Family recipes

By MARY JANE HOLT
Contributing Writer

A highly polished professional is what she is. Knows what a script is. Knows how to write, or use one. Knows what directions are. How to give and follow them. Plans. Organizes. Teaches. Takes care of every detail. Leaves nothing hanging. All i’s dotted. All t’s crossed. That’s just the way she is. One trusts her!

She is the last person I would expect to throw me a curve.

We are talking family recipes here. Now, any sane Southern woman knows family recipes is a subject unto itself. No rules apply. None. Some families share alike with one and all. When all the sharing is done, then each individual can follow the recipe to the letter or feel free to alter, change, enhance and or do whatever they want to with a recipe. Right?

Yeah, then some family members hoard, hide, and tease others with their treasured recipes. They antagonize to no end when it comes to certain “family” favorites. They want all the credit for the mouthwatering menu item. Will share with no one until age begins to overtake the hoarder, that is, then she picks someone to share with.

Now, I had my chance. She picked me. I said no. Wrong girl, I told her. I don’t do that much baking. Pass them on through somebody else, I said. So, Lynda gets picked.

And that has been a perfect arrangement for several years. Lynda did all the cake baking. Kept an empty freezer in the room off her kitchen and used it just for cakes. Baked them ahead of time and froze them. Pulled one out for every occasion you can imagine.

All this before she got a promotion with her company that keeps her traveling Monday through Friday and leaves her no time for baking.

SO, I tactfully, tastefully, and humbly (honest, very humbly) asked for the pound cake recipe. When humbly didn’t work, I resorted to reminding her that the recipe was originally offered to me. I forcefully pointed out that it was only because of my generosity and kindness and direction that she ended up with the recipes.

Finally, she dictates a recipe to me over the phone which actually sounded like any run-of-the-mill good pound cake recipe until she said, “Bake at 300 degrees for almost an hour.”

Yeah, almost. Not quite an hour, but almost.

Okay, easy enough, right?

I follow the directions, then I pour my beautiful batter into a large decoratively shaped fluted pound cake pan, place that pan into a preheated 300 degree oven, and set my timer for 50 minutes. That’s almost an hour, right?

When the timer goes off, I check my cake; my wobbly, somewhat soupy, cake that has not risen one smidgeon, much less thought about starting to turn golden brown or crusty on top!

Sabotage! I had been sabotaged! That’s all I could think. Fury boiled in me. Hot! With 90 people coming to my house this weekend, and no time to waste as countdown preparations take place, she had set me up for failure.

I turn the oven up to 325 degrees for 30 minutes. I turn on the oven light. I pull up a chair. I fume.

At the end of one hour and 30 minutes, my creation began to rise, but it clearly was browning too fast. Continuing my vigil, I turn it back down to 300 degrees. I set the timer for five more minutes. Then I stick in my first toothpick. Comes out mushy. I set the timer for five more minutes. Same thing. Five more. Same. Another five.

At the one hour and 50 minute mark, at last, I take from the oven a pound cake that is really getting much too dark at that point.

When Lynda emerges from her conference somewhere on the North Carolina coast, and finally answers my urgent page, the cake is setting on my kitchen counter and I’m trying to figure out how to “get her.”

At the end of my colorful telephone tirade, do you know what she said?

So sweetly, so calmly, “I should have told you that I never time my cakes. I just go by the smell. When they smell right, just for good measure, I stick in a toothpick and it always comes out clean. I was just guessing when I said ‘almost an hour.’”

I’ll get even. If you have any good ideas how I can do that, please e-mail me at maryjaneholt@aol.com