In the Kitchen with: Betty Peters
Family’s unforgettable cake features toasted marshmallows baked into sugar and nut topping
Coffee cake meets a camping trip in this creatively topped treat, concocted more than 40 years ago by a beloved stepmother.
Maxine Snow had dreamed of altering her recipe and entering it in the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest, but “she never was able to make the conversion” from Bisquick baking mix to Pillsbury flour.
So, “My father ate a lot of mistakes,” said Betty Peters, whose dad married Maxine in the late 1960s. “She loved to bake. She had just made up the recipe during the short time she was married to him.”
Maxine and Wally Snow were married for about four years before his death in 1973. A year or two after that, Peters went through her stepmother’s recipe collection to look for the favorite recipe.
“We knew about this cake because she made it and we all liked it,” she said. “It is just the most interesting cake.”
Four decades later, Peters – now 68 and a mother and grandmother – still makes Crater Cake a couple of times each year. The name comes from the toasted marshmallows which puff up during baking then quickly collapse, creating a kind of moonscape on the surface of the coffee cake.
“When the cold air hits them, all of the marshmallows start contracting. They just kind of cave in on themselves,” Peters said.
Crater Cake puts a creative twist on the topping of a basic Bisquick-batter cake, and it’s super-easy. That’s one reason Peters likes it.
It also holds many memories.
“My stepmother was one very talented woman,” Peters wrote in her “In the Kitchen with … ” submission. “Besides being a music teacher, she could knit, crochet, tat, paint and loved to cook and experiment in the kitchen … ”
Maxine Snow taught organ and accordion lessons in Tacoma before marrying Betty’s father, who lived in Seattle. After he died, she “took off in her trailer” to travel around the country.
“She was just a wonderful lady,” Peters said. “She always looked on the bright side. She was somebody who was never afraid to try something. She would’ve just been tickled to death” to see her recipe shared in The Spokesman-Review Food section.
“It’s a nice complement to coffee, rather than a cake you would frost,” said Peters, a retired receptionist who worked at Group Health Cooperative in Seattle and Spokane.
She and her husband, Jim Peters, 77, moved from Seattle to Valley, where they built a home in 1992. It sits about 8 miles north of Loon Lake and 8 miles south of Chewelah, overlooking Jump Off Joe Lake.
Between the two of them – theirs is a second marriage for both – they have two adult sons and 11 grandchildren. But it’s just her and him at home. So, “I don’t do a lot of baking for the two of us,” Peters said. “We can’t eat it fast enough.”
When she does make Crater Cake, she enjoys it most in the evening after dinner with a cup of tea or with coffee after lunch.
Her husband gives it a good review, too. “The flavor is one of the best. It’s moist. It’s not too sweet,” he said.
But he has a suggestion that would make it more s’mores-like: “A little string of melted chocolate on top would be nice.”
Crater Cake
From Betty Peters of Valley, Washington
Batter:
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups Bisquick
Topping:
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup brown sugar
8 marshmallows, each cut in half
Grease and flour a 9-by-9-inch pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Combine first three wet ingredients in a medium mixing bowl, then add sugar and Bisquick, mixing until smooth and no lumps are visible. Pour batter into the prepared pan.
Combine nuts and brown sugar in a small mixing bowl, then sprinkle evenly over batter. Place marshmallow halves on top, evenly spaced in four rows of four.
Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Note: Greasing a knife with butter makes it easier to cut the marshmallows in half. Betty Peters uses Crisco to grease the baking pan. The cake will also work in an 8-by-8-inch pan, too, but “watch your baking to make sure you don’t over-bake it,” she said.