Last Monday was my grandson’s birthday. For Bryce’s party on Sunday, his father made both chocolate and white cupcakes with strawberry frosting. For the chocolate ones he used the tried and true recipe from Hershey’s can of cocoa.

For the plain cake, he used a recipe that’s been handed down through at least three generations. I don’t really know its origin. It is what my mother called a “stirred-up cake” because she could have it in the oven in less than five minutes. If she needed a quick dessert, the still warm cake from the oven would ready when we finished our main meal. It might be frosted, or be served with fresh or canned fruit, and it was always delicious.

My son displayed my mother’s recipe that I had given him. At the top of it written in Mom’s hand is the note “from my mother,” who, of course, was my grandmother and my son’s great grandmother. Bryce’s birthday cake came from his great, great grandmother’s recipe.

Bryce also carries the name of his great, great, great grandfather, who came from Scotland in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Andrew Dixon Bryce was born in 1844 and apparently came to the United States between the ages of 17, when he listed on Scotland’s 1861 census, and the age of 23 when he married Bryce’s great, great, great grandmother, Eunice from Broome County, New York.