Cooking Up History: Me Maw's Pineapple Cream Cake

It’s 1982 and I am a very young Northern transplant newly engaged to a born and raised Georgia Cracker.  He is taking me to meet his mother’s side of the family for a Christmas meal in his Me Maw’s (Southern for Grandmother) little Brookhaven home.  The house is brimming with people I have never met and bubbling with foods I have never smelled, but I am head over heels in love with this guy and I would have followed him to the moon and eaten green cheese.

Me Maw’s little kitchen counters over flow with crock pots bubbling with black eyed peas and butter beans and on her stove collard greens boil (and stink) and the oven is full with both a ham and a turkey and the kitchen table has only one spot open and everyone is taking their food outside to eat because it’s December in Georgia and the weather is pleasant in the sunshine.

In the middle of the kitchen is Me Maw and she hugs me tight and looks at the new little engagement ring on my finger and tells me to sit at the one open spot at the table and I think, how can I sneak out to the yard with everyone else? But I am new here, I am the Michigan Yankee in Me Maw’s kitchen and she must talk with me and serve me all types of foods that I have never tasted and I must try to eat them--and hopefully like most of them.

Luckily for this Dang Yankee, Me Maw can cook and I find myself sopping up gravy with hand dropped biscuits and little corn bread muffins and I am asking Me Maw for recipes because I ache to please this Southern man I aim to marry in the spring of the coming year. Me Maw makes me feel welcome and I enjoy most all the food she offers and then I am released to walk around her yard, which I do hand in hand with her grandson, and we talk about the Azaleas and the Rhododendrons that have grown so high they cover the windows of Me Maws’ little home.

She calls us in for dessert while drying her hands on her apron and we all, the cousins and aunts and uncles whose names I can’t all sort out as they mostly go by nick names, like Champ or Booger or Stump or Mule, file through the little kitchen and appear again in the yard toting paper plates stacked high with red velvet cake, apple pie, peach cobbler and a white fluffy cake everyone is saying I must try as it’s Me Maw’s specialty.

It has coconut and I not a fan of coconut, but I taste it and it melts in my mouth.  The taste of the pineapple and the sour cream instantly speaks of a Southern Christmas for this Michigan Yankee.

Flash forward. I have been married to Me Maw’s grandson for more than two decades. When she dies, we are all so sad. The aunts whose names I now am familiar with are sorting out her stuff. Christmas comes and I must make the cake but no one is sure how so that Christmas passes without the memorable taste of coconut and pineapple--and that makes everyone sadder still.

A few years later my church, , asks everyone for a recipe to add to a cookbook and we all want Me Maw’s cake in there and we miss that taste as much as we miss Me Maw so I call Aunt Louise who is living in Me Maw’s little Brookhaven home and beg her to look again for that recipe.

“Ok, hun, I will look,” Louise agrees speaking over the phone with me, “But Me Maw’s recipes are in about four boxes and some of them are folded up scraps of paper and I can’t even read ‘em.”

I hang up with her feeling defeated but the phone rings right back to me and its Aunt Louise, “You won’t believe this, Sally, but the first recipe I pulled out of the first box I looked in was for that cake!”

So, perhaps with some divine intervention, Me Maw’s wonderful Christmas cake recipe made it into the church cookbook for all to see and try and enjoy just as our family does each December. The book is still available in the church office and proceeds will go directly to the Norcross First Baptist.

Me Maw's Pineapple Cream Cake

1 box yellow cake mix

12 oz. frozen coconut, thawed

2 cups sugar

1 can crushed pineapple (do not drain, use all juices)

2 cups sour cream

Combine all of the ingredients (except the cake mix) and refridgerate over night. 

Bake the yellow cake on a large serving pan, following the directions on the box. Cool; poke several holes in the cake with a toothpick. Pour the combined ingredients over top. Cover; chill at least two hours before serving.