That's Good Eatin' Two

My mother came from the Susquehannah Valley in northern Pennsylvania, where the woods and farmlands hosted numerous hickory trees. No visit south in my childhood was complete without a brown paper bag full of hickory nuts to take back home. As the youngest and hungriest, it was my job to crack the small and fiendishly hard nuts and extract the tiny but savory meats for family baking. Two hours with a hammer and a nut pick on the back porch would yield enough for a cake, so long as I didn't eat them as fast as I cracked them. The usual recipe was a chocolate layer cake with hickory nut filling between the layers, and peanut butter frosting decorated with the few nut halves that came out of the shell intact. My old friend Allie, hearing of my weakness for the nut, went on a cracking expedition of his own, and yesterday delivered a hickory nut and raisin bar that tasted exactly like July 1959. Bless you Allie.

FYI: Last week's call-out for signature North Country dishes netted some toothsome results. Check out the recipes and comments.