The Bake Shop Ghost

This is the time of year of giving and of bestowing acts of love and kindness on those around us. I recently discovered The Bake Shop Ghost, by Jacqueline K. Ogburn. This delicious book reminds us that it is the little acts that can often mean the most.

Miss Cora Lee Merriweather ran the best bake shop around, but she seemed to have poured all of her sweetness into her cakes for she never smiled and instead seemed to have the pucker of one who had just eaten a sour lemon. When she died, she had no family to leave her bake shop to.

People tried to take over her shop, but her ghost remained and ran each of them out of town. Years pass and Annie Washington comes to take over the shop. After cleaning the place up and making it ready for business she gets down to the business of baking. Miss Cora Lee of course makes an appearance, but Annie is not afraid of a ghost.

The two battle it out all night long until Annie finally cries enough! She asks Cora Lee what she can do so that Cora will allow her to work in peace. Cora has one request, which sounds simple enough, but has a deeper meaning. “Make me a cake so rich and so sweet, it will fill me up and bring tears to my eyes. A cake like one I might have baked, but that no one ever made for me.”

That seemed like an easy enough task for Annie and for the first time in years, the shop was full of warm buttery goodness. Annie bakes up dessert after dessert but none of them “bring tears” to Miss Cora’s eyes. After a month, Annie has run out of ideas and heads to the local library for inspiration. When she finds a section on Miss Cora Lee and the Merriweather Bake Shop, she realizes exactly what kind of cake she needs to make. When she shows it to Cora, her eyes are brimming before she even takes a bite. It was a birthday cake. Annie had learned that it was Cora’s 100th birthday. Not only that, since Miss Cora had been an orphan, there had never been anyone who celebrated her. It wasn’t the perfect cake Cora wanted, she wanted the love that often comes when people buy a cake for someone else.

Cora tells Annie that since she made the perfect cake that she would keep her end of the bargain and leave Annie in peace. But in the time that Annie had been making cakes for the ghost, the two had struck up quite a friendship and Annie had come to appreciate and respect the ghost’s judgement. Rather than wanting Cora to leave her alone in the kitchen, she wanted her to stay on as her partner.