The Family Baker [antikvár]

Introduction The creativity of cooking, and especially baking, has always been an important part of my life. From the time I was old enough to reach the counter, my mother let me help her cook and bake. As a painter and creative artist, she loved (and still does) to use her hands and to show me how to make things. I loved watching her roll out pie pastry and decorate cakes. I clearly remember the first time she helped me tentatively push the plunger of a metal decorating tube to squeeze out a wildly sloping "Happy Birthday Daddy" on a tall chocolate cake. I was hooked. From that moment, I became the family cake decorator. My Grandmother Clara was dazzled, and never tired of telling the story of Susan baking her first "two-egg cake by herself and decorating it, too." The fine points are mercifully lost in history (surely I had help baking), but it became one of those dreadful family stories that stuck; to my ears it never seemed as adorable, or as hilarious, as it did to others. In fact, it is still embarrassing, though the truth is I can still remember how happy I was with that cake and the story makes a point about the importance of a young child's sense of achievement. When my own daughter, Cassandra, was about two, she pulled her chair up to the kitchen table to help me stir cake batter and, with just a little coaching, learned how to separate eggs by tipping them out into her hand. A few years later, she was just the right age to help me test cookie recipes for my children's cookbooks. It is no accident that she earns her living as a chef, baker, and restaurant consultant. And as children's skill and confidence grow, so do their accomplishments. Above my desk I have her photo, age five, gluing jelly beans on the sagging roof of a heavily-sugared gingerbread house we had made together. Hanging nearby is a "Best Cake" blue ribbon from the local Bridgewater Country Fair, which she won at age eleven for baking Anna Olson's Swedish Almond Butter Cake (see page 148). Anna's cake had by then been in our family a long time and had taken on a life of its own. It was the first cake I taught Cassandra to bake, and was our favorite recipe for every special occasion. Anna herself had been an important figure in my childhood. She was a family friend who stayed with my sister, Nancy, and me when our parents went on vacation. We couldn't wait for the treats that accompanied her arrival. She was an incomparable baker; I can still smell the perfume of butter and almonds that permeated the kitchen while she was baking and see her pink cheeks dusted with a touch of flour. Many years ago, I published one of Anna's recipes in my first children's cookbook. Nearly ten years after that book appeared, I received a phone call at Christmas from Lisa, one of Anna's daughters. Her mother had recently passed away, and Lisa, as she related the story, was trying to lift herself from a deep depression by collecting her mother's recipes. One recipe in particular eluded her; she could not find Anna's spritz cookies. Lisa was sharing this search for baking "memories" with her friend, Sonia.The week before