7:50pm and I have the urge to bake almond pound cake. The recipe is my mother’s and everything about baking almond cake makes me think of her. From the smell of almond extract to licking out the bowl-it has my mother’s kitchen written all over it. But my biggest memory and smile comes at the very end when I’m placing the loaf pans in the oven. You see, when my mother made pound cakes when I was little, they always overflowed. She would curse and have to clean the oven and scrape cake from the sides of her pans. Fast forward to when I became an adult and made the pound cake myself for the first time. I placed trays under my pans and nervously waited for the cakes to overflow. It’s inevitable right? Every time Mom made them they set the smoke alarm off. I waited and kept checking the cakes but they never overflowed. Had I followed the recipe correctly? What had I done wrong? They tasted right. They looked beautiful. But….I didn’t have to clean the oven or scrape cake batter from the sides of the pans. After talking to my mom and having a good laugh about my childhood cake memories, we came to the conclusion that moms pans were smaller and she always overfilled them!
There is a little bit of sadness that my cakes don’t overflow. This childhood memory is as much apart of the recipe as the milk and eggs.
Thank you Mom for the memories. I bet you had no idea that setting off the smoke alarm and cursing while cleaning the oven would mean so much to me.
KidMitts 