Keeper of the Recipe Box

on keeping the connection between generations alive, through cake.

This loaf cake may not look like much, but it was my grandfather and his cousin Charles’ favorite cake from childhood and beyond. Studded with raisins and walnuts, scented with cinnamon and cloves, it is a simple yet satisfying cake that gives off cozy winter vibes. I found the recipe while going through my Aunt Jean’s recipe box that is now in my possession after she passed away last summer at ninety seven — her warmth, intellect and humor intact up until the last moment, as she had hoped it would go in the end.

The recipe was written in my grandmother’s handwriting, my Aunt Jean’s older sister who died when I was six. When I see pictures of my grandmother I am not sure if my memories are my own, or if the photos themselves have been printed into my mind, made to act like memories. My Aunt Jean swooped right in and took over the role of grandma, for me and my next oldest sister especially, so it felt like there was almost never a gap. Lucky me, I got almost forty more years with her. 

I don’t think of home cooked meals when I think of my Aunt Jean, if fact, I couldn’t name one memory of her standing over a stove and cooking a meal, although I’m sure it happened. Instead I think about the box of Entenmann’s Crumb Cake she’d have waiting for us every time my sister and I would go to New Jersey to visit. Homemade crumb cake is delicious in its own right, but fluffy overly sweet store bought powdered sugar bonanza crumb cake, holds a special place in my heart. I recently made a crumb cake recipe that used half whole wheat flour and I thought to myself, nope, this is not the place to sprinkle in some health. When I tasted it I knew I was right. 

My other food memories of my Aunt Jean include the jar of thin crisp gingersnaps always on her kitchen counter, a perfect cookie in my opinion. The dish of Werther’s Originals and mug of Dum Dums on the glass coffee table in the living room. Always there, always full, to every child’s delight. I think of how much she loved food even though in her later years she had to eat pretty bland, much to her annoyance, and how glad she would’ve been to know that the Italian feast we had after her funeral, at a nondescript place off the parkway I almost mistook for a strip club, was some of the best Italian food I’ve ever had. In buffet form, nonetheless, which elevates it almost to art. Hidden gems of New Jersey. 

I find myself thinking about the various cakes I would make every time I visited during the pandemic, driving down the thruway past the endless strip malls on Route 17, to her quiet street in Rutherford. The first time I went I brought a crumb cake I had made from a Melissa Clark recipe with whatever was in my pantry. We ate it outside in her driveway, six feet apart, each of us with our own lawn chair and TV table, bundled in spring jackets on a warm enough April afternoon. Then I wiped everything down as if it were a crime scene and we air hugged each other goodbye. After that there was always cake. 

I wish I had known about my grandma’s coffee cake recipe at the time, which I also found in the recipe box. It would’ve been nice to eat it together at her kitchen table. I made it a couple weekends ago for my parents, my dad remembered eating it growing up, and it was excellent. The cake itself was sturdy but light, thanks to a few whipped egg whites, and the crumb topping, sprinkled both inside and on top of the cake, with a bold heaping tablespoon of cinnamon and a handful of toasted walnuts, hit all the right spots. It is the only coffee cake recipe I’ll ever need. 

I am now the Keeper of the Recipe Box and consider it my duty to carry on the tradition of baking my family’s cakes and keeping the connection between generations alive. There is magic in the way food can connect us, I feel it deeply. I know for myself that one of the best ways to conjure my Aunt Jean’s spirit when I miss her so much and wish we could talk on the phone like the inter-generational girlfriends that we were, is to make crumb cake. Although not the recipe with the whole wheat flour. She would’ve agreed with me that cake is not the place to slip in some vitamins. That’s what bread is for. 

My sweet Aunt Jean at ninety, taken on my Holga