A Homemade Life (3 page)

W
hile we're in the business of getting started, I'd like you to meet my mother, too. I think you'll like her. It's hard not to.

For one thing, she's quite petite; barely over five feet tall. “Five feet and three-quarter inches,” actually, is what she would tell you. When someone hugs her, she almost disappears, swallowed up in arms and fabric. Like those impossibly tiny lamps and teacups you find in doll-houses, she inspires a lot of cooing, and though she's very assertive, people often want to pat her on the head. Luckily, she has a special trick for times like these, when a little height would come in handy: she can trot around in a pair of high heels as though they were bedroom slippers. Legend has it that she wore them straight through her pregnancy with me, with nary a swollen ankle to be seen. She may be eligible for the senior discount at the movie theater, but she's very much a fox. She also, incidentally, makes a fine pound cake, and between you and me, that's the clincher.

My mother is the baker in the family. It's always been that way. She can make all manner of things, but in most cases, my father was the savory cook and my mother, the sweet. He was the mad scientist, the Benjamin Franklin type, flying his kite in the proverbial lightning storm, while my mother is more of the pastry chef ilk: methodical and precise,
with measuring cups and measuring spoons and much less mess. She loves recipes, and she executes them exactly. That's a trait she passed down to me, along with a load of others for which I am very grateful. It's from my mother that I learned how to plan a menu, how to throw a dinner party, how to keep a check register, and how to spit cherry pits from the window of a moving car. She also taught me that, when in San Francisco and in need of a bathroom, all you have to do is walk commandingly into the stately Campton Place Hotel, as though you had legitimate business there, and cut through the lobby to the bathroom on the left. That's a skill that has come in handy more often than you might think.

We weren't the type of family to have dessert every night, but when the occasion demanded it, my mother shook out her apron and got to work. She made Katharine Hepburn's famous brownies for my school bake sale and, for my birthday, a pink layer cake from a Junior League cookbook, slathered with raspberry frosting. For dinner parties, she made apple crisp with walnuts and brown sugar or nectarine cobbler with blueberries. I've never had her chocolate cheesecake, but I've heard about it: namely, that she once, on a whim, set it atop the scale, and it weighed in at a terrifying five pounds. That's why I've never had it. She rarely made it again.

My mother's annual holiday baking bonanza was, until it petered out a few years ago, the highlight of the season for a sizable fraction of Oklahoma City. The Saturday before Christmas, she and I would load up the backseat with cookie tins, each lined with red or green cellophane and filled with sweets, and we'd drive around town, delivering them to the doorsteps of family friends. It's the closest I ever came to having a paper route.

Then, of course, there was her blueberry-raspberry pound cake, a perennial classic. It lay dormant for the bulk of each year but awoke without fail in July to accompany us to picnics and barbecues. It's scented with kirsch and shot through with berries, and it is
delicious.
To me, it's what summer tastes like. My mother found the recipe in a magazine article about food processors, and it's been in her repertoire ever since.

Most years, the cake made its seasonal debut at one of the outdoor jazz concerts at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. This was back
when my mother used to volunteer there, and when the museum was housed in the old Buttram Mansion. In the summers, the museum would host jazz concerts on its back lawn on Saturday nights, on the wide strip of grass that ran down to the rectangular reflecting pool and a marble statue of the Three Graces. Admission was free, and the better part of the neighborhood would come, toting blankets and picnic baskets. My parents had a wicker picnic basket that opened at the top like a present, and they'd fill it with cold roasted chicken, Burg's potato salad, and blanched green beans with vinaigrette, along with some sort of dessert, which, at least a couple of times each summer, was my mother's pound cake. While it was still light outside, we would unfold the blanket and eat dinner, and then, before dessert, I would be allowed to run around the grounds until dark. I usually got to invite a friend along, and we would torment the toads in the grass near the reflecting pool or, when I was brave enough, climb trees. (I hate splinters.) Once, during the summer after first grade, my friend Jessica and I invited our mutual crush Lucas to come to a concert with us, and she tortured me by saying that she planned to take him up into one of the trees and kiss him. Much to my relief, she didn't, and anyway, we all drifted out of touch not long after. But fifteen years later, when we were twenty-two, I ran into Lucas while shopping with my mother in a grocery store in Tulsa and spent the next three years as his girlfriend. I am very proud of that, especially because I didn't have to get any splinters to make it happen.

