Community Cookbook: Four-layer dessert, Dolores Bohnsack from Immaculate Conception Church in Jackson

Delores Bohnsack sits at her kitchen table with a slice of four-layer dessert she made. Bohnsack grew up in Leopold, Mo., and worked in the cafeteria at Immaculate Conception School in Jackson for 27 years.

Photo by Jasmine Jones

Recipes tell the stories of communities and the people who shape them. Each recipe is more than a list of ingredients and steps; it is a written legacy of the individual who created the dish, their family and history. This monthly series highlights one of these legacies and gives readers the chance to create the recipe themselves.

The story goes like this: In the 1850s, the Jackson township could not decide between building a Baptist or Catholic church, so they agreed to raise money for both.

Donation collectors wore coats with two pockets, one labeled “Baptist” and the second labeled “Catholic.” As they collected donations from citizens, they divided the money evenly between the two pockets, and eventually, enough money was raised to build two brick churches, each with a capacity of 125. According to Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Jackson’s website and cookbook, this is just one of the stories passed down about the early history of their church.

Dolores Bohnsack, a Jackson resident, has been a parishioner of Immaculate Conception for 49 years. She moved to Jackson after she married her husband, Darell Bohnsack, in 1974, but grew up in Leopold, Mo. She says her mother, Theodora Jansen, was a homemaker and baked bread from scratch nearly every other day. She credits her mother with her love for cooking.

After graduating from high school, Bohnsack attended beauty school and worked at a salon in Marble Hill, Mo., before purchasing a beauty shop from a friend in Oak Ridge. There, she ran her own beauty shop, Dolores’ Hair Fashions, for approximately 20 years. Eventually, Bohnsack grew tired of working weekends and missing her sons’ Saturday sporting events and activities, so she took an open position in the cafeteria at Immaculate Conception’s school.

“I went from trying to please the little ladies at the beauty shop to pleasing the little kids at school,” Bohnsack says.

Bohnsack worked in the cafeteria full-time for 27 years and served as cafeteria manager for 23 of those years. She says at one point, they were feeding lunch to approximately 300 children.

When Bohnsack first took the job at Immaculate Conception School, a woman named Ada Linda Loos, who had worked in the cafeteria for 30 years, trained and taught her everything she needed to know. Loos showed Bohnsack how to make cinnamon rolls, and Bohnsack says she quickly became known among the schoolkids for her homemade cinnamon rolls.

“That was my big thing. I did them until the day I retired at school, and even after I retired, some of the students that used to go to [Immaculate Conception], that was always their favorite, so I’d make a bunch of extra and go around town dropping off cinnamon rolls,” Bohnsack says.

Bohnsack still helps at Immaculate Conception School’s cafeteria on Tuesdays, and she serves as a substitute for both Immaculate Conception School and Notre Dame Regional High School. Despite cooking at her job, Bohnsack still loves cooking for her family and four grandsons. And of course, she loves making one of their favorite treats: four-layer dessert. She can’t remember when she learned to make the decadent pudding dessert, but her mother made it often when she was a child.

In the backyard of the Bohnsacks’ home in Jackson, they have a fully-grown pecan tree. Every November, the Bohnsacks collect “buckets and buckets” of pecans. Bohnsack uses them in her four-layer desserts and pecan pies.

Bohnsack loves to share recipes, and her many recipes — both savory and sweet — appear in multiple Immaculate Conception St. Ann’s Sodality cookbooks. St. Ann’s Sodality is her church’s women’s group, which she has been a member of since she joined the parish. The group’s purpose, according to their cookbook, is to “take care of the Lord’s house,” which they do through cleaning the church, washing linens, cooking bereavement dinners and running a “kitchen ministry” that provides kitchen supplies to those in need.

“When there’s a need, we step in,” Bohnsack says.

Bohnsack’s recipes also appear in the local Relay for Life fundraiser cookbook, published by the Knights of Columbus Ladies Auxiliary. The American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life is a peer-to-peer fundraiser group dedicated to saving lives from cancer. Bohnsack served as the chairperson and co-chairperson for Jackson’s Relay for Life and volunteered with the organization for approximately 16 years.

Bohnsack is a survivor of breast cancer and 24 years cancer-free. The American Cancer Society and Reach for Recovery support groups helped Bohnsack through the treatment process, which is why she wanted to give back through volunteering and heading fundraising efforts.

Bohnsack used her cooking and recipes to fundraise for causes that are important to her. She used cooking to feed school children for more than 27 years. And she currently uses cooking to bring her family together.

“My [oldest] grandson comes over every Wednesday and has dinner with us,” Bohnsack says. “So, I’ll [ask him], ‘What do you want for this week?’ He will pick the menu. As long as I know what I’m fixing, I love it.”

Dolores Bohnsack's four-layer dessert is one of her family's favorite recipes. She uses pecans from her backyard tree for the crust and topping.

Photo by Jasmine Jones

Recipe rewritten from original recipe in “Pleasures from the Good Earth,” St. Ann’s Sodality Immaculate Conception Church 1995 Cookbook:

Four Layer Dessert

1 cup flour

1 cup pecans, chopped

1 stick margarine or butter

1 8 oz. cream cheese package

1 cup powdered sugar

1 full tub cool whip

1 6 oz. box instant pudding (chocolate, lemon or desired flavor)

2 cups milk (or whatever pudding box says)

Extra chopped pecans for top layer

For the first layer, mix flour, pecans and melted butter together. Then, spread into a 9 by 13 inch pan. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes. After the crust is done baking, let it cool before spreading other layers on top of it. For the second layer, use a beater to mix cream cheese, powdered sugar and one cup cool whip. When spreading over the crust, be very gentle so as to not break the crust. For the third layer, beat the instant pudding and milk for about two minutes until it reaches a pudding consistency. For the fourth layer, spread the rest of the cool whip tub over the dessert. Then, sprinkle chopped pecans. Refrigerate and enjoy!

Learn to make four-layer dessert at The Best Years Facebook page.