My mother loved to cook but with four children she found herself barely able to manage more than a few tried and true go-to recipes a week. To cut corners and save time, she would clip magazine and newspaper recipes to tape into her recipe notebooks.

Here I am…I promised to cook her very own recipes, which are handwritten on 6 x 4 index cards and taped into the same notebook. Today, though I thought I would try one of those clipped recipes because I happened to have all the ingredients on hand.

Certain recipes can be a huge deal, like my mother’s plum pudding, or her from-scratch sponge cake. Then, there is the classic “dump” cake. I’ve tried a multitude of dump cake recipes over the years. This one, as you can see it is in the tiniest print possible, is the best one by far.

The ingredients are simple:

2 cups applesauce (I used unsweetened)

a 16 oz. can of crushed pineapple

1 butter recipe box cake mix

1 CUP of melted butter (yes, that’s two sticks…don’t skimp. This isn’t diet food!)

1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Coat a 13 x 9 baking dish (I used a glass one) with oil spray (Pam). Preheat the oven to 350 degree (F.) Dump the applesauce into the baking dish, spread. Dump the pineapple from the can (don’t drain) onto the applesauce. Sprinkle the dry cake mix over the fruit. Pour the melted butter evenly over the top. DO NOT MIX any of it. Sprinkle with chopped nuts (I used roasted pecans.) Bake for 1 hour. Your house will smell lovely.

Spreading the butter across the dry cake mix is the most important move. When it comes out of the oven, don’t be put off with the spots of dry cake mix. But it’s for this reason you must spread the butter over as much of it as possible. When you serve it, it will be like cobbler, so a scoop of ice cream or even a bit of liquid heavy whipping cream drizzled over won’t go amiss.

Oh my! It will impress the family! Enjoy!