I know there are a million recipes out there for pound cake, and probably berry versions, too, but as you can see, I consider this one to be very important. It accompanied me through some crucial times. It's also delicious, and it's my mother's, and more than any of that, it has the lightest, most delicate crumb I've ever seen on a pound cake. In fact, I'm tempted to call it a butter cake instead, because the word
pound
is too heavy for what is actually going on here. It's rich, yes, but not too much so, and its crumb is fine and tender. The batter is very smooth, and folded gently around fragile berries and scented with fruity liqueur, it bakes up into the kind of cake that you can't help but want to eat outdoors. Preferably on a picnic blanket, with your mother.

BLUEBERRY–RASPBERRY POUND CAKE

i
love this cake as is, of course, but because I happen to live near a thicket of blackberry bushes, I've discovered that they are also lovely here, in place of the usual blueberries and raspberries. For that variation, I recommend omitting the kirsch (it's a bit too fruity for the dark flavor of blackberries) and instead adding 1 teaspoon each of grated orange and lemon zest with the flour.

 

2 cups plus 8 tablespoons cake flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

5 large eggs

1
²
/
₃
cups sugar

2½ cups (10 ounces) unsalted butter, diced, at room temperature

2 tablespoons kirsch

1 cup blueberries, rinsed and dried well

1 cup raspberries, rinsed and dried well

 

Set an oven rack to the middle position, and preheat the oven to 300°F. Butter a standard-sized 9-cup Bundt pan and dust it with flour, shaking out any excess. (If your pan is nonstick, you can get away with a simple coating of cooking spray, no flour needed.)

In a medium bowl, whisk together 2 cups plus 6 tablespoons flour, the baking powder, and salt.

In the bowl of a food processor, blend the eggs and sugar until thick and pale yellow, about 1 minute. Add the butter and kirsch, and blend until the mixture is fluffy, about 1 minute, stopping once to scrape down the sides of the bowl. If the mixture looks curdled, don't worry. Add the dry ingredients and process to just combine. Do not overmix. The batter should be thick and very smooth.

In a large bowl, toss the berries with the remaining 2 tablespoons flour. Pour the batter over the berries, and, using a rubber spatula, gently fold to combine, taking care that all the flour is absorbed. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spreading it evenly across the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the cake's center comes out clean, 1 hour to 1 ¼ hours.

Transfer the cake to a rack, and cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Carefully invert the cake out of the pan onto the rack, and cool for at least 20 minutes before slicing. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature.

 

NOTE:
Sealed in plastic wrap and stored at room temperature, this cake will keep nicely for 2 or 3 days. And it also freezes well. Once, when my parents went to visit a friend in Aspen, my mother baked one of these cakes the week before, froze it, and then packed it in her suitcase. It defrosted en route, and they ate half for dessert that night. Then, the next morning, their friend warmed leftover slices on the grill for breakfast. My mother highly recommends that.

 

Yield: 10 to 1 2 servings

I
was not an easy child. I guess you could say that I was fearful, but that alone doesn't adequately capture it. I was born with my hands over my ears, and I don't mean that metaphorically. Any sort of loud noise—thunder, vacuum cleaners, backfire from cars—made me cry as though on cue. But it wasn't only noise. I was also morbidly afraid of blood, needles, and people with any type of visible injury. Also, my head was enormous. I wound up in tears every time my mother tried to wedge it through a turtleneck. I was not a fun, happy-go-lucky kid, the kind who sticks her hand in the birthday cake and smears frosting all over her smocked dress. My parents, as you can imagine, were quite disappointed by this. On my first birthday, my mother carefully set the whole scene: me in my high chair, enormous cake on the tray in front of me, camera poised and ready. But I wouldn't touch the frosting, not even with a fingertip. And, on top of all that, I also hated bananas. Kids are supposed to love bananas. When all else fails, that, at least, is supposed to be easy.

My parents did their best. To ease her mind, my mother once consulted a psychic. The psychic said that I was a “new soul,” that this was my first time on earth, so quite naturally I was fearful. This didn't explain the turtleneck problem, but still, it was something.

But new soul, old soul, if the me of twenty-five years ago could see what's in my freezer right now, she would scream. Lurking within its
icy depths are no fewer than six ripe bananas, hard and frosty-skinned, lying in wait like small, shriveled snakes. It's like a stockpile of tropical fruit terror. And what's more, I
love
it. Growing up really is great.

I'm not exactly sure of the chain of events that led to my conversion, but I do know that it started with a banana nut bread made by Linda Paschal, the mother of my childhood friend Jennifer. The Paschals lived in the house diagonally behind ours, and our families became friendly when Jennifer and I, then five and three, heard each other playing in our respective backyards. Not long after, our fathers built a gate through the fence, and we spent the next several years running back and forth from one house to the other, playing with my plastic toy ponies, staging elaborate lip-synch performances to Juice Newton's “Angel of the Morning,” and eating, as it would happen, her mother's banana bread. Such is Linda's talent with quick breads that not even I could resist. Her banana bread was a model of the species: moist, tender, and spotted with walnuts. It was soulful and persuasive, familiar and softly scented, like the nape of a baby's neck. I have thought of it often in the years since, wondering if it shouldn't be produced
en masse,
sold in drugstores, and fed to anyone in need of calming.

