When Linda Robinson went to the store in Fayetteville last week to buy cake ingredients, only two boxes of cake flour were left on the shelf. She reached for one of them at the same time another woman reached for the other.

"I'll bet I know what you're going to make," Robinson said.

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Walker

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She was right; they were both making Rich's coconut cake.

Judging from the dozens of e-mails and calls we received after our story about Rich's coconut cake appeared in the AJC on Easter Sunday, many Atlantans still have a sweet spot for treats from the department store's long-closed bakery.

We heard from readers who wanted to share stories about Rich's and how much the store used to mean to Atlanta — the Pink Pig, the Great Tree, the Magnolia Room.

We heard from readers who wanted the recipes for other Rich's baked goods — brownies, cookies, chess pies, birthday cakes and especially Japanese fruitcakes. Stay tuned; we may publish some of them.

We heard from readers who had specific questions about the coconut cake recipe. Yes, the frozen coconut is presweetened (although unsweetened works just fine). No, you don't add vanilla to the cake — only to the frosting. Yes, we got the amounts of flour and sugar backward in the recipe as originally published, but it's correct now. We're sorry if you rushed out and made a flat cake because of us.

We heard from a former Rich's bakery employee, Helen Walker of East Atlanta, who remembered how customers would fight over coconut cakes before the store decided to meet demand by baking them ahead of time and freezing them.

We even heard from a daughter of the man who ran the bakery before Carl Dendy, the focus of our article, became general manager in 1966. Joyce Brooks Matthews wanted us to know that her late father, Jeff Brooks, formulated many of the recipes that made the reputation of Rich's bake shop.

As for Linda Robinson, the Fayetteville woman who got one of the last boxes of cake flour in the store, she baked the coconut cake and served it at a luncheon for a dozen ladies, some of whom had worked at Rich's.

"I told them I had a big surprise for them," she says. "They loved it. They all swore it tasted the same."