Coffee and Cake

The people who did it have died.

I grew up in NY suburbs, 1960s, 1970s.

Morning and afternoon frau thing.

OP, are you Frank Costanza?

Yes it wasn't just after dinner or even mostly after dinner. Maybe in the summer, because it was still light outside.

Coffee Klatsch was after the kids were in school and hubby at work.

Before my time, but I'd love to revive the practice.

But in my neighborhood the timing could be random. My mom quit smoking really early in the 1960s, but I like the smell of cigarettes and coffee when neighbours visited.

Coffee cakes used to be a really big thing, but they've fallen out of favor. They were versatile and could be served for breakfast, an afternoon snack, or dessert with dinner. Housewives loved them.

I tend to eat dinner later. As I was on my back patio two weeks ago enjoying a drink about 7, I noticed a couple who live in the neighborhood coming up to the porch of my next door neighbors. They were coming for drinks/coffee and cake or nibblies. The next door neighbors are in their seventies.

Oh my little lamb; hon, it was code for swinger parties

Key parties!

Coffee and Italian pastries for my Northeast 1960s/70s family.

Afternoon or after dinner or Sunday.

Sometimes planned, sometime impromptu.

I miss a good bakery.

All the time.

My Italian American family always had Entenmanns in the house in case anyone stopped by.

If it was planned we made a quick run to the bakery.

Serving cak

Coffee percolator. I have a 71yo friends who still uses a percolator.

PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT THAT CAAAAAKE!!!

Poor Fudgie

You mean literal cake?

Yes, literal cake. I’ve read it was a Northeast thing.

When I was very young in 70s and early 80s. Houston suburbs.

My god, these poor people didn't have the internet or smart phones! Can you even imagine! Is that a life worth living?

But coffee cake wasn't for dessert, it was either for breakfast or to have with afternoon coffee (the Germanic equivalent of the British tea.)

R21 the cake didn’t have to be coffee cake.

And sometimes friends would just drop in…..

Yes, I remember. My Aunt's used to call it Coffee And..... usually on a weekend, but always on a holiday. There was usually a small group for dinner, then other folks came over later for dessert....that was called come for Coffee And.....I

Growing up in the 60s and 70s in a RI Italian family, my mother (and grandmother) invited family over for 'Coffee and..' That left the option open for cake (my mother's coffee cake was the best) or Italian pastry from our Italian bakery. Percolator coffee ! I think it disappeared sometime in the 80s.

Ohio, 60s-70s. Mom baked a cake every Thursday and a pie or two on Saturdays. You never knew when an aunt and uncle, grandparent, or neighbor would stop by for coffee and dessert. I remember it happened at least once a week, but I’m old and could be having exaggerated recollections.

I think this tradition died out when women joined the 9 to 5 workforce...

12 AMERICAN recipes for your exotic Nordic Ware Bundt Cake pan.

Im sure some of boys clambered for the "Tunnel of Fudge" Bundt Cake.

Samantha Stephens was always frosting a cake in her kitchen for 'no special reason' other than to have a dessert on hand in case Mrs. Stephens, Ant Clara or Louise Tate dropped by. Sometimes she offered the first Mrs.Kravitz a slice with a cup of coffee.

This is timely. I have a crumb cake mix I've wanted to make and incorporate apples (I have a tree that's finally got ripe apples on it!) into it, so I found a recipe I plan making this weekend.

However, I'm such an introvert that the only person I know who would eat it is probably going to be busy all weekend. I'm going to make it anyway and take it over there.

R31, if the screen door is open, but you hear nothing but a low sinister hissing from the shadowy interior, leave the cake on the porch and get out of that yard quickly and with great stealth.

My mother never put out anything for anyone. People would stop over and after a while she'd ask if they wanted some coffee (they'd have to ask for sugar and cream). Just a selfish, stingy bitch.

My mother always served burnt champagne and the wrong caviar when Auntie Dominique came to visit ! Fuck that 'coffee and' shit !

I do remember those days, OP. I was very young, but I remember my mother serving cake and coffee to visitors, and sometimes being served when we visited someone's house. I constantly bake cakes and offer homemade baked goods and tea (can't stand coffee) to visitors. People say it makes them feel special. And why not? They are my friends! I expect people will call me an old fool, or a boomer, but I don't think people visit with friends at home nearly as often as they should. You get to talk -maybe have some music on in the background - and get away from screens and 24-hour news cycles, and all of that. A relaxing cup of tea and a delicious snack with a side of conversation is like medicine for your soul.

