In praise of the “just because cake”
Who needs a birthday to celebrate being alive?
The summer before I started college, I got assigned a roommate (hi, Maur!!). We started chatting back and forth via Facebook messages and in one of these exchanges she mentioned that she liked to bake. This seemed incredibly grown up to eighteen-year-old me, who had only ever made cakes from box mixes (no shade!) or break-apart frozen Tollhouse cookies (which are legit delish), or rolled peanut butter balls for Christmas that my mother always deemed too large. (Hands sticky with rice crispies and peanut butter, I re-rolled and re-rolled, grumbling all the way.) I knew that people baked as a hobby, but I didn’t get it. I just wanted to fast forward to the eating part. Who had time to sift flour or wait til the oven pre-heated? Wait a second, what even was sifting flour anyway?
Almost two months to the day after my son was born, my beloved grandmother passed away. Gram Cracker was sweet as pie. She was gentle and kind. She loved to chat and to laugh, to hold hands on the swing outside. She was also plucky and got things done. She was an incredibly talented quilter, a writer and teller of stories, a planter of trees, a tender of flowers and barn cats, and she was a baker. My favorite cookies are her molasses cookies with a soft white frosting. She always seemed to just whip them up out of thin air and they were always delicious. Plus, they had molasses in them, so according to Gram’s rules, they were healthy :)
Not long after her death, once I started to get up and around again after my difficult birth, I started baking. Nothing too fancy. Chocolate chip cookies. Pumpkin bread. Chocolate chip cookies again. Then, sometime around my son’s first birthday, my baking hobby kicked into a higher gear. I made a pumpkin cake and cream cheese frosting from scratch for Bodie’s birthday. Michael and I stopped purchasing pre-made cookies at the store because I always had some on hand. I tentatively bought a jar of dry active yeast and tried my hand at a bread recipe titled “the easiest bread recipe ever” or something like that. I was baking. And I was loving it.
Now, I’ve got a sourdough starter and I bake a loaf every weekend. They’re not perfect; in fact, I had to throw a ruined loaf last week, but they turn out okay for the most part. I make muffins and breads for Bodie. I make cookies on cookies on cookies.
And recently, I’ve started making snacking cakes. I was hesitant to make a cake “just because” until I realized that I had an unfounded subconscious belief that you needed a reason to have a cake, but why? Cake is delicious. Life goes by fast. What more reason do we need? As I was baking my first “just because” cocoa yogurt cake (it has yogurt in it, so it’s healthy!) I realized that part of why I’ve been baking up a storm is that it makes me feel connected to Gram Cracker. When I have Bodie “tir” (stir) the batter or messily pour a cup of flour into a bowl, I am like Gram, handing little me a butter knife, a bowl of frosting, and a stack of cookies. When I run into my neighbor who is undergoing chemo, I ask if he and his wife would like a couple of slices of cake just because, and I am my Gram slicing pieces of pie for my cousins and me at any time of day just because we are there and she is there and there is a sweet treat to share.
I miss my Gram. Oh, how I wish she could hold my little boy. So I put Bodie in a backpack, I get out the sugar, the butter, the eggs. I make a cake just because I want to feel close—to her, to myself, my family, my neighbors. We ‘tir and we giggle, we frost and we conjure her in our kitchen. And sometimes Bodie turns to look at something I can’t see, waves, and says, “Baiiiiiii” in his sweet little voice, and I imagine her standing there in the corner, clapping her hands together like she always did before she was off to do something, and I think: what sweetness, this life.
With love from my kitchen table,
Kaia
I Loved this!!!