During the pandemical times, I started baking with my kids. I’ve always enjoyed the activity but haven’t spent much time on it since having babies. Baking is in my blood so it was bound to come back around once the haze of sleeplessness lifted.
So today my two children and I cobbled together a chocolate cake. I don’t even love chocolate cake, but my husband and kids do. What started as a Texas sheet cake turned into a two layer cake from a different recipe because I couldn’t find the right pan. By the time I was whipping the butter, my kids had found the lime I had cut up for my tea and squirted it all over each other’s heads and the floor. We carried on and ended up with an ugly but moist cake with a crap ton of buttercream frosting. Chocolate cakes have a proclivity for being dry so all in all I think ours was a success.
Even though baking with my kids is honestly exhausting and messy, I think it’s something I can’t help but pass onto them. I baked with my mom, dad, and Meme growing up. I can still remember making fruit cobbler with my Meme as a small child and wrote a little poem about it here. In my hometown, baked goods were things you made for celebrations and funerals. They’re what you took to church potlucks and birthday parties, and what you brought the shut-in down the street who has cancer. Baked goods are a love language.
Southern Living posted a recipe for blackberry jam cake on Instagram and I was immediately transported to Christmas Eve at my Mamaw’s. I can see the three layer spice cake as clear as day on her antique side board. I can taste the raisins and the pecans crunching together. My teeth ache a little thinking about the thick layer of caramel frosting slathered on top.
Sometimes I feel foolish for all of the hullabaloo baking creates because most people around me are so health conscious- they are barely interested in it. It’s “I’ll take a small piece” or “I’m not eating carbs right now.” I fall into these patterns, too, but I bake anyway. Sure there are healthy recipes for sweets these days and I’ve made a lot of them. Subbing maple syrup for white sugar and apple sauce for oil. The kind of baking I grew up doing and enjoy the most is inherently decadent. Butter creamed with sugar is what you need when your dog dies or you had a baby or you’re celebrating a 50th birthday- not an almond flour cupcake with a light glaze.
Maybe a brownie from scratch or a slab of coconut cake will brighten one persons day or at least make my kids happy. Maybe my children will learn a thing or two about mixing dry ingredients and wet separately and then combining them gently. Or they’ll think back on standing in our small kitchen crowded together eating spare chocolate chips while I whipped the butter.
What is something you enjoy doing that isn’t necessarily productive but important to who you are?
Kacie B. Sharpe 