorian sponge cake. Haven’t made one for years. May try next weekend.
The first time I made pound cake, I followed the recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook exactly and ended up with three times the amount I had expected. The excess I used to make an English trifle, which was wonderful!
I didn’t mention pineapple upside-down cake (nice photo btw!) because after seeing it all the time in the 60s and 70s and then not at all for 25-30 years, it seems to have made a comeback. Around 2010 or so, some of the moms at my kids’ school started bringing them to bake sales, and since then I’ve seen them several times.
This thread is reminding me of some things that I never want to see again, lol. I haven’t eaten anything made with Jell-O since I stopped living with my parents. Ditto angel food cake (my mother’s were just terrible - way too sweet and rubbery) and pineapple upside down cake (I have never liked pineapple, though I do occasionally make a variation with apple instead).
One thing I did like growing up that no one seems to make any more are different types of candy - saltwater taffy, rock candy, divinity and peanut brittle. Homemade peanut brittle is the bomb. I’ve also made pralines as an adult, and those were very good as well.
Anybody ever hear of a Dump Cake? I remember my mother picked up a cookbook with the recipe for one back in the '70s, probably at some thrift store.
She actually made one once (she really wasn’t into baking). It was pretty good, as I recall.
My mom made divinity and peanut brittle, and we made rock candy a few times. But she has arthritis in her hands and candy making is a lot of work.
Just don’t tell her it’s not possible to make old-fashioned fudge when it’s raining. She doesn’t care, and her fudge always turns out perfect.
I have never had peanut butter fudge as good as my uncle’s. He would send care packages at Christmas full of goodies.
I’ve made chocolate fudge a few times, and even managed to rescue the last batch (turned gritty and had to remelt it), but I don’t have the skills my mom does.
Of course, My grandmother used to make them all the time. I’ll still make it from time to time. Two cans of peaches and the juice from one can. Yellow cake mix and a melted stick of butter.
As for bread pudding, I love it but I hate the kind you get in restaurants anymore. So dry … they hope the sauce will save it. I’ve been thinking for a week that I should make some myself. Nice and moist with no sauce needed.
I think when you look at general cookbooks from the pre-1970 era it’s kind of telling. They frequently had entire sections of the cookbook devoted to themes like ‘making candy at home’ or ‘entertaining the boss at dinner’ that reflect not only changing dietary trends but social trends as well.
My grandmother’s collection of recipes – which I have carefully conserved – included things like threshing day dinners (served at noon to a passel of neighboring farmers who were traveling from farm to farm with the threshing machines and teams of horses). "Kill, pluck, and dress twelve hens … " Also how to make soap, sausage, and yes, candy. My grandmother used to make at least a dozen kinds of cookies for Christmas, and had a wide repertoire of cakes and pies. She was a great cook, who taught me most of what I know, about baking in particular.
Lots of dessert recipes aren’t forgotten at all, it’s just that you can’t buy them from food product manufacturers. They live on within family or local cultural traditions. When middle class women entered the workforce en masse, elaborate desserts meant for entertaining declined precipitously. Food tastes also evolved. From my grandmother’s era, where a daily dessert was not uncommon in farming communities where everyone engaged in a lot of manual labor, to my mother’s era, where Modern Convenience Foods were a postwar marvel and many were anxious to leave behind immigrant foods and embrace a bland conformity, to my era, when organic granola became mainstream … and now, it’s all about ethnic fusion and gluten free. And everyone is too fat.
The world keeps turning. I usually have a piece of fruit for dessert.
I remember the desserts my paternal grandmother made were mainly from fruits and vegetables that she grew herself - “pumpkin” pie made from Hubbard squash, and fruit pies and cobblers using blackberries, blueberries and/or raspberries. She also canned her produce, and made jam.