Autumn Memories & Grandma’s Apple Cake

Melancholy reflections;

Autumn, family, recipes and…

Grandma Alice’s Apple Cake!

Autumn reigns in my heart and is a favored season of many of my loved ones. It was Mom’s and has always been my favorite season. Every year when the season finally arrives I reminisce, recalling wonderful memories of Autumn; vivid colors, crisp air, fragrant autumn fruit, comfort food, hot cocoa, hot cider and, most of all, memories of time spent with family.

This year I feel not only melancholy but solemn and pensive. I feel there is so much meaning in the lessons of the earth and it’s seasons. I, most certainly, must be in the fall season of my life, perhaps more near my winter and final season than I may know. There have been many changes (very much like Autumn’s changing colors) in my life over the past year. I’ve experienced loss, grief, estrangement, sorrow, regret, repose and resolve. I’m learning more to accept the things that I cannot change and learning that change can take on many hues and color…just like Autumn leaves! Conclusions are not always as they seem and may bring forth new beginnings. We learn to wait on God’s timing. We transition…into His seasons for us.

While scouring through some of Mom’s cookbooks after she passed away I came across a special little gem. Mom bookmarked a recipe with a paper that had some hand drawn clocks on one side and a recipe for cinnamon rolls on the other. I was overjoyed when I found this gem! I recognized the hand drawn clocks. I drew them, when I was very young, when Mom was teaching me how to tell time! I held this little gem, nearly in disbelief, but could remember, quite vividly, sitting with my Mother and drawing out the clocks on the page. There is so much meaning in this piece of paper to me. It is as if Mom was telling me that we had a time, a season together and that there will be another time and season for us to be together again. 

And the meaning in the clocks being drawn on the back of a cinnamon roll recipe? Well, most certainly, it means…

‘It’s always time for a cinnamon roll!’

Another little gem…

This is Grandma Alice’s Apple Cake recipe card, front and back.

It didn’t photograph well but I love the recipe cards and scraps of paper that are Grandma’s and Mom’s, hand written. 

Autumn is a time that my Mother and Grandmother got their bake on. I have followed in those footsteps. I have recently taken inventory of recipe clippings, Grandma’s recipes, my cookbooks and some that were Mom’s, magazines that feature recipes and binders full of recipes that I’ve printed from the internet. I’ve tried many of these recipes and my intention was to try many more. I have to be realistic and ask myself though; how and when in the world, now that I am in this fall season of my life, am I ever going to try all of these recipes that I wanted to try? There are only two people in this house! Even if I attempted one recipe a day (impossible) I could never get to all of these ‘treasured’ recipes! I think I will have to come up with a strategy (unlike the gal in the movie Julie and Julia who went through Julia Child’s complete recipe book in a year) whereby I am able to make good use of this recipe collection of mine, even if it is just on a small scale. 

While I’m sure Grandma’s was a tasty cake I could not help myself and doctored it up a bit. With the addition of some fall spices and golden raisins it was a fantastic cake for my ‘melancholy bake on’! I’m sure Grandma wouldn’t mind!

This link will take you to the ‘updated’ recipe:

https://sites.google.com/site/recipesfromhomeandtherange/grandma-alice-s-apple-cake

‘Til we meet again…

Take time to make memories,

May you be blessed simply…

and simply blessed

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