Cue the angels singing

Vi Kronon’s 7-Up Cake
Our Recipes Second Edition Polish Women’s Civic Club, Inc. 1979

3 sticks oleo (margarine - I used Land O' Lakes because it had the most fat)
3 c. sugar
5 eggs
3 c. all-purpose flour, sifted two times after measuring
2 Tbsp. lemon extract
¾ cup 7-Up

Combine oleo and sugar in large bowl of mixer. Cream until lemon in color. Add eggs, one at a time. Beat well after each addition. Add flour. Continue to beat well. Add lemon extract. Fold in 7-Up. Pour into oiled and floured 10-inch tube pan. Bake 350 degrees for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Cool well before serving. Best served sliced in thin slices. (I think nice thick slices are pretty great myself!) Freezes well.
_____________________________

So I bought the margarine and 7-Up to make this cake and then I came home and saw that it called for lemon extract. Why that didn't stick out to me, since I never use lemon extract, I don't know. I had lemons but I wanted to follow this recipe exactly so I checked the Dollar General (it's closer than the grocery store). No lemon extract. Off to the grocery store. Wait! My tire is flat. Off to get air in my tire. Then to the grocery store for the lemon extract - over $4 for one bottle, and you need the entire bottle! Oh well, I've come this far. Home to make the cake. Hey, where's all my sugar? I don't have 3 cups of sugar. Back to Dollar General. Home to make the cake. Sniff. Sniff. What's burning? Why are there flames in my oven? Ooops! Should have put foil around the pan (it has a removable bottom like a springform pan and it leaked a little). I opened the oven so many times to clean that up (didn't want a smoked cake) that I didn't think it would rise properly.

Was it worth all that? YES! YES! OMG YES! One of the best things I've ever made. It was my dream pound cake. Dense, moist, with the most incredible crust. Every piece I ate (and I ate many) brought me great joy. Recipes like this are the reason I keep cooking and baking.

I bought this cookbook off of eBay as sort of a Christmas present to myself back in December (I say 'sort of' because I was going to wrap it up and wait until Christmas to look in it but I couldn't wait). I've been looking for Polish recipes like I grew up with, not the recipes you find in Polish cookbooks, and I figured out my best bet was looking for fundraiser type books in areas with a lot of Polish people or from Polish organizations. There aren't a lot of Polish recipes in this book but enough to make it worth it.