I’m from the South and although we didn’t have coffee and cake, I remember my grandparents born in the 1920s taking me over to their friends’ houses. We would sometimes call but a lot of times we would just knock on their door and they would invite us in for visit time.

It originally was a German tradition, Kaffee und Kuchen, brought to the US by German immigrants. It was the German equivalent of the British afternoon tea.

The custom died out when women joined the workforce and didn't have the time or inclination to bake cakes from scratch. Weekend kaffeeklatsches seem to have been replaced with champagne brunches and afternoon gossip hour over a bottle of Stella Rosa.

We did that as youths in Europe. Plus cigarettes.

We used to do this all the time!

I remember a weekday staying with either grandmother often involved going to a neighbor’s house for coffee/tea and a “baked good”, or neighbors stopping by. This was in the afternoon when the housework was finished, but before dinner prep got started. I was always ignored and left to my own devices. I peeked in a lot of cabinets.

Growing up, I had a neighbor who looked like the American Greetings character Maxine. She would invite me over for cookies, petit fours, and iced tea. We would talk about Are you being served and her antiques. She also pointed out that I was effeminate.

Another North East Italian American here - grew up in the 70s. As others have stated, OP, there were various scenarios - but the underlying value was that when people were in your home you offered them something, and it was common for people to drop by "I was just in the neighborhood and thought I'd knock" - so you always had something on hand to offer - cookies, crumb-cake, whatever. My mother only baked for our birthdays, but we too always had some Entenmanns and Stella D'Orro in the kitchen. It wasn't just for company - but mom made sure it never ran out

It would be considered rude not to offer, but it was usually not seen as rude to drop by unannounced - usually in the afternoon before people started cooking dinner. If it was a bad time, you could say so at the door and neither side was put out; it was just how people socialized back when you didn't have access to a phone when not at home.

In my neighborhood of small single family homes it was also a carryover from the way my parents generation had grown up - in apartments where people socialized with neighbors all the time - on the stoop, kibitzing out a first floor front window or sitting on lawn chairs on the sidewalk. Now some people get put our if you actually do call on the phone instead of sending a text. Things change.

Stella D’Oros 🤤

And if a friend miscalculated and did ring the bell during dinner, the common script was your mom invited them to join, they apologized and declined, you father insisted, and then everyone moved over and they sat down at the table.

Instead of coffee and cake at home now it’s Stanley mug concealed wine and cannabis gummies at junior’s soccer game.

My grandmother, who lived with us, used to buy a slab of coffee cake every Thursday for us to eat for the next couple of days. People might or might not come over to visit We lived in Northern New Jersey. Much later in life, I learned that it was known as New Jersey coffee cake (AKA crumb buns).

I remember those crumb cake slabs in Connecticut, and suburban NY too, at "German" bakeries. You paid by the pound. The crumb was very uneven and once the cake was sliced you could see the thickness of crumb and cake. You could request which end from which to cut your portion. Which was put in a white box with string. Most towns had both "German" and "Italian" butchers and bakers. The butchers had fresh meat and cured meats and cheese and salads. A lot of it was non corporate. The German ones are gone. Italian bakeries and delis do hang on.

Yes. And the knife stayed in the Entenmann's box with the remainder of the cake afterward. Nobody knew why.

Women of my mother's generation (born 1930) who didn't work outside the home had the time and resources to do this. They consumed "diet candy' (Ayds) AND chowed down on coffee cake with friends--pretty much at the same time.

Lauren Bacall always had pot of High Point coffee brewing in case Ms. Leonard Bernstein or Yoko Ono dropped by at the Dakota.

In Wisconsin, they're called Kringles.

R51 yes, those are still strong in WI. I lived in Madison for a few years and remember those more from work. You couldn't so much as scratch your ass without someone bringing in a Kringle to celebrate it.

[quote] The German ones are gone

There are still some here and there. But I agree, more cities still have their Italian groceries/bakeries running.

Such great memories of days gone by.

Today, we mistaken Facebook and other social media interaction as 'socializing'. No more entertaining in person, no more getting families together on a regular basis, no more person-to-person interaction (as we can see from Millennials and Zoomers).

