Sweet for the soul - Muenster Catholic reflects on 50 years of making and donating cakes

Betty Rose Walterscheid puts the finishing touches on a cake. (NTC/Kenneth Munyer)

MUENSTER — After 50 years and almost 15,000 cakes, Betty Rose Walterscheid is hanging up her spatula.

The longtime parishioner of Sacred Heart Church in Muenster has donated many of her cakes to Catholics in the Muenster-Gainesville-Denton area since she made her first tiered cake in 1970 for her parents’ 35th anniversary. The spatula that retires with Walterscheid was a gift received when she married her husband, Jerry Walterscheid. The couple will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary Jan. 28.

Cakes for a sacramental event like a wedding or first Communion were donated by Walterscheid. Some of her special ones include cakes made for the May 25, 2002 ordination of Father Kyle Walterscheid, pastor of St. John Paul II Parish in Denton. And 15 years later, cakes made to celebrate his priestly anniversary and other anniversaries for service which included honorees Father Ken Robinson (25 years), Sister Francesca Walterscheid (70 years), SSMN, and Sister Roberta Hesse (65 years), SSMN.

Those cakes are recorded in her famous ledger, which includes a list of all the people she made cakes for since 1972, which total 12,764. Of that number, 2,154 were for weddings and, just like at Fr. Kyle’s ordination celebration, included multiple cakes.

“My wedding cakes included a groom’s cake, so my total would be close to 15,000,” she said.

Walterscheid is self-taught. The first cakes she made were for her family and not recorded in her ledger. Her cake-making business started after she made a tiered wedding anniversary cake for her parents.

“I never had any lessons. I studied Wilton cake decorating books,” she said. “It’s like riding a bicycle, you try and try and then, finally you get it!”

For several years she made cakes when former Fort Worth Bishop Kevin Vann celebrated and blessed couples who had been married 50 years or more.

“Any time I could do cake for a celebration at our parish, honoring nuns and priests, first Communion classes, and other celebrations, I did those as a gift to my parish with great joy,” she said.

The last wedding cake she baked in 2020 is for a bride in Henrietta, and one that brings her cake career full circle, showing the loyalty of her clients.

“I did her mother’s cake over 30 years ago, then her sister’s wedding cake, so what a way to end my years of cake decorating,” she said.

Walterscheid said she would continue to decorate only for family, including making the cake for a great niece who is getting married in January at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Grapevine.

“I did her mother’s cake and the groom’s mother’s cake in Grapevine,” she said, reiterating the generations of family members who’ve come to her for cakes.

Walterscheid said sometimes a cake is booked a year in advance of the wedding day. But she’s never frozen a cake. She bakes the day before the wedding and frosts them on the big day.

“On a few occasions, [husband] Jerry delivered a wedding cake while I finished another. The most layers I baked in a day was 39,” she said.

The couple has delivered cakes all over Cooke County and even delivered cakes to San Antonio and Austin.

“We did many weddings in Denton and the Metroplex,” she said.

On many occasions, the couple did full-service weddings.

“We did the tablecloths, all glass dishes, the cake and punch ... Jerry helped by doing dishes, making icing, and driving us to where we needed to go and getting us there on time,” she said.

The most cake orders Walterscheid made was in May 1984, when she baked 60, nine being weddings.

While the number of cakes Walterscheid has baked in the last 50 years is amazing, the number of Rosaries the couple has prayed together is more impressive.

“We started saying the Rosary in Lent the first year we were married and never stopped,” she said. “If for some reason we were not together, we’d call and make sure we prayed it. Jerry calculated the number in our 59 plus years as [approximately] 21,855.”

Jerry Walterscheid has been a Knight of Columbus for 68 years, and Betty Walterscheid has been a Catholic Daughter of the Americas for 58 years. She is also a lector and minister of Holy Communion and helps with Vacation Bible School. Before COVID-19 hit, the couple served as greeters at Mass.

The couple has three sons, John, Doug, and Ron, and three daughters-in-law who have blessed them with eight grandchildren, with their fifth great grandchild due in December.

As for who will take over the cake business? Betty Walterscheid said she has no clue. “I wish someone would take it over,” she said.

She has plenty to keep her busy while retired: caring for her grandsons after school, canning fresh fruits and vegetables, and running the family farm.

“I don’t think we will be twiddling our thumbs,” she said.

The one thing she will miss the most?

“The people that you meet,” she said. “To see everybody happy, I’ll miss that more than anything else.”