Behold the power of the Peanut Butter Snacker.
Everything changed - if only for a moment - when Norris Angle popped a honey-colored square, made from his late grandmother's recipe, into his mouth. Without warning, the ultra-sweet peanut flavor sent him back to Exmore on the Eastern Shore, to Ruth Beach's white clapboard house, the one with the sloping back porch and broken front door handle, the one without running water and the place where he spent countless days at the kitchen counter stirring batters, licking wooden spoons and absorbing his grandma's talent for baking.
"That's the first time I've tasted that in 30, 40 years," said Angle, 49, sounding a tiny bit surprised. "It tastes like a memory."
The text of that memory, part of a sheaf of splattered recipes in Ruth Beach's slanted script, was splayed across Angle's brand-new kitchen counter. His late mother's mighty, black KitchenAid mixer stood nearby, next to his fancy stainless-steel stove.
Here, in the newly renovated kitchen that Angle shares with his partner, Mike Vario, the old and the new are bound tightly, like a rope of DNA.
By day, Angle works as a florist. But we found this month's Everyday Chef at a Parrot Head Club of Tidewater meeting where Angle won first place for his interpretation of a Jimmy Buffett song - a diorama presentation that featured a bed, big-screen TV and a batch of mini chocolate cheesecakes.
That recipe didn't come from his grandma, but Angle says her spirit was mixed into the sweets.
"This was one of her favorites," he said, using spatula to press through a stiff mass of Hummingbird Cake batter.
Angle spent much of his boyhood in the Exmore house living with his grandmother and mother. The trio favored each other so much that a friend once compared them to nesting Russian dolls. To Angle, they seemed more like friends than elders.
To prepare for his cooking close-up, Angle had already made his grandma's Peanut Butter Snackers and her version of Better Than Sex Cake, a ring of sin with a dense, dark interior shot through with molten chocolate.
Ruth Beach never changed the name of that cake to shield her grandson's ears, and she loved a dirty joke.
"Look at her," he said, nodding toward the counter and a photocopied portrait of a woman wearing cat-eye glasses. "Doesn't she look like she'd bite you? She was a rough old thing."
Angle remembers helping her bake four, five, even six cakes in a single day - fundraiser confections for the VFW post - and the way she always wiped her hands on her apron until it was covered in batter and flour.
Hummingbird Cake, made with bananas, pineapples and pecans, is a staple at Southern funerals and church socials. It's supposed to be light, but the batter in Angle's bowl made that outcome seem doubtful... until he dumped in a can of undrained pineapple and frozen, ripe bananas.
"Freezing makes them mush up and easier to mush in," he said, mashing the fruit into the batter.
"Don't do this in a mixer," he added. "It makes it heavy."
He ladled equal amounts into three cake pans - one from his grandma - and slid them into the oven.
While the cakes baked, Angle brought out another trove of handwritten recipes, this one from his aunt, Charlene Smith, who lives up the shore in Craddockville. Neatly penned pages preserved the flavors of his childhood: sausage gravy, stewed tomatoes, cinnamon rolls, stuffed celery and strawberry-rhubarb pie, the one sitting on the sideboard next to the Better Than Sex Cake and the Peanut Butter Snackers.
While the cakes cooled, Angle dumped butter, cream cheese and confectioners' sugar into his mother's mixer. He then spread thick, snowy layers between the cooled discs, and sprinkled each with chopped pecans.
When he finished, he took a step back to survey his work.
"She's a little lopsided," he said. "But she'll eat good."
Lorraine Eaton, 757-446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com
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Recipe
Peanut Butter Snackers
Yield: 16 squares
- 1/2 cup Karo Light Corn Syrup (not Lite)
- 1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
- 1/2 cup peanut butter
- 3 cups Rice Chex or Corn Chex cereal
- 1/2 cup cocktail peanuts
Grease an 8-by-8-inch baking pan.
Combine syrup and sugar in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently, until mixture just comes to a boil. Remove from heat. Stir in peanut butter until completely mixed. Stir in Chex and peanuts until evenly coated.
Gently press mixture into pan. Cool and cut into squares.
Source: Norris Angle's grandmother, Ruth Beach
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Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie
Yield: 1 pie
- 1 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
- 2 1/2 cups sliced strawberries
- 2 1/2 cups sliced rhubarb
FOR THE TOPPING:
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
- 2 teaspoons sugar
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Mix sugar, cornstarch and nutmeg together. Fold in strawberries and rhubarb. Allow mixture to rest for 15 minutes.
Pour into unbaked pie crust.
Bake for 15 minutes at 425 degrees; reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for an additional 30 minutes.
Brush the top of the baked pie with butter and sprinkle with sugar.
Source: Norris Angle's aunt, Charlene Smith
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Better Than Sex Cake
Yield: 1 Bundt cake
- 1 box German chocolate cake mix (or other chocolate cake mix)
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1 large package instant vanilla pudding mix
- 4 eggs
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 1/2 cup water
- 6 ounces chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a Bundt pan.
Add all the ingredients except the chocolate chips and beat at medium speed for 2 minutes. Fold in chocolate chips.
Bake for 45 to 50 minutes. Allow to cool before removing from pan.
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Icing for Better Than Sex Cake
- 1/2 cup whipping cream 1 cup chocolate chips
Place cream and chips in a small pot over medium heat and stir until smooth. While warm, drizzle over the top of cooled Bundt cake.
Source: Norris Angle's grandmother, Ruth Beach
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Ruth Beach's Hummingbird Cake
Serves: 10 to 12
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 1 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
- 1 8-ounce can crushed pineapple
- 1 cup chopped pecans
- 2 cups bananas
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Grease and flour three 9-inch cake pans.
Combine first five ingredients in large mixing bowl. Add eggs and oil, stirring until dry ingredients are moist. Do not beat.
Stir in vanilla, pineapple, pecans and banana.
Pour equal amounts of batter into the three cake pans. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in the pan. Then remove and cool completely.
Source: Norris Angle's grandmother, Ruth Beach
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Icing for Hummingbird Cake
Yield: Enough to frost a three-layer cake
- 8 ounces cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
- 1 16-ounce package powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans, divided
Mix cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add sugar and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy.
Frost first layer of cake and sprinkle with 1?3 of the pecans. Repeat with remaining two layers.
Source: Norris Angle's grandmother, Ruth Beach