Outside a little wind rustled the new leaves along DeForest Avenue, Summit, New Jersey. Inside, the piano made music like laughing.

In closing, Ann Bartleson will play a duet with her sister Susan,” and Mrs. Helen Chrystal Bender, standing tall with a gentle Quaker dignity, smiled her teacher’s smile at the two young girls. Music in hand, they squeezed their way out of the second row back, heading for the grand piano where the tall tapers made the golden light.

In the pause of waiting, a solid, compact little girl’s voice from the front row queried, “Do we eat the cakes next?” This child was as patiently expectant as everyone else for the recital’s grand climax: supper with Mrs. Bender and the feat of cakes.

Wonderful cakes! For thirty years these cakes have been baked by teacher Bender to help celebrate the school’s Sunday afternoon musicals. After music the ham and bean supper, then te cake cutting. Mrs. Bender cooked the meal, she baked the cakes, over 200 a year. There were nine on the table the evening I visited. Now Mrs. Bender is retired and lives in Hawaii. At long last she has put her famous cake recipes into a book.

Teacher Bender’s favorite of the cake collection is the Gold Cake which goes along with the Angel Food to use the yolks left behind by the whites. Spice Cake—that’s for me any old time.

Clementine Paddleford, How America Eats (1960)

GOLD CAKE WITH ICING

Yield: 1 9-inch tube cake

½ C (1 stick) butter
1½ C sugar
11 egg yolks, “7/8 cup”
½ C milk
1¼ C sifted cake flour
½ tsp salt
1/3 tsp orange extract
1/3 tsp lemon extract
1/3 tsp almond extract
2 tsp baking powder
Icing

Preheat oven to 350˚. Cream together butter and sugar thoroughly, and add egg yolks, beating until creamy. Sift together cake flour and salt, and add to creamed mixture alternately with milk, beating after each addition. Add extracts, and at the very last baking powder, stirring well. Turn batter into an ungreased 9-inch tube pan, and bake about 45 minutes or until done. Invert on rack to cool. Remove by running a spatula along sides. Cover with Icing.

ICING

¼ C (½ stick) butter
1 lb confectioners’ sugar
Orange juice

Blend together butter and confectioners’ sugar, and add orange juice, “just enough to give icing a nice spreading consistency.”