Birthday Pie

But if we'd said yes to pie, she might have made this, for which there are three cards:

Key Lime Pie

3 egg yolks
1 c. condensed milk* Mix

Add 3 oz lime juice a little at a time
Pour into crust (Graham crax)

3 egg whites
1/4 tsp cr tartar **
6 T sugar

Bake @ 425 5-6 min

*The other card calls for 1 can--
**--and for 1/2 tsp cr of tartar

Mom also had a clipping of Lee Bailey's Key lime pie recipe from "Country Weekends" (published by Clarkson Potter), which uses a pre-baked pie shell instead of a Graham cracker crust. The filling takes a can of condensed milk, 1/2 c. of lime juice, and 2 egg whites but no yolks, and is unbaked.

Devil's Food Cake

Today, August 8, was Mom's birthday. There were three other August-September birthdays in our family, and Mom would often propose that she make a pie for herself instead of cake. We kids usually insisted on the cake, which might have been this:

2 eggs
1/2 c. sour cream*
1/2 c. melted shortening**
2 c. sugar
1 1/3 boiling coffee
2 c. flour
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 c. cocoa
add 2 tsp soda to coffee

Beat eggs, add sugar and shortening. Add flour & cocoa alternately with cream. Add coffee & soda at end. Bake at 350 for about 50 min.

*Three of her cards have essentially the same recipe. On the handwritten one that looks oldest, "milk" has been crossed off and replaced with "milk." The other two cards specify "sour milk."

**The earliest card adds (Crisco); the other handwritten card has "marg." replaced with "oil." The third (typed) calls for "wesson oil."

The frosting would have been chocolate--thick and fudgey or glossy--but oddly I haven't found a recipe in the boxes.