My cousin is 43 with an 18 year old son who just left home for college on the opposite side of the country. She mentioned all summer (via Facebook) , since his HS graduation this past June, she and her husband were going to have a 'big family cookout in mid-August to wish him well on his college venture. This was to take the place of a graduation party in June. Sounded like a good idea. It never happened. The kid took off a few days before Labor Day, and a number of people (via Facebook) questioned how did they miss the announcement of the cookout she was planning and inviting us all to ?

Her response - "Busy summer - I didn't have time."

Really ? She and her hubby couldn't set aside three hours on a Sunday afternoon to cook hot dogs and hamburgers for about 20 guests in their giant backyard, to celebrate their son ? Mind you, everyone responded on FB during the summer with "I'll bring a dessert!" or "I'll bring a side dish!" - so she wasn't doing this alone.

This is why we don't socialize in person any more. The younger generation has different priorities.

You know why, R48 - that way you cold always cut yourself a slice without walking the 3 feet between the kitchen table and the cutlery drawer. And less to wash!

During dinner my dad would always ask me to get him a knife, or whatever - but his chair was right near the drawer and I was at the other end of the table. He was paying for the food, so in hindsight it was a pretty fair exchange.

While being hospitable to guests is a custom that goes back millennia, I think for postwar Americans it was also a point if pride that you could - my grandparents were the children if immigrants, my parents were born during the depression - their definition of "doing well" was very different than ours today.

My maternal grandfather was one of seven, his mother died while he was in high school. He dropped out and moved into a rooming house with his father, the six sisters were farmed out to other relatives. He and his dad worked to provide the money for their upkeep. When I was in college, I asked what it had been like to grow up poor. "We were never poor, he replied very matter of factly, we always had food on the table."

My mom and her friends did a coffee and cake thing once a week in the evenings at each others’ homes in the 70s (suburban Connecticut). It was a fun social gathering for them

r48 that's funny and so true.

I got on an Entenmann's roll (lol) back in the early 90s when I lived in Western NY. I really loved the Raspberry Danish Twist, and I absolutely left the knife in until the cake was gone.

Yes, I was a fat whore back then, and not to be trusted when left around an open Entenmann's coffee cake.

As a NJ kid in that era, this is the first time I'm hearing of this.

This was also a time before people carried water bottles everywhere and there weren't shops on every corner where you could buy cheap beverages and ready to eat snacks. So it was quite possible your visitor might be hungry or thirsty by mid-afternoon.

I'd imagine if you were a busy housewife, stuck running errands, buying groceries, dropping off clothes at the dry cleaners, keeping the house tidy, etc., an hour or two of gossiping over cakes, coffee, or tea with friends and fellow housewives was a welcome relief from the domestic drudgery.

Modern appliances freed up some of their time, and they busied themselves by forming clubs like the Wednesday Afternoon Fine Arts League, holding elections, fundraising, and putting on shows for the community. I kid, but today's housewives are probably busy homeschooling their kids or posting pictures on FB of Little Liam posing with his first AK-47.

Today's wives and mothers are not baking high-caloric sweet desserts and eating them with friends over a cup of coffee. They're spending their free afternoons at the gym, Yoga, or powerwalking through the neighborhood and sipping on Powerade.

I remember my mother hosting women's group meetings. We had one of those big coffee urns. She would put out cookies. This was in the mid 60s.

I remember an episode of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” where Laura and Rob are having chocolate cake in the living room and Rob says, “Honey, you can’t drink coffee with that… that’s a ‘milk cake’!”

She replies, “No darling, it’s easy. Just watch”, and proceeds to take a bite of cake, then takes a sip of coffee.

Rob: “YECCH!” (looking away in disgust)

Not really on topic, but no other threads applied.

For the amount of cakes Samantha baked and served on BEWITCHED, none of the characters ever gained weight. Sam was always baking a cake to celebrate Darrin signing a 'big client' at his office. These days, the 35 year old wife would look at the husband and ask, 'Who cares about that ?'

SF suburbs, 1960s-2000s until she died, Mom would put on a pot of coffee and whip up a coffee cake if friends and/or neighbors dropped by, usually on weekend afternoons, and pretty much anytime on weekdays after she retired. In the 60s, they'd also smoke while gossiping. After holidays, she'd have cookies on hand to serve. She'd also do this whenever one of my siblings or I would drop by as adults. She was Greek and was compulsive about serving food or snacks to guests. Don't remember people coming over for dessert after dinner, however. When we visited relatives in Greece, my cousins would serve the exact same cakes and cookies. In fact, their houses smelled the same as ours -- like pine-based floor cleaner and fresh baked sweets.

all this got me thinking about the cookie table!...a wedding tradition from Pittsburgh area

So, completely related to this, I found out there is "Cake Picnic" in SF that they've started (as as a tradition). I guess they've had it a few times now, and there is one coming up in October (I think the 2nd week). You buy a ticket, bring a cake (can be either homemade or a purchased cake you love), and then sit down with 14 other strangers and have a picnic and have a piece of everyone's cake.

