Taking the Cake

arian O’Brien was St. Louis’ answer to Julia Child, on KMOX. She didn’t cook fancy stuff like Child, though. As the food writer for the she maintained regular correspondence with readers, who asked her for accessible, budget-conscious Midwestern recipes, such as that perfect bundt cake she’d just popped out of a glass mold in the photo above. In spring she started her column with a story about an avid reader who brought her “a huge pot of old-fashioned lilacs.” Placed on her desk in the busy newsroom, even the grouchy people stopped by to take a sniff, she noted. O’Brien then shifted to a preview of that week’s episode of freezing fruit for pies and making crumb toppings for coffee cakes. By the end of her column, she shifted back to a more poetic mode: “More next week about spring—more about a spring tea more about lilacs—who was it that said life was dull?”