Pecan Cream Cheese Pound Cake: When St. Expedite Wants a Little Better Than Sara Lee

Tradition has it that St. Expedite loves his Sara Lee pound cake. Some devotees will even say he prefers it to homemade pound cake. I don’t know about all that. But I do know a few things.

One, you should try to be as specific as possible when working with St. Expedite.

Two, you should give him your agreed-upon offerings when you see specific movement congruent with your petition. You can’t always get *everything* you want all the time in a hurry – recognize that he did work for you and acknowledge what he was able to do. He’s not a surly teenager whose allowance needs withholding until he gets a work ethic and moves out of your basement. Give him his damn flowers.

Three, he is not gonna get mad if you give him a homemade pound cake instead of that tasteless, pale yellow brick of stuff you can buy at the gas station. Plus you can impress the currently-living and not-yet-sainted with this pound cake. This is a family recipe from my mother’s side of the family.

1 1/2 cups butter
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 cups sugar
6 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 cups cake flour divided
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 325. Lightly grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan. In a large mixing bowl, mix cream cheese, butter, and sugar until fluffy (about 5 minutes). Add eggs one at a time, beating between each. Add vanilla and almond extracts. Mix. Reserve 1/4 cup flour; dredge pecans in it. Add remaining flour a little at a time, beating on low speed. Fold in pecans.

Pour batter into pan and bake 1 1/2 hours or until cake begins to come away from the sides of the pan. Let cool in pan before removing cake.

Feast of St. Expedite

St. Expedite’s feast day is the 19th of April, and I set lights and began work on his altar for the community altar work last night.

But there are still spots left if you’d like to jump in – you can find out more at Seraphin Station.

Saint of the Month Box

Finally, St. Expedite is the saint for this month’s Saint of the Month box.

Standard box includes, at a minimum, a bottle of oil, a candle, a holy card or mini prayer booklet, brief history and recommendations for working with the saint or spirit, and a charm, medal, or curio.

Deluxe box includes, at a minimum, a bottle of oil, a fixed, blessed, dressed, and decorated vigil candle, a holy card or mini prayer booklet, brief history and recommendations for working with the saint or spirit, and a handmade chaplet, rosary, or necklace.

Learn more or order now at Seraphin Station.

More St. Expedite resources in the education section’s index of rootwork topics.

Saint of the Month: St. Martin of Tours / San Martin Caballero

Louis Galloche. “A Scene From the Life of St. Martin.” 1737. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Image Library. Public domain.

November’s saint for the Saint of the Month Box is St. Martin of Tours, aka San Martin Caballero, whose feast day in the Roman Catholic calendar is November 11th.

He was a 4th century bishop in Tours but had once been a soldier, and this is how he’s almost always pictured in the art of Western Christendom – a soldier on horseback cutting his cloak in half to clothe a beggar. He had a reputation for miracles even while he was still living, and he was one of the first non-martyred saints to be venerated so widely.

Officially, he’s the patron saint of beggars, the cavalry (and equestrians generally), innkeepers, soldiers, and geese, and he is invoked against poverty and alcoholism.

In popular practice, however, especially in the Latin American tradition, you’ll find his image in restaurants, hotels, bars, shops, and anywhere else where the proprietors rely at least in part on strangers/passing travelers for their income. You’ll also find his image — and especially his horse’s horseshoe — serving as a fairly broad-based good luck token in all kinds of contexts. Folks call on him when they need a job, pray for his intercession to protect them from evil and change their bad luck, carry his package amulet or bundle when they’re gambling, hang his image in their homes for general luck and prosperity, even build a shrine with his horseshoe when they need a better place to live (and they are sure to give the shrine pride of place when they move into the new digs!)

You can get your very own cool box of San Martin Caballero stuff in the Saint of the Month box for November at Seraphin Station. They usually contain something you don’t already have because I’ve collected a ton of cool stuff over the course of my lifetime working with saints and spirits, and they will usually contain some item or product that you can’t get elsewhere or otherwise.

Learn more or order your Saint of the Month box now at Seraphin Station.

October Saint of the Month Box

Seraphin Station

Saints of the month for October are St. Teresa of Avila (a mystic author and Doctor of the Church, invoked against headache and heart attack, feast day Oct. 15) or St. Jude (neglected apostle, invoked for hopeless causes, feast day Oct. 28).

Looking to spruce up your altars, add to your chaplet or holy card collection, or just learn more about saints and spirits in folk Catholicism? The Saint of the Month box gets you a hand-picked and handmade bundle of saints’ goodies selected for you and shipped to you.

Whether you’re just starting to learn about saints and spirits in the hoodoo rootwork tradition or you’ve been working with them for years, I strive to delight you with something new and covetable to add to your collection with every box. (I have some pretty neat stuff squirreled away.)

This gives you a chance to get something new for an…

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