The recipe states “3 or 4 eggs,” but “don’t worry,” Mommy told me then, “this is a forgiving recipe. It always comes out.” And it does.
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M
y daughter is coming tonight and I want to give her honey cupcakes. It’s almost Rosh Hashanah.
As I pull out my recipes that I keep in a painted metal box I notice how old some of them are. Fanning the index cards out on the white kitchen table one of them dark with age and streaked with coffee or grease from long ago when it sat unheeded on my kitchen counter takes me back. It’s written in a neat cursive that I don’t recall possessing but I must have because I wrote it down when I called my mother and got the details from her the expert. She didn’t quite remember how many eggs it needed so the recipe states “3 or 4 eggs ” but “don’t worry ” she told me then “this is a forgiving recipe. It always comes out.” And it does.
I’ve never failed when baking my mother’s honey cake or her wonderful cupcakes. The flavor varies from sinfully delicious to just very good but it doesn’t ever flop even if I omit an ingredient or two — with the exception of course of the honey. My mother’s honey cake doesn’t contain brown sugar nuts or the adulterants commonly added today. It’s sweetened with one full pound of honey. My mother used Golden Blossom poured from the jar. When I was little I’d stand beside my mother and watch the clear syrup swirl gently into the batter.
First Mommy “made a well” as she explained. I’d pull a chair to the counter stand and watch her work. My mother seemed tall to me then though she was only about five-foot-two; she usually wore a cotton shirtwaist dress covered by a colorful print apron that contrasted with her kerchief-covered soft brown hair and eyes.
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