“I have to be there at 8 o’clock on Saturday,” our daughter Gaye explained as she and her sister Elizabeth were trying to work out a running schedule. Gaye wanted to be at her town’s farmers’ market when the fresh strawberries arrived. She didn’t say what her use for the berries would be, but she didn’t want to miss them.
Anyway, she thought that fresh strawberries would be good whether in last issue’s strawberry pie or today’s pound cake. The “store bought” berries imported from around the world extend the supply, but the season for fresh, local strawberries is short. Today’s recipe can be used with the fresh or frozen berries. As our contributor suggests, the fresh ones can be sliced and sugared and allowed to rest a bit before you make the cake.
It’s a good cake. It is also a pretty pink cake, and the recipe is from Mrs. Hazel Merrill, a member of Brandon Baptist Church in West Greenville since 1944. She is currently an assistant teacher for an adult class. Her pastor there is Wilton Maxwell, and the church is in the Greenville Baptist Association.
Mrs. Merrill has had this recipe a long time. So long, she says, that it is yellowed with age but still readable. She clipped it from the old Greenville Piedmont newspaper back in the days when several South Carolina dailies also had afternoon editions. Her recipe from Jan. 17, 1966, had been sent by Mrs. J.G. Mayfield of Lyman. Mrs. Merrill’s cousin, Mrs. R.T. Cantrell in Sans Souci, had sent a similar recipe but without the flour and water and increasing the berries to one cup.
Hazel Merrill
Mrs. Merrill and her late husband John Sr., who died in 1986, had five children. One of them, John Jr., lives in Colorado Springs, and the other four – Jim, Steve, Anne and Phillip and their families – live in the Upstate area.
Hazel has two interests in addition to her church and family. The first is pen pals. Over the years, she has had about 30 or so in a lot of states, including Colorado, Mississippi, New York and Arizona, as well as in England.
Her other interest is calligraphy. She uses this beautifully styled penmanship to write birthday and other greeting cards to friends. Sometimes she uses the special blue ink, which turns a gold color when it is heated and dried. How lovely it must be to get one of Hazel’s personally penned cards!
It will also be lovely for you to make Hazel’s Strawberry Pound Cake this Saturday, then serve it as a delicious end to … Sunday Dinner.
Strawberry Pound Cake
1 18½-ounce package white cake mix
1 small package strawberry gelatin
4 eggs
½ cup water
½ cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons flour
½ cup sliced strawberries, drained
Grease a tube pan. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Mix together all the cake ingredients. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour.
Icing
1 1-pound box powdered sugar (you may not need the whole box)
1 stick (½ cup) butter or margarine, softened to room temperature
Juice from berries
Combine the sugar, butter and juice. Frost cake when cool.
(Note: To use fresh strawberries, wash and slice them and add sugar to taste. Allow to sit at least an hour to extract the juice.)