By Eudora Pennywhistle, Potluck and Kitchen Affairs Writer

GRANTHAM FORKS — The ninth printing of "Blessings From the Kitchen," the spiral-bound fundraiser cookbook sold by the Ladies' Auxiliary of Oak Hollow Fellowship, arrived from the printer this week in four cardboard boxes. It has a new cover, a new foreword and an index that finally lists the casseroles in alphabetical order. On page 112, it still calls for two cups of salt in Loretta Pfeiffer's Sour Cream Pound Cake.

The recipe was supposed to read "two cups of sugar." According to the auxiliary's records, the error was made in 1986 by a volunteer typing the first edition on an electric typewriter in the church office, during what she later described as "a very long afternoon."

Since then the cookbook has been reprinted eight times. Each time, the proofreading committee has read every page, corrected every other typo, and left page 112 exactly as it was.

"We noticed it in 1988," said auxiliary president Glenda Marchbanks, 71. "By then a lot of people had already made the cake. It felt rude to change it on them."

Members say the cake that results is dense, golden and tastes, in the words of one deacon, "like a pretzel that has made some choices." Every few years a new member bakes it for a funeral luncheon or a baby shower, takes one bite in the kitchen and quietly sets it on the far end of the dessert table behind the lemon bars.

Then there are the loyalists. At least three longtime members say they have made the cake exactly as printed for nearly four decades and will not hear a word against it. "That's the recipe," said Harold Voss, 83, who brings one to the fall harvest supper every year in the same glass dish. "If Loretta wanted sugar, she would have written sugar."

Loretta Pfeiffer, who submitted the original recipe and moved to her daughter's home in another state in 1994, has been reached by phone several times over the years. Each time she has confirmed the recipe calls for sugar, thanked the caller for asking and asked how the choir is doing.

The proofreading committee took up the question again this summer and debated it over four meetings and two pans of brownies. In the end, the committee voted 5 to 4 to keep page 112 as it is and add a small footnote that reads, "See note." The note does not appear anywhere else in the book.

Auxiliary volunteers say sales of the ninth printing are strong, with 140 copies sold at the Sunday table in the first week. Several buyers asked specifically whether it was "the one with the cake."

At press time, the committee had begun planning the tenth printing and had assigned a new volunteer to type the updated index. She has been asked to be very careful on page 113.