Sunday: go to church, dinner with the host kids; once the kids leave, start planning, get the boards ready on the tables in the living room.     Organized? You bet. If you're Betty Vander Weide, you won't make it through the week without organization, and lots of it-every i dotted, every t crossed-all the jots and the tittles. Success is in the details. If, by Saturday night, you can lay your head on the pillow with the assurance that it all got done right, then you'll measure the days and hours of your week carefully, as if in coffee spoons, making sure the particulars are dutifully attended to.     She hides in Maurice. Well, that's not exactly fair to say. Betty Vander Weide has lived in Maurice all of her life, save two years she doesn't much remember in Sioux Center. She's lived in the little burg along Highway 75 since her Dutch immigrant father, John Vander Stelt, Sr. -expert upholsterer, gardener extraordinaire, painter of mountain vistas, utility handyman, and, in a way, community legend-bought the Maurice Town Hall, built a living space for himself, his wife, and the four of his kids still at home, and moved in, turning the old basketball court into a spacious shop for turning old sofas into living room showpieces.     Betty (Vander Stelt) Vander Weide (go ahead and say that with a mouthful of marbles) doesn't really hide in Maurice at all. As any Maurician knows, most any time of day or night, at least at the beginning of the week, she can be found at home on Oak Street, where she's lived almost ever since she married Rod Vander Weide, the owner-operator of a beautiful 1998 Peterbilt that, when he's not on the road, stands outside the shed built for it, displaced by cake mix. No kidding.     Betty Vander Weide doesn't really hide in Maurice, Iowa, and neither does Rod-how do you hide a ten-ton eighteen-wheeler? What most Mauricians don't know, however, is how enormous her one-woman business has become. What hides in Maurice is a cake-baking and decorating operation that simply boggles the mind. Take a deep breath, then listen.     Monday: start making the the gum-based flowers-you'll need hundreds-one pedal at a time; get the other stuff ready-ingredients, plans, etc. Figure it this way-60 roses take 12 hours, and you're going to need a ton more this week.     It started-this incredible business-already before she and Rod were married, when Elaine Korver-now Dekkers-asked her to bake her wedding cake. Betty was 19. Even though Betty's mother was a great cook who never used a recipe in her life, Betty says cake decorating was a new thing to her. But growing up with a world-class handyman like her father taught her not to question what she could and couldn't do. A wedding cake wasn't so much a request as a challenge. So she said yes-if she could practice for awhile.     So she started baking cakes for practice, and most of Maurice's populace became recipients of her continuing and delicious attempts. "I practiced and practiced and practiced, working with different techniques for frosting and flowers," she says today, remembering. "It was sheer stupidity is what it was. I didn't know a thing." But this is what she'll say, and if you want to know Betty Vander Weide, this is what you have to remember about her: "You see, I didn't think I couldn't do it."     That's it. What do we call that? Pluck or stupidity? Stay tuned.     Tuesday: do the books. You got to pay the bills-eighty cases of cake mix from Hy-Vee. Lots more. Eleventy-seven customers-you got to keep track of cash flow.     What made her practice difficult was the family of artisans she came from. They're close, she says, close enough to be stern critics. So when she'd unveil a new creation that didn't meet the aesthetic standards her family set, they'd tell her as much. Mad? -sure she was mad, but she'd go back to work. Elaine Korver still needed a cake.     Finally, the wedding day arrived. Betty Vander Stelt was up at three-a habit she's never broken, by the way-slaving away in the kitchen. By mid-morning, she'd kicked everybody else out because the artist had to work alone. Soon, her creation was starting to take shape, layer upon layer.     Suddenly, a crisis. "The support system didn't work," she says. She'd picked up the technique from a book somewhere, but the book had it wrong. That cake started to look alarmingly like the great Leaning Tower of Pisa. She bawled. Didn't help. The cake still looked like an old felt hat. She bawled some more.     Brother John to the rescue-another recipient of the genetic disposition to tinker masterfully. "All right, all right, Betty," he told her. "I'll take that thing apart." He took the boards and pegs down to the upholstery shop, drilled the boards so the pegs fit snugly, and brought the whole thing back. "Don't worry," he told her. "It'll stand straight now." And it did.     No more tears.     But baking that first cake took an emotional toll. "Don't ever do that again," Rod told her once it was all over-her future husband.     So much for his advice. Today, some wild June Saturdays she'll have seven cakes ready for ritual. Not only that, Rod helps all day long. He's learned.     Wednesday: Do the baking-as much as you can, at least 90%; what time you have left, decorate, decorate, decorate.     If wedding cakes were the only item on her menu, maybe she'd have some free time; but there are birthday cakes too, some weeks as many as 12 of them, in fact-plus graduation, confirmation, first communion cakes-the bulk of them in April and May. Betty Vander Weide is Maurice's First Lady of Cakes.     This year she's booked solid in June-26 weddings. That's right, 26. If you need one, call somebody else. She says she turns down more business than she takes.     Sit in her kitchen some morning and listen to the calls. A woman from Yankton asks about a wedding cake for the fall; Betty Vander Weide was recommended by some reception place out west. "You should come in and talk-you know where Sioux Center is?" Betty asks. "You know where Rock Rapids is? -how about east of Beresford? We're in a small town along Highway 75," she'll say, as if all roads lead to Maurice.     Thursday/Friday: Stack the cakes and put the boards in between. Get the crumb-coating on. Roll on the fondant frosting. Don't figure on sleep.     Fondant frosting is a British innovation in cake decorating. It rolls out like a pie crust and gets laid atop the cake, sealing it, Betty says, almost like Tupperware.     What remains of the week would be a gauntlet to normal people, but not Betty. "I never go to bed on Thursday night," she says. Let me repeat that. "I never go to bed on Thursday night. I stay up all night."     Betty Vander Weide doesn't sleep on Thursday nights. She works. If Sioux County, Iowa, is renowned for its booming work ethic, then Betty Vander Weide is our cover girl. But picture her with a smile.     How can you not sleep? -go ahead and ask her? "Fear," she'll tell you. "What happens if I don't get done? What happens if it doesn't get done right? You want those brides to have a wonderful day that day," she says. "You want them not to have to worry, at least, about the cake? I can take care of that much at least."     Amazing.     Is it any wonder why Sioux City's posh Marina Inn tells brides looking for cakes that they really ought to take a ride up to Maurice?     Saturday: hit the road.     Here's last Saturday's triptik. Up at two a.m. With Rod at the wheel, the trailer packed, the cake in the van, head to Remsen, the Avalon restaurant. Set up the table, the cake, and leave the instructions on how it has to be cut. Go home.     It's now five a.m. Load up again and head for Sioux Falls-top floor of the Holiday Inn. Set up, leave cake and instructions, head home. Get back around nine.     Load up again, drive to Sioux City's Shrine Temple. This one's really flashy. Set up lights and backdrop, chiffon-all the trimmings here, not to mention the cake. Finally, head home.     Shower, change, and then, ll things, get back to Sioux City for the wedding.     Last Saturday, she and Rod got home at eleven.     Tired yet? I am.     Sunday: go to church, mash potatoes, host kids, start planning.     And every Sunday during the school year, the house is full of kids-as many as twelve-from one or both of the area colleges. They come to the Vander Weides on Sunday for a feast.     Tired yet?     One more thing. If you ask some Sioux County saintly types for the definition of the word decadence, they'd probably say Hollywood or maybe Las Vegas. If that's the answer, then it's likely those saints have never tasted a Betty Vander Weide creation.     But many have and many will.     Cake that good can't hide long in Maurice, Iowa.