It's being held on Treasure Island, which used to be a scumbag/lowlife area when I was living in SF from 2007 - 2010, but has now undergone some development/renovation. It sounds fun, and I may mosey down there. The only real issue is getting on and off the island if a LOT of people show up. I'm sure they've worked out public transportation out there if they built up housing, businesses, etc. but that part would be a reason for me NOT to go. I guess the last time they held it at the Legion of Honor in SF, which would be preferable.

Still, it sounds fun.

In India, the very least you offer a guest is a cup of tea. Sometimes a cold drink.

There were also tins and boxes of assorted snacks on hand. If there was help available, sometimes hot snacks were prepared on the spot.

Please go to the cake picnic R66.

You owe it to all of Datalounge to report back.

My mother’s best friend lived next door. They would alternate going to each other’s home every night and had coffee and cake while watching The Merv Griffin Show.

Joyce always has cake and tea at the ready.

We morphed them into Swing Parties and .Key Parties. Too many crumbs on the floor anyway.

I baked a cake for my uncle's 86th birthday today. While we were eating it, I mentioned this thread -saying I remember my mom (his little sister) doing the coffee-and-cake-thing. He laughed and said that his mother did too. Only she was a terrible cook. So she used to take one of her cake pans to the local bakery and have them bake a cake for her so she could take it home and pass it off as homemade! I might have doubted his story, except that when I was young I remember being at a Fourth of July barbecue at my grandmother's house where she served her famous coleslaw. I was sent to the kitchen to get something and found, in the fridge, the large bucket of coleslaw from KFC. Busted! I reminded my uncle of that episode and my poor cousin was left stammering, "B..B..B.. But Grandma wrote out her coleslaw recipe for me and gave it to me when I got married!"

A good time was had by all today! FWIW, the cake was Julia Child's VIP cake -a French walnut cake that is really delicious, with royal icing and an apricot-brandy filling.

Kaffee und Kuchen

I would be invited to enjoy cucumber sandwiches for afternoon tea. Does that count?

PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT THAT CAAAAAAKE!

Put on the coffee! I brought Entenmanns!!

Yes, but not coffee cake or bundt cake. A real cake, and coffee. After dinner.

Mein Kuchen bringt alle Jugern im Garten. . . . . .

My parents had this album (Morton Gould--Coffee Time._ When I read "Coffee and Cake" this is the first thing I thought of.

Also good are some rugelach or a nice babka.

Trader Joe's has a chocolate babka I get from time to time. It's pretty darn good.

r77 - what makes you think bundt cake isn't REAL cak?

You can make pretty much any cake into a bundt cake - it's just the shape of the pan with a hole in the middle.

AND, the hole is a nice collector for frosting, so there's that as well.

Banana bread and other quick breads will do in a pinch but they are suboptimal.

R81 Okay, it's a real cake.

We never had bundt cake at home and I have rarely had it.

[quote] You can make pretty much any cake into a bundt cake - it's just the shape of the pan with a hole in the middle.

But it's taditionally a tan or brown cake with white frosting poured over it. I tend to think of it along with coffee cake. Like a "casual" cake.

Say we went to recital or something with some other people. Mom might aske them to come back to the house later for coffee and cake. But it was usually a layer cake.

R65 - here is the cookie table I did for my younger son's wedding. He and his bride live on the West Coast, and they really aren't familiar with the cookie table.

(A little background, both my sons went to Pitt, my elder son lives there, and many of the guests were from the Pittsburgh area, PA, and the East Coast).

I baked approximately 1500 cookies, 18 different kinds, and shipped them. There was some breakage, but more than enough for the wedding and for the guests to bring home. A labor of love.

Im Garten mein Kuchen alle Jugern bringt. Fixed that you ya.

My sister calls long red traffic lights "coffee & cake lights"

Kaffeeklatsch ist fein

I live on the East Coast and I'm not familiar with the coffee table.

I mean cookie table.

