Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Pudding Cake - Visits from Philly

As many of you may or may not know, an uncle who is very dear to me and my brothers and sisters had a massive stroke 2 days ago.  With brilliant medical intervention and PRAYER, he is doing much better and will be headed to a rehab facility soon.  Thank you all for your prayers.
 

Look at those heavenly layers of cake, pudding and whipped cream!
That being said, the last few days have been spent walking down memory lane about my Uncle Will and his wife Aunt Millie.  They still live in the same neighborhood my dad was raised in, and though it has been rare that they leave the city, they did venture out to visit us in Nebraska when I was a kid.  My dad left the old neighborhood and the family.  In reality he did it (at 17) so his dad would have one less mouth to feed.  Anywho, so the story goes that my dad met my mom and they made their life in my hometown, which is also my mom's hometown.  For big city people, this WAS a different world.  


My Uncle Will took me and my sister Patty to "Mel's Dime Store".  If you are from my hometown, you remember the ol' place!  We didn't have alot of money growing up and rarely got toys aside from Christmas and birthdays.  Well, he took us in and let us each pick out 2 toys, anything we wanted.  I remember knowing I wanted to pick TWO baby dolls.  I couldn't believe in my 5 year old mind that someone had THAT MUCH MONEY they could buy us each 2 toys! Oh the GLORY!  

While we were busy picking out toys, my Aunt Millie was busy at home....cooking!  She is Italian to the core and cooked us a feast every single night of their visit!  She also made us "pudding cake".  We were sure this was a "city dessert" when in reality it was cheap and cheerful!  She was after all feeding a family of 12 plus themselves!  It was the first time I was introduced to "jimmies".  When we learned what they were we felt so "la-dee-dah".  She made 2 pans of this one night and it has stuck in my head like glue ever since.  (I grew up and moved to South Jersey and jimmies are a food group of their own!)  I want to share it with you.  It is so delicious and not to heavy for these hot summer months.  


I used a sugar free angel food cake from the store.  You can easily use sugar free pudding and fat free whipped cream.  NONE of those choices will affect the dessert at all, only make you be able to eat more!  


Aunt Millie's Pudding Cake
1 angel food cake
2 sm. boxes chocolate pudding
2 sm or 1 lg container of whipped cream
chocolate jimmies

Cut your angel food cake into slices.  Lay them in the bottom of a 9x13 pan.  Prepare pudding as directed and pour over the sliced cake.   Spread on whipped cream (you could make your own too!)  Sprinkle the top with jimmies.  HEAVY on the jimmies please!  Refrigerate until ready to serve!




I hope you make this easy, delightful dessert.  What a great recipe for your kids to make or to help with!  Enjoy this as much as we did as kids and do as adults.  Thanks Aunt Millie for teaching us "country kids" about jimmies.  It changed our lives! 

Your "missing Uncle Willy and Aunt Millie" chefwannabe
Chris

6 comments:

  1. Oh yes...I remember the time. They bought me a basketball for the hoop that was put up on the garage years earlier but we didn't have money for a basketball. I walked home from town bouncing it all the way. I arrived home and Uncle Will stood underneath the basket as lined up my shot to throw the first shot....I eyed the back of the hoop, concentrated for a moment, then will all the confidence I had threw the ball up .... it floated through the air with pure grace, no spin, dead on to go through the hoop and not touch a thing...and it did, but as it went through and headed downward to the ground, it came right down on a NAIL!!! One shot and the basketball was ruined! I cried as I held the basketball with air sizzling out of it! Finally I had a brand new basketball and with one shot it all ended! Or so I though. Uncle Will hugged me and said "Let's go back downtown Annie, I saw they had more basketballs where this one came from". I will never forget that day.

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  2. Thanks for joining the Blog Hop!

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  3. Awesome memories!! Thank you for sharing!

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  4. Simple and quick but so yummy! I love great memories and yes, jimmies were a childhood delicacy in our home too!

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  5. I am not sure if it is because I am Canadian or not...but i have no clue what jimmies are??

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