Halloween is over, Thanksgiving is almost here, and based on the level of red/Santa/snowflakes I have been seeing in stores, it might as well be December already. Call me a grinch, but each holiday deserves to have its own time in the spotlight, and I am not a fan of the way that “the holidays” creep up earlier and earlier every year. Let Thanksgiving happen! Christmas can last for a whole month! CHILL.

Anyway, with the November-December holidays come pie. In my family, pie isn’t just a dessert; it brings up some history, strong opinions, and nostalgia-tinged emotions. Growing up, apple, pumpkin, and pecan were the types we usually would make for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Since I’ve acquired my own kitchen and pie dishes, I’ve toyed with these flavors, straying into the realm of salted caramel apple pie, sweet potato pie, and derby pie (I have yet to make this one), but my family was always about the classics, and the holidays were not a time to throw a new ingredient into the pie filling.

I haven’t even touched on the subject of pie crust, which is where the strong opinions come in. My parents have been happily married for 38 years, but for the first 18 years of their marriage, my Mom left the pie crust up to my Dad. It wasn’t a distaste of pie or a penchant for cake; rather, it was how intimidatingly perfect my Grandma Eleanor’s pie crust was. I honestly have no recollection of Grandma’s pie crust and couldn’t tell you what made it special; I just know somehow that translated to Dad making the crust and Mom making the filling. Dad was very particular about his technique, and there are hand-scrawled notes in the cookbook with the ratios of fat to water and how much of each ingredient that he uses. I inherited my Mom’s hesitancy to venture into pie crust making, but one day, I guess I just decided I wanted a pie so badly that I sucked it up and thought, “Ok, it can’t be that bad. It’s butter, flour, salt, and water. What’s the big deal?”
Well. It kind of helps if you have a rolling pin, but a wine bottle will do in a pinch. Counter space is also your friend, as is time. But setting out to make a pie is a funny thing because while I always have the end goal in mind, I somehow seem to forget how much work/time/effort is required between the dream and the taste of pie. I’ll finish the crust, be satisfied for a minute, and then realize, “Crap, I’m not even halfway done.” And then I’ll chop the apples or whatever and bemoan the process of peeling, slicing, etc. Even baking a pie takes FOREVER. An hour? Really? And then wait- it has to COOL? If nothing else, pie is a labor of love.
For whatever reason, I really got into pie making in September and October, baking at least 4 pies in a span of 6ish weeks. I taught some former students how to bake, and we hosted a bunch of friends for dinners, usually ending our meal with huge slices of pie . It was a happy time, marked mainly by the sense of accomplishment upon seeing the pie come out of the oven and delight once I got to I delve into the buttery crust and warm filling topped with melty vanilla ice cream (if your pie excludes ice cream, you’re doing it wrong.). Ushering in the first glimpses of fall with pie just felt right.
As I’ve reset the clocks for daylights savings time (it’s STILL kicking my butt. #gettingold), and the temperature has dropped, something changed; the mood switched from being festive to somber. And then on November first, it hit me, and it hit hard. The morning after Halloween, when I went to write the date in my journal, I realized how close November 18th was. November 18, 2018 is the first birthday that my Grandma Eleanor isn’t here to celebrate.

