My mother’s “Well, that’s not even a cake” cake

My mother has never been into baking. To start with she hasn’t been much into cooking in general, but she has become an accomplished cook, with the small unfortunate side effect that we, the kids, were her guinea pigs. But no harm done, we’ve grown up tall and healthy, and so polite that we hardly ever remind her of her past cooking misdeeds, only every time we get together, but, hey, absolutely lovingly!

The cakes, on the other hand, she was never interested in, and she remained so. She’d say things like “My children don’t like cakes”, which was a blatant lie, and when we’d confront her with it, she’d dismiss us with a wave of the head meaning “Well, the opinions differ”, as if our opinion of our interest in cakes differed from her opinion in our interest in cakes, but both were equally valid. We found that logic hard to argue against, but at times, we’d manage to pester her into baking, we were three kids after all, and she was only one mom, and our dad was oftest on our side, too. Somehow I remember that pestering as an autumn thing, in summers there was the vast abundance of fruits, and in the winter there were so many holidays and celebrations that we’d be fed up with cakes way before Christmas, and the whole spring was, for me at least, one long waiting for early May and the first sweet cherries. What I remember are the bright autumn Sundays, Sunday afternoons, when we’d go “Mom, make us a cake!” She had by that time dished out a good Sunday dinner, and was perhaps looking forward to putting her feet up and snatching half an hour with a book, and was thus even less willing to get up and make a cake than she would normally have been. So most of the time, she’d whip together this particular cake, and we’d go, “Well, that’s not even a cake!”, and she would argue that it was, namely it had a general cake form, and some of the main cake traits, like fruits, and sponge bread, and at times nuts, and if you squinted a bit, it looked like a cake too, so we’d end up sitting around the kitchen table, blissfully bickering whether it as a cake or not, and eat it all in one go.

And then I grew up, and moved thousands of kilometers from my mother, and became a decent cook myself, better then she was then, but not as good as she’s now, but I’m definitely better than her at desserts, by a large margin. Deserts are my forte! I’m also a mother myself, of two girls who seem to hold inexplicably long culinary grudges, “That was a very good roast, mom, you remember when you made them tough and chewy, dry as a — ”, “Yes, darling, it’s been three years since I last destroyed a Sunday roast, a third of your life ago! And you still mention it every time I make one! Will you ever let it go?” Chuckling with a full mouth “No.” I simply don’t know who they’ve gotten it from!

So I’m a grownup now, and a mother, and I enjoy making elaborate cakes and following strict, complex recipes, but when the autumn comes, and apples are at their best, I start longing after my mother’s “Well, that’s not even a cake!” cake. Not to invite guests, not to impress anybody, just for me and my girls, on bright Sunday afternoons. The cake, since it’s not even a cake, doesn’t have a proper recipe, it’s more of a loose narrative, and it goes something like this:

“Take some apples depending on how large tin you have, peel them and core them, and then stuff them with something you have in the house that you think would go nicely with apples, walnuts or hazelnuts or something like that, but if you don’t have any, that’s ok too, put some cinnamon on top, if you like cinnamon, drizzle them with brown sugar or honey, and then put them in the oven and bake them, and when they look kind of soft and baked, beat up some sponge cake, of whatever variety they make them where you come from, pour it over the apples, and bake it again. When the cake is finished, turn it upside down, take the bottom of the tin off, and if it looks kind of wet, put some more nuts on it, if you have any left, and some more honey, and bake it some more, at a lower temperature. It goes nicely with ice cream, and if you don’t have any, just send your youngest one down to the shop to buy some, and when she starts complaining that it’s not her turn, because she did it the last time, while her older sister was … — just look at her in that particular way your mom looked at you, you know that look, the one with the a slightly arched eyebrow, and smile to yourself as she flies down the stairs.”