Weston says her rum-cake tradition has run its course

The letter begins:

It is with mixed emotions that I pen this letter. After 46 years of celebrating an excellent family tradition, the Weston Caking Legacy has come to an end.

The writer is Claudette Weston, a local businesswoman, tireless volunteer to charities and unofficial queen of holiday rum cakes in these parts.

More than 600 people will not get Weston's famous rum cake this year. And considering that this cake begs to be shared -- if only in the interest of sobriety -- perhaps thousands of people will not taste this rich, moist and heady holiday treat.

Weston is the owner of Weston & Associates, which plans group meeting and events and sells promotional products to companies. She also serves on several state and local boards, including Consumer Credit Counseling Services, Partnership for a Drug-Free North Carolina and N.C. Clean Water Management Trust Fund. Earlier this year, she won a community-service award from the Coalition for Drug Abuse Prevention for her volunteer work. She gives awards, too -- $10,000 a year to a nonprofit organization through the Joel A. Weston Jr. Memorial Award Endowment Fund, established in honor of her husband, who died in 1984.

Between her business contacts, volunteer work and her infectious good humor, Weston has made many friends. And for years, beginning in 1962 when she was a young wife and mother, people have come to count on Weston to express her gratitude for their friendship -- and sometimes their business -- with a rum cake during the holidays.

After reading the letter, I first thought that perhaps Weston, 71, was not well.

But she assured me that she's in good health.

Her decision, she said, has more to do with quitting while she's on top. "I would have weeks when I would say, ‘I can't do this anymore,'" she said. "This was the time to stop before I dreaded it, before it stopped being fun."

In a way, Weston's tradition became a victim of its success. In 1962, she made a few cakes for the folks in her husband's office. "Then it was like, I'll make one for Dr. so-and-so, and then his assistant, and then it just kept expanding."

From the weekend after Thanksgiving until about mid-December, Weston would bake rum cakes nearly nonstop. She had help from her eldest son, Joel, and from friends Mona and Jack Adams, and often other friends and family members. Even so, some days would find her baking from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Between baking, shipping and hand deliveries, the cakes consumed four weeks of Weston's life each year. The project kept her so busy that she hasn't cooked Thanksgiving dinner in about five years -- a situation she is rectifying this year.

If it's hard to wrap your mind around 600 cakes, consider that she baked only four at time. And consider her supplies, based on my calculations from her recipe: 600 boxes of cake mix, 200 dozen eggs, 50 (48-ounce) bottles of vegetable oil, 150 pounds of butter, 300 pounds of sugar, 150 pounds of pecans and 37½ gallons of rum.

The change will leave a big void in her holiday season. "It's going to be really weird," she said. "It's already weird that I'm not making lists, I'm not ordering rum."

Weston said she's especially going to miss the fun of having her children, grandchildren and friends spend so much time together as they churned out cake after cake.

And, she said, "I think I'm going to miss the smell -- that warm, fuzzy smell that fills the house."

Weston said she was overwhelmed by the letters and e-mails of people expressing their thanks for the many cakes she had given them over the years.

At the same time, she said, people were disappointed that they wouldn't get their rum cake. "One (letter) was a suicide watch," she said with a laugh, from a friend pretending to be so distraught over the lack of a rum cake.

The story does have a happy ending. Because Weston won't be shelling out for cake supplies this year, she is donating an equivalent amount to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest North Carolina in honor of a longtime friend, Nan Griswold, who recently resigned as the food bank's executive director after 26 years.

Weston won't say how much that is, but the costs of all those ingredients is significant.

Weston's letter encourages her many friends to make a similar donation.

"That's a big thing. Every member of my family is a giver," Weston said. "I wanted to do something. And I know the food bank can use the help, so this is a good thing."

Weston is starting a new tradition. She plans to make a similar donation every holiday season to different charities that help feed the hungry and less fortunate.

Along with the letter, Weston included the recipe and a copy of my 2005 story about her cakes. She ended the letter by saying, "Perhaps you might bake a cake and surprise a friend or colleague with a gift of love this holiday season."

I have put Weston's recipe in the Winston-Salem Journal's Recipe Database at www.journalnow.com so that others can carry on the tradition that Weston nurtured for so many years.

Despite her business and volunteer work, Weston will have a lot of extra time on her hands in the next four weeks.

What's she going to do with all that free time?

"I don't know," she said. "Do you need some help?"