I’m not really sure what the 500 in 500 Cake means. Possibly $500, but why not put the dollar symbol? I have a recipe for Oscar’s $100 Cake that dates from this general era, so a $500 banana cake recipe seems a bit of an expense! The town of Cudahy is a small one located in Wisconsin. The house is modest, on a corner, with a view of fields. It doesn’t appear much changed from the time when Mrs Albert Ollmann was making this cake. I found a lovely and very complete history of the town on the Cudahy Historical Society page. Seems like a sweet, small town.
500 Cake
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour milk
1 cup mashed bananas
1/2 cup chopped dates
1/2 cup chopped nuts
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups flour
Cream shortening (i.e. butter) and sugar, then add eggs. Beat all together and add sour milk with soda, mashed bananas, dates and nuts, then flour and baking powder.
Bake somehow… Try: pour into greased loaf pan and bake at 350º for 30-45 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.
Gram's Recipe Box 
This cake is named after the card game Five Hundred or 500, which was a popular card game for social card parties in small towns and rural areas in Wisconsin, where I grew up. The game is similar to euchre and derived from that card game. Five Hundred cake is my very favorite cake, which I bake in a 13×9” pan, and frost with a broiled coconut frosting similar to German Chocolate cake.
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My grandmother who lived in Milwaukee had the very same cake in her recipe book, but it was written out in her handwriting. I was thinking about trying to make it, and I thought I’d better search for it on the internet to see if there was any record of it, and here we are! Many of her recipes seem to leave out vital information, so I’m sort of glad to see that this version ends as abruptly as hers did.
The additional information from Jeanne Mraz is very helpful. I wondered where the name came from. Now I vaguely remember playing a card game with my grandma that was called Rummy 500, but that may be a different game. When I make this cake, I think I will use either cream cheese or lemon buttercream frosting to brighten it up a bit. The cake sounds a little heavy.
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