Sherry Dike's Famous Oatmeal Cake

My family has always been very diverse when it came to making meals. One side of my family is hispanic and mainly eats hispanic foods, and the other side is white and makes everything and anything homemade from scratch. I'm not trying to say that my hispanic family doesn't make anything from scratch, just that the other side makes homemade country style cooking. I remember going to visit my grandparents on the ranch once or twice a month and my grandma would always make the best meals in the world, the kind that your mouth just waters at the smell of. This is where my love of sweets came in to play, she made all her desserts by hand without a recipe.

My favorite dish has come to be her famous Oatmeal cake, and oh my goodness was this cake amazing. It is so rich, moist, and delectable that I have never understood how it can be so good. I mean its not like any cake you can buy from the store, or the box you make at home, it is completely and totally homemade. The cake literally melts in your mouth and is surrounded by a delicious caramel type frosting. It has three layers, with the frosting covering every layer; mmm.... just thinking about it makes my mouth water.

As I grew up, I would ask her to make this cake every year for my birthday, and that became the day I looked forward to. I recently just asked her for the recipe since I haven't seen her since I was about sixteen, which would be about four years now and I was suprised when I saw the recipe. Generally cakes have flour, but she doesn't use any flour, baking soda, or powder at all. This really suprised me because I didn't understand how the cake would rise without one of these ingredients. I guess its just a magically delicious cake that she sprang upon one day in the kitchen when she was trying to come up with a new dessert recipe. I find it very interesting that the majority of her recipes are Dike traditions that her and my grandpa came up with. I guess you don't have to have a recipe for everything, accidents can turn into delicious treats.

Throughout the years, I have come to enjoy home cooking and home style foods rather than eating out. If theres a restaurant that serves this, I'm more likely to go there rather than a place I know serves the majority of their food from frozen. If I could share this recipe with everyone I would, simply because I believe everyone should get the chance to try my Grandma Sherry's oatmeal cake, but its a family secret that I have been told I can't share.