My first cookbook · Coming this spring
Cakes for the Potluck Table
Sixty cakes that never come home leftover. The church cookbook classics, the poke cakes and dump cakes, and the old-fashioned ones your grandmother had memorized.
Get on the list and I’ll send you six of them right now, laid out just like the pages of the book.
You’ll hear about the book before anybody else, and get the best price it will ever carry. No spam. Just cake.
What you get today
Six of the most-requested cakes in the book.
Printed clean and laid out like real cookbook pages. No ads, no popups, no scrolling with frosting on your hands.
One recipe from each of the six chapters, so you get the range.
- Old-Fashioned Chocolate Cola Cake — a can of cola in the batter, marshmallows in the icing
- Hummingbird Cake — the Southern classic, banana and pineapple
- Ugly Duckling Cake — fruit cocktail and warm coconut topping, better than its name
- Easy Carrot Cake — stacked tall with cream cheese buttercream
- Pineapple Sunshine Cake — cool, bright, and better the next day
- Apple Snickerdoodle Dump Cake — cinnamon-sugar crumble, five minutes of work
Where it started
It started at a cake walk.
Our church used to hold them. If you didn’t grow up with one, a cake walk works a lot like musical chairs. The ladies of the church baked cakes and lined them up on a long table at the front of the basement. Numbers were taped to the floor in a big circle, and we’d walk around them while the music played. When it stopped, somebody’s number got called, and that lucky person went up and picked out a whole cake to carry home.
One year I came home with five of them. I felt like the luckiest girl in town.
After that I was hooked. I went to every cake walk I could find, at our church and just about every other one around. But it was never only about the cakes. It was the covered dishes carried in still warm, and the recipes that got passed around a table until everybody had a copy in their own handwriting.
This book is my way of keeping those going.
What’s inside
Sixty cakes, six chapters.
Every one made with ingredients from any grocery store, in a pan you already own. Some from scratch, some starting with a boxed mix and ending up somewhere a whole lot better.
- Church Supper & Potluck Favorites — Texas Sheet Cake, Kentucky Butter Cake, Gooey Butter Cake
- Southern Cakes Worth Saving — Hummingbird Cake, Preacher Cake, Butter Pecan Cake
- Vintage Cakes with Stories to Tell — Watergate Cake, Shoofly Cake, Pea Pickin’ Cake, Ugly Duckling Cake
- Family Favorites & Celebration Cakes — Red Velvet with Ermine Frosting, Granny Cake, Pink Lemonade Cake
- Poke Cakes & Icebox Favorites — Lemon Lush, Cherry Yum Yum, Banana Pudding Poke Cake
- Dump Cakes — Pineapple, Pumpkin, Pecan Pie, Cherry
There’s a page in the front to put your name in, and pages in the back to write in your own. This is the kind of book that gets handed down.
A fair question
Most of these are on the blog. Here’s why I made a book anyway.
Mostly because you kept asking for it. Enough of you wanted these recipes somewhere other than a screen that I finally sat down and made the book.
A book stays open on the counter while your hands are covered in buttercream. A phone screen goes dark and asks for your passcode. The binding is concealed wire, which is the part I fussed over most. It opens completely flat and stays where you put it, and it still has a real printed spine so it looks like a book on the shelf instead of a workbook.
Sixty cakes in one place, sorted so you can find the right one for a potluck, a birthday, or a Tuesday that needs something. No searching, no ads, no ten-minute scroll.
My hope is that this one ends up splattered and dog-eared with somebody else’s handwriting in the margins, the way the good ones always do.
Questions
The short answers.
When does it come out?
Spring 2027. Everyone on this list hears the date first.
What does it cost?
I’ll announce pricing when pre-orders open. The list gets the lowest price the book will ever carry.
Is it a real printed book?
Yes. Full color throughout, 7.5 by 9.75 inches, with a concealed wire binding so it lies completely flat while you cook.
What happens after I sign up?
The six recipes land in your inbox right away. After that you’ll hear from me a handful of times between now and spring, mostly about cake.
Six cakes now, sixty this spring
Send me the six cakes.
Get the sampler and I’ll let you know the minute the book is ready.
No spam. Just cake.