November 28: Granna's Nut Cake

My grandmother's Nut Cake recipe is one of the treasures I found as I sorted through her cookbooks and clippings.  I found slips of paper with notes, sometimes written by a stranger's hand, about family tree birth dates, maiden names and death dates.  Granna made lists of flowers she needed to use to make an arrangement for horticulture club.  She made lists of dishes to serve for certain birthdays.  I found lists she made of her planned menus for Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving lunches.

Her neat, tight, level handwriting spelled out her plan of action for entertaining the whole family for the holiday.  Occasionally, her notes featured prices of the items she planned to make, or whether she had a coupon, or notes on which market had the best sale.  On the nut cake recipe, in addition to lots of stains and smudges, were written the price-per-pound for all of the expensive ingredients: Butter $1.67, Candied Cherries 1.29, Pecans $3.75 (now three times the price).

Pricey Ingredients

Did I remember one of those specific Thanksgiving menus on slips of paper used as bookmarks in a recipe book?   Sometimes she dated the notes "Thanksgiving 1985" and I sat, wishing I could remember any specific holiday at her house.  But, they were unremarkable because they all pretty much featured the same menu.  Each planned item was a favorite of one of her children or grandchildren; there was her cornbread dressing, her sweet potato casserole, turkey (sometimes cooked by my grandfather on the grill until it was as dry as sawdust), asparagus casserole, cylindrical cranberry sauce with rings of indentations left by the can, her homemade potato rolls, and her nut cake.

Granna's nut cake was the perfect lovechild of fruitcake and poundcake.  I have never seen another recipe for this cake.  It has a golden crust showing just the slightest nut-shaped hints of the treasures inside.  Candied cherries, candied pineapple and chopped pecans are packed into the buttery cake with none of the crazy cloying citron or bizarrely-colored fruit of fruitcake infamy.  Granna always made the nut cake in advance (it bakes for three hours and has to cool in the pan) and wrapped it in multiple layers of plastic wrap, then aluminum foil to store in the freezer until the night before we arrived at her house.

Keith likes to take us all out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner so that I don't have to "spend all day in the kitchen" instead of watching the Macy's parade on the couch with him.  But, I always make pies for dessert at home after the feast.  I always make pumpkin pie by Chief Wilma Mankiller's recipe.  Chief Mankiller was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma for many years and she was an honoree at my college commencement.  Her recipe calls for baking pumpkin from scratch and it is Keith's favorite pie.

Everyone loves Mama Judy's pecan pie recipe, so I made a gluten-free version and a gluten-"full" version.  I also made a coconut custard pie on a gluten-free crust.  Mama Judy used to make a coconut custard pie (probably from Mrs. Dull's cookbook) but I found an appealing recipe clipped from a newspaper stashed in one of Granna's cookbooks.  It turned our very well.  I used frozen, prepared pie crust this year to save time.  The pies turned out just fine albeit with soggy bottom crusts, so I won't take the easy way out on pastry next year.

We've been rolling in pie and then cake for days.  It was a great weekend.

Granna's notes were her way to plan, organize and even savor the excitement of our visits.  She probably sat down at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee reviewing the list multiple times in preparation for a holiday.  When I look at the lists, I can see her working on them and her nut cake tastes like thanksgiving to me.

On Saturday:  The Chocoholic

May 16: Lemon Tunnel-of-Love Tea Cake

The Lemon Tunnel of Love Tea Cake recipe is from Desserts From The Famous Loveless Cafe cookbook.  In April, after a perfect breakfast at the Loveless, daughter Autumn and I decided that we needed to buy the Loveless recipe book as a memento of our trip to Nashville.

We were in Nashville during spring break to start exploring the colleges on Autumn's list of desirables.  Vanderbilt was number two on her list, just behind Duke, and this was her first campus tour.  Autumn's expectations were quite high as we embarked on the tour.

I believe in the power of a campus visit; you can never decide if a college will be suited to you without one.  As I began my own college search, I was thoroughly sold on Smith College as my perfect school.  The catalog featured the courses and majors that I wanted.  The local Smith alumnae club reached out to me frequently by phone and I attended a very nice tea at the home of a graduate.  In early October 1985, my parents took me to New York city for a few days before we boarded a train bound for New England to tour colleges on my list.  We visited Smith first, since I was absolutely convinced that I would apply Early Decision there.

My New England college tour, Mt. Holyoke 1985 - wearing a navy, polished cotton skirt that I made for the trip.

My mother visited admissions and the financial aid office while I toured the campus with a student named Cassandra.  It was a spectacular, New England fall day.  As Cassandra led me around campus, I noticed students hanging around alone, mostly inside the library looking glum and blasé.  None of the students seemed happy to be there.  Smith residence halls are called "houses" and are a cross between a dorm and a sorority.  During the tour of her house, Cassandra introduced me to her housemates as "Samantha from GEORGIA;" one word, heavily laden with subtext of REDNECK, KKK MEMBER, BUMPKIN and HICK.  The housemates all nodded in unison after the word spilled out of her mouth.  I looked around for a fire escape and tried to remember if I knew my way back to the car.  But, I didn't bolt.  I decided to let Cassandra continue my tour back to admissions so as not to make a scene and live up to their worst expectations of southern girls.

When I met my mother in a parking lot at admissions, I began to cry.  How could this hell-hole of depression and condescension be the same institution that seemed to perfect in the brochures?  My mother ordered me into the car and said "Dartmouth is on your top-ten list, it's less than two hours away, let's go."  I was still crying, at this point, and screamed "I'm not going to college!"  "Well, I don't care, I am going to drive to Dartmouth anyway" she replied.

