From banker to baker

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Growing up, John Lamprecht ate well, his mother Wanda made delicious and big home-cooked meals every day. It was probably pretty standard that most kids in the sixties and seventies had moms that cooked every day and John’s mom was no exception.

She’d grown up with four brothers and both of her parents worked at a Cotton Mill, so the day-to-day cooking was left to Wanda when she was old enough. And with four brothers, she cooked lots of food, chicken fried steak, fried chicken and homemade bread. Wanda’s father, Virgil Hanks went on to be the Chief of Police here in Gonzales, they were a busy family.

Wanda didn’t have dreams of being a chef or professional baker growing up and neither did her son John. In fact, he went in to the banking business where he’s been ever since.

When he was a pre-teen, his mother got a job with Dr. Ted Crews and during the three years she worked for him, she continued to cook dinner every day. Around 1973, John’s parents, his father was a postman and then became the Postmaster in Cost and Waelder, decided to raise chickens as a business, 30,000 chickens. With this new home business, John was tasked with helping out in the kitchen.

His mother would go down to Boyson’s Grocery and buy a huge round steak that the butcher would tenderize for her and she’d bring it home and have John prepare chicken fried steak with it. It was really the first thing he remembered cooking alongside mashed potatoes. John found he enjoyed cooking and took on more responsibility and though his mother loved to read cookbooks, they stayed close to the home-style cooking their family had loved for generations.

John took on so much of the cooking that his mom teased that he only did it to avoid working at the chicken house.

Like most small towns, everyone pitches it when their church has fundraisers and Wanda Lamprecht was no different. She’d bake a loaf of bread or one of her German chocolate cakes or any kind of pie imaginable. She was well known for her cinnamon rolls that she makes with a sweet dough unlike the kind many of us know, a yeast dough with the cinnamon and sugar glaze poured on top.

After a while, Wanda was being asked to bake things all the time, and while John was working at American National Bank between 1989-1993, they set up a pie order and delivery system every Friday. Folks would call Wanda and ask her to make a banana cream pie or pecan or a fruit pie, coconut cream was very popular and Wanda would whip them up for only $5 a piece. She was making about 25 pies a week, every week, all different kinds of pies for anyone that wanted one.

She started selling her bread too, orders were being snatched up for $5 a loaf.

Wanda’s bread is different though, no one can replicate it though John has tried. He said his mother’s hands move differently than his, and her quick hand movements make for a different texture in her loaves. Besides her bread, cakes and pies she is well known for her cream cheese pound cake John says.

John saw his mother make her very popular German chocolate cake years ago, she made one for his wedding and eventually started to help her make them. Wanda is in her early 80s now and when a call comes for one of the baked behemoths, it is son John who takes on the task. I can speak from experience that one of those beauties, surrounded by strawberries weighs roughly fifty pounds. The Hospital Foundation had one of Wanda’s German chocolate cakes at their live auction last year and it sold for well over $1000!

John said that his mother is very proud of her recipe and she ought to be, the texture of the cake itself is unlike any other cake I’ve eaten, smooth and not crumbly, as if it was borderline flourless, which I know it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have the recipe, only two people have it, Wanda and her son, and he has been sworn to secrecy until after she passes, John says. According to John, Wanda said “I do not want to go somewhere and be served my own cake,” so he won’t share. He did tell me that they use the Mexican vanilla, the bottle that has a rooster on it and only Crisco oil, no Wesson, not now, not ever.

Wanda has worked hard her whole life and ought to be proud of her many accomplishments: hard-working daughter, cook to four hungry brothers, wife, chicken farmer, baker and most importantly mother. John speaks to her every day. There is a real connection between mother and son, baker to baker, that was palpable as I listened to John tell me about Wanda. She sounded much like my own mother, avid cookbook reader, incredibly hard worker and an even better cook and baker. My own mother was extremely humble and self-deprecating and John said Wanda is the same, though recently, at his uncle’s memorial service, Wanda made sure that guests knew the cakes they were eating were her recipes. I’m sure my own mother would have done the same thing, humble yet quietly proud of their own ability, mostly self-taught with lots of hard work and practice. To create a vision, to build something with your own hands, to see the process through, to have people notice, is no easy feat, but when you are a true artist, it’s hard to hide the beauty in your ability. 

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