My last memories are of her a year ago at Thanksgiving. I hadn’t planned to go to New York that week, but her health was fading, and opportunities to travel “home” are infrequent, so Collin and I changed our plans and hopped on a plane to Rochester. While visiting my parents, we drove the few hours to her nursing home, which sat at the top of a hill in rural New York, for a birthday/Thanksgiving visit. I had in mind that it could be my last time with her, so despite our attempts to bring the party, I couldn’t ignore the sobering reason behind our visit. We made our way to her room in the carrying a Wegmans raspberry chocolate cake and some party supplies. My Mom, ever ready to brighten the mood, spoke in upbeat tones and helped Grandma eat her cake, talking with an energy that I appreciated but also recognized as an attempt to keep things as non-awkward as possible. Seeing Grandma go from being the one who hosted the grandkids for a week every summer, visited us more often than any other grandparent, raised three boys on her own, and trekked out to Ohio for our wedding in her late 70s to being generally non-responsive was really hard. Staring into the face of my Grandmother, I didn’t see her; all I saw was decline and disease that had overtaken her, and it left me trying to piece together words that weren’t enough. I tried to make what were my last words to her meaningful, but when we left, I remember wishing I had said more, and that there was some way I could have known she had heard me. Regret filled my heart, and I felt empty.
Fast forward to January. Leading up to the phone call, my Dad had sent some e-mails explaining that Grandma wouldn’t be with us much longer. The day of her death, my Mom texted me and asked if she and my Dad could call later, and I knew the reason why. My Dad expressed a surprising sense of relief and joy that she was no longer suffering, but I began to sob. I didn’t want her to be gone; I wanted her to be with us, who she really was, healed.
Because the snow and frozen ground in upstate New York in January isn’t conducive to funerals, we waited until May to bury her, giving everyone in our spread out family time to make arrangements. We spent the weekend together, glad for the reunion but sorry for the reason behind it. It came and went quickly, quite unlike the grief that settled over me after Grandma passed away.
The drawn-out timeline of her sickness, death, and burial turned the grieving process into an unpredictable, harsh monster. It took us a while to realize that anything was wrong, and even when we did, the disease still overcame her slowly, one step at a time. Grandma Eleanor was a strong woman, but I remember the day I realized something was making her weak. As I sat in the car waiting to leave for a family outing, I saw her stumble and almost fall in our driveway years before she was diagnosed or taken to a nursing home. That instant, it hit me: my tough-as-nails grandmother was sick. I cried then, and I cried after most visits with her from that point forward. Grieving while someone is still alive is a strange phenomenon because when they leave this earth, it feels surreal. You realize they’re fully gone even though pieces of them had been disappearing over time. People have told me that grief is a weird thing, and now I can see why. Does it ever end? Can you feel it sneaking up on you? Should I try to stave it off or dwell on it? After her death, I expected grief to hit me hard for a month or so and then fade, but instead, I grieved over time, and whenever I thought I was done, it’d catch me off guard.

Like that morning in November, and then again on November 9, when I dated my journal pages and thought, “9×2=18. In 9 days, it will be the first anniversary of Grandma’s birthday.” I started to cry and sat at my kitchen table for 20 minutes, desperately searching through my phone for old pictures of her, seeking one that showed her as I remembered her, not as she was the last time I saw her. I made a list of all the little things that she used to do or say, and then I reached out to family members I hadn’t spoken to in months to ask them for more. It was like she was slipping away from me a little bit- even though she is already gone- and I was grasping and clawing for anything I could cling to that reminded me of her.
When someone is gone, you take what you can get, no matter how insignificant it seems. And in my grandmother’s vast, irreplaceable absence, one thing I have is her recipes. She, like most, I’m guessing, had trademark recipes. Whenever she came to visit, we expected a giant tub of homemade pinwheels. At holiday dinners, her fruit salad with cooked dressing always had a place on the table. And on multiple birthdays, this cake, my great-grandmother Helen McKinney’s white cake with broiled frosting made an appearance. This recipe is surprisingly simple and therefore a little out of the ordinary for my blog. It was also clearly written in a different time, with the instructions telling the baker to “sprinkle nut meats on top.” Nut meats?!? Regardless of its whimsy, this recipe is a family favorite, and so in loving memory of Grandma Eleanor, in honor of cake in the midst of pie season, and in celebration of her birthday, here is this recipe.
Happy Birthday, Grandma Eleanor. I love you <3.


Helen McKinney’s White Cake with Broiled Frosting

Created by Jenny Barrett on November 17, 2018

An old school family recipe from my grandmother for a white cake deliciously topped with a caramelized brown sugar frosting and walnuts!

• Prep Time: 15m
• Cook Time: 40m
• Total Time: 1h 5m

• Yield: 9-12 servings

Ingredients

Cake

• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 cups white flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk, at room temperature
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 3 tablespoons shortening
• 1 egg, at room temperature
• 1 cup white sugar

Frosting

• 3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped

Instructions

Cake

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease an 8x8 pan with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Beat sugar and shortening together on medium speed until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
3. Mix in egg and vanilla, beating until incorporated.
4. Alternate between adding the milk and dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt), mixing gently to combine.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes.
6. Once cake is done and out of the oven, turn on broiler.

Frosting

1. While the cake bakes, mix together butter, sugar, and milk for frosting. The frosting will be thick.
2. Pour frosting mixture over hot cake and sprinkle the nuts on top.
3. Place cake under broiler until frosting is bubbly and topping is toasted, about 2-3 minutes.
4. Allow to cool and enjoy!

• Print