Sweet Memories

A weekend of rain is all the winter it seems we’re going to get in Southern California this year. Still, the gray skies set my mind and spirit on homespun things. I signed up for a knitting class. I need something different—something more creative than technology can provide—to occupy my hands, mind, and nervous energy each night. And I’ve just spent the morning baking. For all our growing awareness of the evils of sugar, nothing transports memories through time like homemade sweets. On our close-knit cul-de-sac I’m always assigned desserts for parties. Tonight I’m bringing salted caramel tarts to an Oscar screening, and, as I set the dulce de leche in a roasting pan to thicken, I think of my cousin Chris and his wife Laurel. It was a recipe they introduced us all to one Thanksgiving, a new option to sit aside the pumpkin, apple, and pecan pies at my Aunt’s house. It was my aunt who taught me to bake when I was little. We would have sleepovers and she would take me through every recipe, step by step. I can still picture myself standing on a stool in their tiny kitchen in Van Nuys, she in her nightie, finessing a wooden spoon through the batter, turning the big white bowl in the crook of her bent arm. I have a bowl just like it, a Williams Sonoma standard that I’ve had for 20 years now.

But not everyone likes salted caramel tart. Some people, like my husband, like chocolate more than just about anything. So I flip through my old recipe book and find a yellowed entry for fudge pie with walnuts. I am delighted beyond words to discover I have all the ingredients on hand. At the bottom of the recipe there’s a note from his mom, who passed three years ago. “In my experience, it slices much better if you chill it first. But it’s a wonderful recipe to serve to very special friends.” It’s signed, T.D. for Terry Davis, with a smiley face, and I stop to imagine what scraps of my life’s work will be unearthed later by my kids, my grand kids— and what, out of the great swath of if, will be meaningful to them. To make the crustless fudge pie I use the hand mixer that the mother of my uncle (I’m never sure what that would make her–a great aunt, maybe?) gave me at my bridal shower, 29 years ago. Still works like a charm. Just like the simple joy of placing the large near empty bowl laced with streaks of thick, sweet fudge in front of Lon. A thousand memories of pies and cakes and parties come flooding back as I see him smile at the sound of those five magical words, “Want to lick the bowl?”

Have a sweet and Blessed Sunday. And even if the movie Nebraska doesn’t win best picture, remember, it should.