The Friends of Rolling Hills Library have cooked up a sweet fundraising effort in time for Christmas shopping.
The Cake Lady and Friends is a cookbook of 150 cake, pie, candy and cookie recipes from Friends members, library staff and volunteers and Barb Dalrymple, aka The Cake Lady.
The cookbooks go on sale on Black Friday, Nov. 28, at Books Revisited (the Friends used bookstore), the Belt Branch and Savannah Branch. Cost is $12.
Dalrymple began her Rolling Hills career volunteering in 1981 and became a part-time employee two years later. That’s when she started bringing cakes to work on Mondays and for coworkers’ birthdays. She retired in 2015 as acquisitions manager but still drops off birthday cakes to Belt Branch staff members.
In November 2011, Dalrymple’s first recipe appeared in the library’s monthly newsletter. The recipes became the newsletter’s most popular item through the years and are still there in the library’s quarterly newsletters. The idea for a cookbook was sparked with her 100th recipe in the 2025 winter newsletter.
“It’s just what I do,” Dalrymple says about the cakes. “It just makes me happy that someone else is happy. Most often they smile when they see me coming in (the library) with a cake.”