Baking A Memory
Jan. 13th, 2019 12:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mama_kestrelMy mother, bless her, will be 85 years old this coming Thursday. I asked her what kind of birthday cake she wanted. I was expecting her to say cheesecake, and indeed had all the necessary ingredients already assembled for the creation thereof. Cream cheese, sour cream, and eggs all await their destiny in the auxiliary refrigerator in the garage. The almonds for the crust are ground, and Amaretto for flavoring is in the liquor cabinet.
Mother surprised me. She asked me to make Boston Cream Pie. Now, I don’t remember her ever making Boston Cream Pie the entire time I was growing up, and indeed when I asked her she agreed that she had not, nor did she know how. Nor did I recall my grandmother making it. Grandma, when she was called upon to make a Festive Dessert, always made Sunshine cake, which was her own recipe for hot water citrus sponge cake. Further conversation led me to realize that my memory was not faulty in the least. My grandmother had made Boston Cream Pie for my mom’s birthday, but had done so for the last time when Mom turned 16, the year before she graduated high school. And now, about 70 years later, she wanted another one. How could I make one to match something I’d never tasted – indeed something that hadn’t been made since before my mother met my dad, let alone before I came into existence!
But really, that’s less of a challenge than matching reality, because memory is a slippery thing. We talked about it, mother and I. It started with a sponge cake, but not like the Sunshine cake. It wanted a sponge cake baked in layers, not too sweet and not too rich. The filling was a thick vanilla custard, like the filling in a custard pie, but cooked, not baked. And the chocolate on top was a soft frosting, not fluffy, but definitely not a glaze. I set out to create something to match.
First came the quest through my vintage cookbooks. I have the cookbooks my grandmother and mother were given when they were married, in the late 1920s and 1950s respectively., plus others I've acquired along the way. Those recipes are very different from modern cake recipes. Eggs were clearly expensive then, and recipes are described based on how many they required. They have less sugar than modern cakes as well, by as much as half. I mean that literally: the modern four egg sponge cake I dug out of my current Fanny Farmer cook book called for 2 cups of sugar with a cup of butter. The recipe I ended up using, from the 1953 Joy of Cooking, used 1 cup of sugar. Then there was the pastry cream. That was easy; the filling for a vanilla cream pie worked just fine, thank you. And finally, there was the frosting. I hunted, read, got frustrated, and finally gave up and made up my own based on mom’s description. Melted butter, cocoa powder, confectioner’s sugar, vanilla and heavy cream. It turned out beautifully. Even more to the point, it turned out exactly as described: soft, smooth, and very chocolaty. It was also so dark that my son thought I'd put black food coloring in it, but no - it was all pure chocolate.
And it worked. Mama came in, was handed a piece, and ate it standing in the kitchen, hmm-ing and purring in pleasure, occasionally verbalizing enough to tell me I’d nailed it perfectly. She was on her second piece before everyone else had firsts, and her third before I got one at all. Basically she had cake for dinner, but y’know? She’s 85. If she can’t have cake for dinner now, when can she?
And so I baked a memory, when I wasn’t even sure what she was remembering.
It seems an appropriate birthday gift
Mother surprised me. She asked me to make Boston Cream Pie. Now, I don’t remember her ever making Boston Cream Pie the entire time I was growing up, and indeed when I asked her she agreed that she had not, nor did she know how. Nor did I recall my grandmother making it. Grandma, when she was called upon to make a Festive Dessert, always made Sunshine cake, which was her own recipe for hot water citrus sponge cake. Further conversation led me to realize that my memory was not faulty in the least. My grandmother had made Boston Cream Pie for my mom’s birthday, but had done so for the last time when Mom turned 16, the year before she graduated high school. And now, about 70 years later, she wanted another one. How could I make one to match something I’d never tasted – indeed something that hadn’t been made since before my mother met my dad, let alone before I came into existence!
But really, that’s less of a challenge than matching reality, because memory is a slippery thing. We talked about it, mother and I. It started with a sponge cake, but not like the Sunshine cake. It wanted a sponge cake baked in layers, not too sweet and not too rich. The filling was a thick vanilla custard, like the filling in a custard pie, but cooked, not baked. And the chocolate on top was a soft frosting, not fluffy, but definitely not a glaze. I set out to create something to match.
First came the quest through my vintage cookbooks. I have the cookbooks my grandmother and mother were given when they were married, in the late 1920s and 1950s respectively., plus others I've acquired along the way. Those recipes are very different from modern cake recipes. Eggs were clearly expensive then, and recipes are described based on how many they required. They have less sugar than modern cakes as well, by as much as half. I mean that literally: the modern four egg sponge cake I dug out of my current Fanny Farmer cook book called for 2 cups of sugar with a cup of butter. The recipe I ended up using, from the 1953 Joy of Cooking, used 1 cup of sugar. Then there was the pastry cream. That was easy; the filling for a vanilla cream pie worked just fine, thank you. And finally, there was the frosting. I hunted, read, got frustrated, and finally gave up and made up my own based on mom’s description. Melted butter, cocoa powder, confectioner’s sugar, vanilla and heavy cream. It turned out beautifully. Even more to the point, it turned out exactly as described: soft, smooth, and very chocolaty. It was also so dark that my son thought I'd put black food coloring in it, but no - it was all pure chocolate.
And it worked. Mama came in, was handed a piece, and ate it standing in the kitchen, hmm-ing and purring in pleasure, occasionally verbalizing enough to tell me I’d nailed it perfectly. She was on her second piece before everyone else had firsts, and her third before I got one at all. Basically she had cake for dinner, but y’know? She’s 85. If she can’t have cake for dinner now, when can she?
And so I baked a memory, when I wasn’t even sure what she was remembering.
It seems an appropriate birthday gift
Memory beyond
Date: 2019-01-13 06:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-01-13 04:56 pm (UTC)Thank you for carrying forward that gift of loving thoughtfulness and creation from generation to generation.
no subject
Date: 2019-01-13 05:01 pm (UTC)I tended not to want cake for my birthday. My 16th birthday party, at Dad's CPA office, where I was working that summer, was a HUGE chocolate chip cookie, the one made in a round pizza pan. :-D
I have made a S'mores coffee cake and often brownies over the years. ;-) :-)
no subject
Date: 2019-01-14 05:06 am (UTC)That's a wonderful gift to give somebody. She must have been very happy with it.
- SB