Sweets: A Collection of Soul Food Desserts and Memories

In this sweetly sentimental cookbook, Pinner shares""plain old down-home confections"" and her childhood memories of the lively women who created them: Mama,""My My"" (her grandmother),""Aints"" Lula and Pinky,""Cud'n"" Flossie and more. In addition to the standard pound cakes, fruit cobblers and cookies of most home-baking books, she relates some truly original recipes, like Cud'n Bertise's Mashed Potato Fudge and Cud'n Merle's Mississippi Bean Fudge, which""doesn't taste one bit like beans,"" she assures. The exhaustive section on pies includes Egg Pie, Old-Fashioned Sugar Pie, Cantaloupe Pie, Butter Bean Pie, White Potato Pie and others, proving that one can make a pie out of just about anything--or even a Little of Nothing (the name for a pie that calls for only milk, sugar, flour, vanilla, butter and cinnamon, whose recipe came from Miss Nellie, the only white woman among Pinner's pantheon of cooks). The recipes and story snippets are punctuated with snapshots of family gatherings in small-town Michigan and Pinner's concoctions, making this a nice, nostalgic collection of desserts.