A few years ago, Janet Plum of Kingsville wrote wanting help locating the recipe for a favorite chocolate cake from her childhood; it was made by a German bakery in downtown Baltimore called Doebereiner’s in the 1940s and 50s.

At the time of her original request, in September 2014, I never heard from anyone about the recipe. Then, as sometimes happens with this column, I received a letter out of nowhere recently from Audrey Crooks of Reisterstown. She had located her copy of the recipe she thought was likely the one that Plum was in search of. It had been given to Crooks some years ago by her former next-door neighbor, Peggy Sindall, who is the daughter of Doebereiner’s owner George Doebereiner.

In a column in The Baltimore Sun in 2003, Jacques Kelly reminisced about weekly visits with his family to George Doebereiner’s bakery and ice cream parlor located at 29 E. North Ave. The sweet shop was well known for what many people, Kelly included, swore were the finest sweets Baltimoreans ever hauled home on the No. 13 North Avenue streetcar. According to Kelly, the bakery closed sometime around 1953. But clearly, memories of the wonderful baked goods sold there live on for many.

This recipe is for an old-fashioned and straightforward three-layer chocolate cake. Perhaps the secret to the cake’s deliciousness was the quality of the ingredients and the care with which it was made at the Doebereiner bakery. Sadly, almost all of these neighborhood bakeries are now gone, along with most of the recipes that made them so special. It’s good to know that every once in a while, an old recipe turns up again so we can try to re-create some tasty memories.

Requests

Bonnie Engelskirch, who grew up in Baltimore and now lives in Georgetown, Del., is looking for the recipe for the Federal Hill cake made famous by Muhly’s Bakery on Charles Street in Baltimore. The bakery is closed now, but she was hoping someone might have the recipe to share with her.

Mary Kelly of Chase is in search of the recipe for a chocolate devil’s food cake that was on the jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise many years ago.

If you are looking for a recipe or can answer a request, write to Julie Rothman, Recipe Finder, The Baltimore Sun, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore 21278 or email baltsunrecipefinder@gmail.com. If you send in more than one recipe, please put each on a separate piece of paper and be sure to include your name, address and daytime phone number. Important: Name and hometown must accompany recipes in order to be published. Please list the ingredients in order of use, and note the number of servings each recipe makes. Please type or print contributions.