My Maternal Grandmother was called Mama Bennie by all her grands and great-grands.  She was the mother of fourteen children, 7 boys and 7 girls.  My mother is her third daughter, is her name sake, and is her 9th child.  My mother has 6 older brothers and they were not used to little sisters.  They nicknamed her baby sister. She is still called sis by her siblings.

I spent a lot of time with my grandparents growing up.  We lived on a dairy farm until I was in the third grade.  My parents purchased two acres from my grandfather and built a house closer to my grandparents.  My grandfather owned a farm but once he retired from the railroad he sold the family land's and home and bought a smaller home and some land outside of town.

Now to the subject of this story. My Mama Bennie was good at cooking, baking, sewing, quilting, canning, and things that housewives did back in the day. She was a little short lady maybe five feet at the most with long gray braids and gray eyes. Some of my cousins and siblings thought of her as being mean. I didn't see her that way.  She was stern but caring. She was my best friend when I was growing up. She had lots of antique cherry furniture and we couldn't play in the house at all. In my Mama Bennie's kitchen stood a pie safe that seemed to always have a pineapple cake inside.  I would sit and stare at that cake, drooling I am sure. If all the children were there she didn't cut it, only on special occasions did we all get a slice.  If I spent the night I always got a slice and a bottle of her favorite NuGrape soda pop. While the other children wanted to play outside I washed her dishes and swept her floors, whatever she needed or wanted me to do and I always got some of her good cakes. The pineapple is the one I still love the most and is the best pineapple cake I have ever tasted. Over the years I have tried to master her cake. In memory of my dear sweet Mama Bennie I am going to enter my version of her cake in the Paula Deen's Roundup recipe contest.  I have two months to perfect my cake. I am going to bake a plain butter cake with pineapple filling or frosting .  She also had meringue on hers so I will incorporate that in it some way. I am going to type up a form, invite my friends and mother's sisters that live here over for lunch and serve it and let them rate it.  Wish me luck my GH friends.