In recipes, sustenance for the heart
My mother loved to bake. Growing up, my house was always filled with the sweet smells of something great in the oven — Italian cheesecake, Irish soda bread, chocolate chip cookies.
She was first to volunteer to bake something whenever my school ran a fundraiser, though her cakes rarely made it to the sale table; they were usually snatched up instead by one of the teachers. My mother’s baking prowess was the talk of the faculty lounge.
In mid-December she would begin baking her holiday butter cookies. She was a onewoman assembly line producing plates of sweets for family, friends and her various doctors.
One of her most popular desserts was a sour cream walnut coffee cake, a light and airy delight that has a middle layer and topping of sugar, cinnamon and crunchy walnuts. She discovered it back in the ‘70s when a neighbor made it for a funeral reception for my late uncle. Despite the unfortunate circumstances, my mother immediately asked the neighbor for the recipe.
The coffee cake quickly became my favorite dessert, and my mother knew it. Every few weeks I would come home to find one waiting for me. Once I moved out, I only had to vaguely hint, and in a day or two she would appear at my door, coffee cake in hand. It mattered not that she was now getting on in years and hobbled by arthritis. I suspect her aches melted away when she was in the kitchen doing what she loved, for those whom she loved most.
She always made me a coffee cake for my birthday.
When my daughter, M.E., was born in 1992, I gave my mother a blank recipe book and asked her to write down her favorite recipes so that one day M.E. would have them. She immediately went to work filling the book with recipes for her Sunday Italian sauce, chicken piccata and, of course, all her cakes and cookies.
Not content to just list ingredients, she included notations about where each recipe came from along with family anecdotes and baking hacks.
My mom passed in 2019. Her last two years were difficult ones as she battled dementia. Often, she would slip into a mental loop and ask the same questions over and over. My sister and I discovered the only way to pull her out of a loop was to get her talking about something else. And that something else was baking.
Mom could be deeply lost in her world, yet we needed only to ask her a question about one of her recipes and an immediate clarity appeared in her eyes. Her memory returned and she began running down the recipe and its intricacies in amazing detail.
Four months after her death, it was my birthday. When M.E. asked what I wanted as a gift, I gave her my standard father answer: “Thanks, but I don’t really need anything. Save your money.” But that year, M.E. knew better. She understood that on my first birthday without my mom, I did need something.
And so, a sour cream walnut coffee cake appeared on my doorstep on my birthday morning. A new tradition was born.
Two weeks ago, another birthday was upon me. M.E. called with an invitation to take me out to dinner to celebrate. I accepted, but a thought crossed my mind: “Hmm … dinner … I guess no coffee cake this year.” I’ll confess to a bit of disappointment.
When M.E. arrived at the restaurant, even before sitting down, she said, “First things first!” and presented me with a package. I didn’t have to open it to know what was inside.
My waistline attests to the fact that I love the coffee cake. But, even more, I love what the coffee cake has come to represent — a lasting generational bond between my mother, my daughter and me. And like the cake itself, it is sweet and wonderful.