Necessity is mother of invention

Cathy Decker/Staff reporter

Ready to serve cake and customers at the Aledo branch of Farmers State Bank of Western Illinois, from left are Lee Ann Baldwin, Kim Goben, Deb Bonnick, Deb Goben and Taegan Coulter.

Power outages didn’t stop Nannette Coulter from fulfilling her job on Thursday.

Nannette makes cakes on the side and is the wife of Farmers State Bank of Western Illinois’ Aledo branch vice president Eric Coulter. She got the gig to make the bank’s 100th anniversary cakes. The bank branches -- all six -- are celebrating with a birthday party today, all day.

“She made 18 cakes,” said Kim Goben, customer service manager at the Aledo branch.

She said she was decorating cakes in the dark, Goben said. The Coulters had a generator to help with baking the cakes, but she did say she was “decorating by candlelight.”

“She joked that she was going to have on her business card ‘Cakes by Candlelight,’” said Deb Bonick, a teller at the Aledo branch.

The six branch offices are located in Alpha, Alexis, Aledo, Woodhull, New Windsor and Viola. There is enough cake to feed 500, Goben said.