I’m not sure I trust anyone who doesn’t like cake. Sorry, that is just how it is. So, when I was thinking about a new blog topic, I thought of occasions past, captured in photos, and my mind went immediately to cake. (Especially since I had already written about noodles.)
Do all families have a “signature cake”? I suspect many do. Ours, going into its third generation, is a sour cream coffee cake with nuts, which is equally good for breakfast, a mid-morning or afternoon snack, or for dessert. It’s buttery, cinnamony, and just totally delicious. It is known by the name “Jewish Nut Ring” in our family, although we are not Jewish, and I think that my mother got the recipe from a women’s magazine, probably sometime in the 1950s. Our recipe is very much like this one but we would never, NEVER add raisins or chocolate chips as suggested here, and ours includes walnuts, not pecans, and involves pouring melted butter on top before baking. My mom had a special round pan for this (now my sister has it), but I found a suitable one years ago at a yard sale for just this purpose.
Do all families also have signature birthday cakes? I know many who do. My sister’s was a white cake, baked in a rectangular baking dish, split in half and spread with apricot jam, reassembled and coated generously with whipped cream. I think it fell out of favor some time ago. Mine is a keeper – the Chocolate Pinwheel Cake, very much like this one, which has been tracked down to a 1954 recipe “courtesy of Baker’s Chocolate and Carnation Evaporated Milk,” two of the main ingredients. So, though I never asked her about it, is likely to stem from my mom browsing through those women’s mags again.
Our version, passed down through a series of hand-written recipe cards and pieces of dog-eared note paper, has an important difference from the above recipe, in that the filling has a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of instant coffee instead of more chocolate. And, really, more chocolate is not what is needed in this cake. Swirling an unadulterated, and almost obscene, amount of pure melted semi-sweet chocolate into the batter to make the “pinwheel” design is the key methodology. When it cools, it forms an intense, crunchy chocolate orgy, which is offset somewhat by the fluffy, not too sweet mocha filling.
Various other cakes have come and gone, witnessed by this little parade of photos, but these are the two with the most memories and staying power. It’s no wonder, as they are delicious, but also evoke special times in the kitchen and at the table, sharing sweet moments bite by bite. I’d love to hear about other cake memories!
