It was serendipity.

Charlie Makinney e-mailed from his home in Portland, Ore., to request a recipe from his memories of growing up in the Islands. At lu'au in those days, he recalled, it was common to see plates of homemade cake slices on the tables. "Frequent favorites were a tomato sauce cake with a sort of buttercream frosting with mashed peaches in it. The other frequent fave was prune cake with a similar buttercream with mashed prunes in it." Charlie found a good prune cake recipe during a recent visit to the Parker Ranch boutique, but the frosting that came with it didn't taste like his memories.

It just so happens that, in researching The Advertiser's 150th anniversary cookbook, I had been looking over a prune cake recipe from a 1978 Maili Yardley column, considering it for inclusion in the book because prune desserts were once very, very popular (and a favorite of my mom).

Maili — whom I consider to be the source of all wisdom on such things as heirloom cake recipes — said Seven-Minute Icing is the right partner for a prune cake. Furthermore, the prune cake she referred to was one that came from Parker Ranch territory.

She got it from Eva Kealamakia, who won a blue ribbon with it in the baking division of a fair in Kamuela that year. The cake is originally from Kealamakia's mother, Maryann Lincoln Lindsey, who used to bake her cakes in a kerosene stove and sometimes made as many as 20 cakes at a time for a party!

Maili didn't offer a recipe for Seven-Minute Icing, this being the era when everyone knew what that was. But I'd seen a good one in earlier research, and sure enough, I found it in a 1938 column by home economist Pauline K. Edwards in The Advertiser. (Why is it I can remember every recipe that ever crossed my desk but can't find my car keys half the time?) Seven-Minute Icing is made by whipping a sugar and egg white mixture in a double boiler for seven minutes or so (thus the name). It makes a shiny, fine-textured frosting that is a good foil for the moist, fruit-filled cake.

I made the cake — but with a different icing — when I was testing recipes for the book, and everyone in the office commented favorably. (However, I ran out of room, so it's not going to be in the book. Be sure to save the recipe if you want it for your files.) I think the prune cake works much better with the Seven-Minute Icing than with butter icing, just as Maili predicted.

Find recipes for the cake and icing inside this section.

If you've got more requests, I'll be hopping off to Merrie Monarch later this month, but I'll be fitting some food research around my hula writing. Leave a message at 535-2412 or wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com. (And, please, when requesting a recipe, be very descriptive — anything you remember can help in my search.)

Send recipes and queries to Wanda A. Adams, Food Editor, Honolulu Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802. Fax: 525-8055. E-mail: wadams@honoluluadvertiser.com.

For more information about our 150th anniversary cookbook, call 535-8189 (message phone; your call will be returned). You can pre-order the cookbook online.