Yes, I also lived on the East Coast from the late 80s through the early 2000s in upstate New York and went to many weddings and other shindigs...no cookie tables were present.

But it would have been a whole lot cooler if they were.

I can only repeat what posters upthread have said but also add this was a very suburban Jewish tradition when I was growing up in the New Jersey of the 1960s. If we didn't have my grandma's homemade rugelach or a babka from the local Jewish bakery we'd be happy to settle for an Entenmann's pecan or cheese Danish ring. Later on, Sara Lee's Brownies were also a favorite. We rarely had cakes with icing unless it was a birthday cake.

My dad also called the late afternoon event "Coffee And...."

Shop Rite sells their own version of those Entenmann's Danish rings and coffee cakes. I always have to force myself to keep moving.......

Sadly, about the only Entenmann's you can buy around here is their chocolate-covered doughnuts. When the brand first appeared there were coffee cakes, pecan rings, and all sorts of things. Now it's just doughnuts...

Entenmann's was so good in the early 90s. I'm not necessarily a sweets person, but Entenmann's definitely was addicting. Not good to have in your house without more than one person to help eat it.

R93 The banana cake with chocolate stripes on top of the frosting.

[quote]Lauren Bacall always had pot of High Point coffee brewing in case Ms. Leonard Bernstein or Yoko Ono dropped by at the Dakota.

"Yoko, here's a tip: too much caffeine can show on your face. But not with High Point! It's LIVELY!"

R84 that’s beautiful- what a lovely thing to do

This party needs lemon knots, I haven’t had one in years. We have an Italian bakery in Flyoverstan City that makes them, guess I just need to go.

Speaking of cookies, I've got a new one I'm going to make during the holidays: Rosemary-Lemon Shortbread Sandwich Cookies. It uses lemon curd.

My mom always kept an Entenmann’s or Sarah Lee in the freezer. When her witchy friends dropped by, she’d serve semi-frozen cake with Martinson coffee (blue can), cooked in the electric percolator. I’d be cowering in bed.

Most of the people I know now claim having caffeine after 11:00 am or so ruins their day, let alone having sugar or carbs even later in the day, if at all. it's hard to imagine this tradition having much of a place anymore. I've ordered coffee (caffeinated) while out with dinner with co-workers, and they've been aghast that I'll be functional the next day.

R99 Let me remand you that coffee is brewed, not cooked in a percolator. I love when a water / waitress brigs me coffee and says, "Sorry for the wait - this is freshly brewed". Makes the coffee taste even better.

r101 water can walk and talk?

R102 It's news to me. I typed in waiter but spell check changed it to 'water' so I guess so. Not going to argue with spell check.

PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT THAT CAAAAAAKE!

When did I break out in a rash?

Wednesday

When did I have that cake?

Tuesday.

Must have been the cake then

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAggggghhhhj!!!

Young Lady! I heard that!!.

A cup of coffee used to be about 6-8 ounces.

When women stayed home to raise the kids there was a lot more baking going on.

My mom both baked and bought cake, in the '60s-'70s, but I think she bought most of it at the local bakery. They didn't have the bakeries in supermarkets then (not where I was). The markets weren't that big. Entenmann's was a New York thing, then. We did have it later, around the '80s.

My mother never did this with her cronies, but she would stop and visit on the phone during the afternoon. Coffee was always interest. Still, we'd usually have a cake or a "kuchen" (more like a coffee cake) on the weekend. She occasionally made them from scratch.

Having people over for coffee and cake on the weekend was still a thing in the 70s and 80s, though.

The thread is about coffee and cake after dinner.

[quote] Most of the people I know now claim having caffeine after 11:00 am or so ruins their day, let alone having sugar or carbs even later in the day, if at all.

Who are your friends... the Olsen twins?

I don’t think this ever happened in my house except family dropping by specifically for dessert. We lived on the same block as my grandmother for many years so extended family was always popping in to her and/or us.

My grandmother always had an Entenmann’s box on the counter. My sister and I would go to her house after school until my mom came home from work and every once in a while she would let us have some with our tea. But if we ever asked, her answer would be, “no, that’s for company.”

R109: No it isn't. People noted how coffee & cake often was an afternoon thing. Different backgrounds. Different customs. I'm from the Midwest and coffee and cake in the evening was dessert. Inviting people over for coffee was a daytime thing.

R112 Go back and read OP's opening.

[quote] Coffee and Cake

[[quote] When you were younger, did people specifically invite people over for just coffee and cake after dinner? What happened to that?