Those were the last words uttered in the car for the entire 90-minute drive to Hanover.  Mom parked the rental car in front of the Hopkins Center for the Arts.  "I am going to admissions and financial aid.  You can sit here in the car, suit yourself" she said as she pitched the keys into my lap.  I fumed.  I thought of all kinds of really good retorts, excuses and justifications.  As I stewed, I looked around at the gorgeous October day.  I saw dozens of students outside enjoying the weather.  They were walking in groups, laughing, playing soccer and frisbee on the green.  I looked at the stately buildings surrounding the green.

Then, I decided that teenaged indignation was thirsty work and decided to go look for a Coke.  When I got out of the car and started walking toward the Hopkins Center, two students stopped, then smiled and asked "Are you a prospective?"  "Can we help you find something?"

I walked around, taking in the activity of the arts center, the satisfied air of the students, and my Coke from the Hopkins Center cafe.  I circled around the building and stopped in front of the window of the drama department's costume shop.  It was as if the dress forms and gravity-feed irons told me that there was a place for me at college... that college.  I applied Early Decision and I consider it my first great, mature, independent decision.

Autumn's visit to Vanderbilt did not end in tears and fury, but Vandy did drop a few places down her list.  She was disappointed in the main library as it seemed dark and dismal.  She was let down by the separation of first-year students into their own section of campus with its own commons and dining hall.  She would prefer to be mixed with upperclassmen in the dorms.  So, we will continue to search for the right fit and tour more of the colleges on her list.

Some selections inspire you and some disappoint; so it is with the Lemon Tunnel-of-Love Tea Cake.  I will admit that I baked it a little too long, but that was not the problem with this cake.  It is an oil cake instead of a butter cake (which I prefer).  But the main problem is the lack of bright lemon flavor.  I have a recipe for a Lemon Picnic bundt cake that I make for many pot lucks and other occasions.  It has that tangy lemon flavor, so despite our love of the cream cheese "tunnel," I will stick to my Lemon Picnic cake.

Next Saturday: Snow Cake

March 14: Boston Cream Pie

When Keith was in high school and college he had a summer job as a performer on the Stone Mountain Scenic Railroad.  He usually played a cowboy or Confederate soldier in a historical scene alongside the train's route; the train would slow down and stop so that the passengers could watch the action.  Sometimes, he was the announcer on the train, welcoming the passengers, providing trivia about the park or narrating the mini-plays.  One of his favorite jokes from his railroad announcer days was about a southern country bumpkin learning geometry:

When the bumpkin was instructed to find the area of a circle using...

, 

the redneck became outraged and insisted "Pie are ROUND, cornbread are square!"

In honor of Pi Day (3.1415... ), my Saturday Cake is Boston Cream Pie.  Its very name claims its New England Yankee heritage.  I had been in a quandary about how to celebrate Pi Day in this year of cakes.  My college friend, Laura Simard Regan,  suggested Boston Cream Pie as the best choice.  I met Laura my freshman year at Dartmouth and I know that I can trust her judgement on this because:  She was a math major and claimed to have graduated "Pseudo Cum Laude" and she is, herself, a Connecticut Yankee.  Plus, Laura has the good judgement to now reside south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Most of our gang at Molly's Balloon in Hanover for a birthday celebration.
That's me in the blue blazer with Laura, standing, right behind me.

When choosing the Boston Cream Pie recipe I knew that making a Yankee cake required a Yankee recipe.  I chose the recipe from The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook.  The King Arthur Flour Company is located in Norwich, Vermont, right across the Connecticut river from our Alma Mater.  King Arthur sells flour and baking specialty products at kingarthurflour.com.  KAF also offers baking classes and sells freshly-baked treats at their Norwich headquarters.  

In March of 2003, I took a vacation to attend a two-day French Baguette class at KAF.  I booked a long weekend at Breakfast On the Connecticut, a bed and breakfast inn in Lyme, New Hampshire (breakfastonthect.com) and drove up from my home in Washington, DC.  On the way up, I encountered snow storm that started in Connecticut and worsened the further north I drove.  Yet, I was determined!  My planned 8-hour trip became a 15-hour trip and I arrived in Lyme exhausted.  The next morning at the Baking Education Center I discovered that only three other students had been able to make it to class, so our two-day class was shortened to one day.  It was immensely enjoyable and I would love to take more classes there sometime.  Due to the storm, my hosts at the inn offered to share their dinner that night after the class so that I wouldn't have to get out on the roads.  Did they know I was a southerner and assumed that I couldn't drive in the snow?

My Boston Cream Pie

The recipe was located in the "Pies and Pastry"section of the cookbook, under a heading called "Pastry Mavericks."   It calls for topping the assemblage with "your choice of chocolate frosting."  I chose to chocolate ganache.  As you can tell, the cake layers are a little dark; the recipe instructed to bake for 30 minutes, but at 20 minutes, I checked and found the cake layers on the verge of burning!  The filling is pastry cream, made from flour, sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla.  Keith likes the ganache and the pastry cream, but acknowledges that the cake was a little dry.

I've made a pie that is a cake.  

I make my cornbread round (as any self-respecting southerner does, unless they are in a punchline).  

I am a southerner who drives in the snow and bakes on vacation.  

So, call me a Pastry Maverick!

Next Saturday:  Sheath Cake