When I look at my bookshelf of cookbooks, I often think of a lady I never got the opportunity to meet in person but whom I feel connected to through a very sweet gift: Merna Snay.
Merna, a former resident of the Mount Hope and Haven area, was a prolific cook—and by all reports, a really good one. She got the opportunity to compete in the Pillsbury bake-off on several occasions. When she downsized, many years ago, she gifted me with some amazing vintage cookbooks, and when I decide I need a challenge, I will flip through them to see if I can decipher the directions. There was a generation of authors who often wrote recipes with the assumption that anyone reading them could fill in the blanks for the parts they weren’t including.
Recently, I purchased a big bag of plums from our local grocery store, and with a gathering at our office on the horizon, I decided it was time for one of Merna’s books to come off the shelf.
The recipe I landed on is from the booklet “Rare Recipes and Budget Savers, Volume 2,” published by the Wichita Eagle in 1963.
It was originally submitted for the Home Town News column on June 26, 1962, by Mrs. T.P. Mueller. She included the following note with it: “For that little lady who is in the doghouse for the loss of her plum crunch recipe, here is one, very good, and can be used either with plums or dried prunes.”
I never lost a plum crunch recipe, but I was glad for Mrs. Mueller’s guidance, nonetheless. I did add extra cinnamon in my version.
Plum Crunch
Ingredients
Filling Ingredients
- 3 1/2 cups fresh plums pitted and chopped
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 tablespoon butter melted
- 1 tablespoon flour
Crunch Ingredients
- 1 1/4 cups quick or rolled oats
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/2 cup butter
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease an eight-by-eight-inch baking dish with butter, and set it aside.
- Add the plums sugar, cinnamon, butter and flour in a bowl and stir to combine well.
- In another bowl, add the quick oats, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon, and mix to combine. Cut in the butter with a fork or pastry cutter until it is mixed throughout the crunch mixture.
- Press half the crunch mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan, and then spread the filling mixture over top. Sprinkle the rest of the crunch mixture evenly over the top.
- Bake for 30 minutes or until the filling is bubbling around the edges and the top is browned nicely.
- Serve warm or room temperature. Store leftovers in an airtight container.
I doubled this recipe and baked it in a nine-by-13-inch pan. It received excellent reviews from our guests. It was sweet and cinnamon-y and home-y.
We had a bit of the crunch left over, so we ended up swirling it into a quart of ice cream, using my stand mixer, so we can enjoy it later on.
And as I crumbled the oats and spread the sugary plums, I had to think of a beautiful connection made between two women from Haven, born decades apart but sharing a love of anything homemade.
Some gifts are priceless.
This piece first appeared in print April 9, 2026.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.