R112 I fucked that up. OP wrote...

[quote] Coffee and Cake

[quote] When you were younger, did people specifically invite people over for just coffee and cake after dinner? What happened to that?

Ah mo cut you a biiig slass 'o lemon pie!

Entenmann's was so good in the early 70s Butter, eggs, chocolate.

R109 - you are correct about OPs original question, but it read to me that he was asking about something that he had heard of but was completely out of his lived experience. I took it to be a "I heard about this old custom, was it really a thing back then" type of thread.

Right from the start, most people responded that while sometimes people were invited over just for dessert - (often on a holiday after the big meal when other friends and family would come by for an extended dessert open house) - it was more often, in our 60s -- 80's lived experience, an afternoon mom thing - sometimes planned, sometimes impromptu. At that point the discussion expanded into also what was served - home baked, store bought, and regional variations - Pittsburg Cookie Tables at weddings, Entenmanns with included cutlery, etc.

Conversations, like the custom of "just dropping by" and being offered coffee and cake, evolve. It does seem that inviting people over ONLY in the evening, ONLY for coffee and cake, was not as common as the other situations, so perhaps the thread should have died out in the first 10 - 15 responses.

Sort of, R110. I was thinking of my co-workers, who are mainly women in their late 30s - 50s. They won't touch caffeine after lunch. But many of my friends, mostly in their 40s, have sworn off coffee after breakfast, for the most part, too. I have no problems with a cup of coffee in the evening with dessert if I'm out for dinner, but very few people at the table will order anything with caffeine then.

I can never remember guests being invited over or just stopping by for coffee and cake AFTER dinner. Seems very strange to me unless perhaps it was part of a big event meal like Christmas or Thanksgiving.

Then again, I'm Jewish.

At my house people came over for dinner all the time -we seldom had a formal dessert or people come by after the meal instead of for it.

When I was a kid I remember my parents going to movies, plays and sporting events with other couples then having them back to the house afterwards for coffee and dessert.

I don't know too many people who drink coffee after dinner anymore. Usually it's wine.

R117 Whatever. He said, "did people specifically invite people over for just coffee and cake after dinner?" That sounds pretty specific. Yeah, sure, my mother did go over other moms' houses, and they'd have coffee, and usually coffee cake, or donuts, or something. They weren't "specifically invited." It was more casual. I don't care if people talk about that, or anything else. I was just pointing out that you said OP never said it, when he did say it.

R123 - R117 here - I wasn't the one who "said the OP never said it" - I was just chiming into the discussion.

I would be interested in why you feel the need to monitor the direction of the thread. No snark intended, I'm seriously interested in this.

The coffee and layer caker was not my life experience. It was definitely a gal pal thing --coffee and strudel or crumb cake. Different ethnicities do it differently. No Diuncam Hines or Betty Crocker in my mother's or grandmother's house. Dessert was ice cream, fruit, Italian cookies and the occasional cheesecake.

Any chance we could bring this back? I love getting together with people over cake!

Yes, reminds me of adolescent years when we’d have holiday or Sunday dinners, my delightful grandmother would spend the day with us, and after dinner my dad would repair to his den to watch football on TV while my mother, grandmom and I would loll at the kitchen table enjoying coffee, cake, ice cream and candy as some old MGM or Warner Brothers classic film or another was tuned into on the little kitchen television set. Mary Moment: I know. 😍

Years ago I met a woman from Tennessee who had just married and moved to my city at the time (Seattle), and I asked her if she liked the city so far. She looked at me in astonishment and said, "Why, y'all don't have any CAKE!" By that she meant she couldn't find any cake in restaurants or coffee shops and she was baffled at the lack of it. Then I moved to Knoxville for two years for job related reasons and discovered you could, in fact, get cake in almost every restaurant and coffee shop--it was like an obsession down there. (Especially omnipresent down there: red velvet cake with white buttercream frosting.) I since have moved back to the Pacific NW, and I might miss the cakes down there had they just been better.

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco on company and Entenmann's.

What was the Entenmann cake DL was obsessed with maybe ten-fifteen years ago?

So true r129 and very funny.

that was great, r19. Thanks for linking that!

Thanks, R129 -That's what this whole thread is really all about! Exaggerated, of course, but pretty accurate nonetheless.

Saralee was excellent in its prime.

This thread IS "Lud and Marie Meet Dracula's Daughter," the 2025 version.