Of course, it would take many doses of Linda's bread before I was solidly on board with bananas, and even today, I am no great fan of eating them plain. But I find it very easy to tuck away baked goods made from them. Sometimes I buy bunches of bananas just to bring them home and let them go brown. There's something profoundly reassuring about having a bunch at the ready, ripe and speckled and on the verge of stink. It's like hoarding gold bullion, only this type of gold needs to be kept in the freezer or else it will start to rot. I love to bake with bananas. They make baked goods miraculously moist, with a sort of sweet, wholesome perfume that, I sometimes imagine, Betty Crocker herself might have worn.

If I didn't watch myself, I would probably dump mashed bananas into anything that held still long enough to let me. I cannot have too much banana cake with chocolate ganache spread over the top, or too many banana-scented bran muffins. But my standby banana vehicle is
the one that started me down the road in the first place: the tried-and-true, the humble loaf called banana bread.

I love the classic banana-nut combination, just like Linda Paschal used to make. But I also like my banana bread with more exotic additions, like shredded coconut or dark rum, and my all-time favorite is a plucky variation involving chocolate and crystallized ginger. It's a formula I stumbled upon a few years ago, with the help of my friend Kate.

One Saturday morning, when Kate met up with her usual running buddy Glenn, he handed her a present. It was heavy and rectangular and wrapped in foil, and when she tore into it, she found a loaf of homemade banana bread flecked with chocolate chips and chewy ginger. Had I been Kate, I probably would have hidden it away and hoarded it, but lucky for us all, she is a better person. That night, she invited me to dinner, and after big bowls of mussels and a baguette, she whipped a carton of cream and served me a thick slice of the cakelike bread with a dollop on top. And then, bless her heart, she didn't even bat an eyelash when I ate three slices. In fact, she nearly matched me at two and a half and may have outdone me in cream consumption.

These days, I bake banana bread all the time, and I usually do it as Glenn did, with chocolate and ginger. It's homey but a little sophisticated, and it's almost impossible to stop eating. The flavors of banana and chocolate get along so well, and ginger makes them even better, cutting through their richness with its spicy heat. It's the kind of thing that begs to be cut into big, melty slices while the loaf is still hot.

I am still not sure how I feel about turtlenecks and thunder, but I'm willing to bet that, with enough banana bread, I could find a way to warm to them, too.

BANANA BREAD WITH CHOCOLATE AND CRYSTALLIZED GINGER

t
his recipe is my take on Glenn's. If you don't have any chocolate chips lying around, try chopping up a bar of chocolate instead. I like the look of the irregular chunks and shards that result.

 

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

¾ cup sugar

¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips

¹
/
₃
cup finely chopped crystallized ginger

2 large eggs

1½ cups mashed banana (from about 3 large ripe bananas)

¼ cup well-stirred whole-milk plain yogurt (not low fat or nonfat)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

 

Set a rack in the center of the oven, and preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a standard-sized (about 9 by 5 inches) loaf pan with cooking spray or butter.

In a small bowl, microwave the butter until just melted. (Take care to do this on medium power and in short bursts; if the heat is too high, butter will sometimes splatter or explode. Or, alternatively, put the butter in a heatproof bowl and melt in the preheated oven.) Set aside to cool slightly.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt. Add the chocolate chips and crystallized ginger and whisk well to combine. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, lightly beat the eggs with a fork. Add the mashed banana, yogurt, melted butter, and vanilla and stir to mix well. (The same fork works fine for this.) Pour the banana mixture into the dry ingredients, and stir gently with a rubber spatula, scraping down
the sides as needed, until just combined. Do not overmix. The batter will be thick and somewhat lumpy, but there should be no unincorporated flour. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, and smooth the top.

Bake until the loaf is a deep shade of golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour. If the loaf seems to be browning too quickly, tent with aluminum foil.

Cool the loaf in the pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Then tip it out onto the rack, and let it cool completely before slicing—unless you absolutely can't help yourself, in which case, dig in.

 

NOTE:
Fully cooled, this bread freezes beautifully. And it tastes delicious cold, straight from the freezer. To protect it from frost, wrap it in plastic wrap and then again in aluminum foil.

 

Yield: about 8 servings