Caramel Cake
This one isn’t about Mom, except it is. Please indulge me.
Flower rings with my daughter, Luca. I think we were at a park in Denmark, maybe 2019?
Young Luca with the iconic Austin “I Love You So Much” graffiti on the side of Jo’s Coffee.
Mother/Daughter portrait. London, maybe 2012?
Seriously the cutest little nugget ever! Photo by the amazing Matt Lankes.
Luca and I have been some places and seen some things!
Luca is our 3rd Amigo, or as ZZ Top would say our Tres Hombre. We’re going to have to figure out empty nest. I’m sure we’ll manage. :)
When we were locked down for COVID, my Reed family would gather on Zoom to visit. One time we issued a challenge for everyone to recreate album covers. This was our offering.
A Bean family tintype portrait by Lumiere Tintype taken at the Trans Pecos Festival of Music + Love in Marfa, TX in 2019. (Don’t mess with Luca!)
This showed up as a Facebook memory this week. Sob.
If you want to bawl your eyes out, watch this video from the movie Mamma Mia! This song was in my head all day Saturday when I dropped my kid at college.
Mom and her first grandchild, my daughter, Luca. They adored each other.
We dropped my daughter, Luca, off at college on Saturday, something I didn’t think would affect me that much since she is literally going to school like 4 miles away, just across the river, at the University of Texas. Boy, was I wrong.
I mean, to be clear, Luca was pretty much already hatched. She’s super independent and has been driving herself to school on the other side of Austin for years. Luca grew up going to summer camp for months on end and just did a graduation trip to Europe with a friend. So, what’s the big deal about college? Well, something is. It’s like a line in the sand that once crossed keeps you from going backwards. I think it’s that as a mom you spend so much time and energy trying to keep these creatures alive that it feels freaking bizarre to have them not under your jurisdiction. I was speaking with one friend today who commented that even though you often rarely saw these teens when they lived in your house you, on some level, were tracking them throughout the day subconsciously. And, now, you’re not supposed to.
Since the move wasn’t such a big deal (I kept joking that if Luca forgot anything she could call me and I would drive by and throw it out the car window) there wasn’t a lot of buildup to the big day. Luca is pretty environmentally conscious and doesn’t like to buy a lot, so school shopping mainly happened in our house. “Can I have this chipped Buc-ee’s mug?”, “Which lamp can I take?”, and stuff like that. One thing she did want was a hairbrush. She really likes mine, a Mason Pearson that my mother gave me when I went to college (they are crazy $ and last forever!) so I reveled in actually being able to give her something she wants and told her just to take it. I’ll find a new, less expensive one. I did get Luca to buy some new bedding, but that was online and kind of boring. (Come on! I’m a professional shopper! Like literally.) Packing was procrastinated so, honestly, the house didn’t feel all that different until maybe the day before. Luca handled all of the registration stuff so I didn’t even know where we were going or when. I expected the day-of process to be terrible, envisioning hot, sweaty lines of cranky people in burnt orange. Well, hats off to UT because they were organized as hell! We got in and out of the key pickup situation at the baseball stadium, parked right in front of the dorm, unloaded, and were done in 45 minutes. It all happened so fast that I think I was genuinely in a state of shock.
I told Luca that my mother used to always make my bed when I moved in somewhere. I went to 2 years of boarding school and then Mom also took me to Rhode Island for my first year of college. That was her thing: making my bed. It made her feel like I was settled enough that she could leave. I wanted to make Luca’s bed but her sheets were at the bottom of her trunk and she couldn’t be bothered to find them, so I didn’t insist. My husband and I asked Luca if she wanted us to stick around or take her to lunch and she declined saying she just wanted to be alone. Good luck with that, kiddo, welcome to having a roommate. Again, we didn’t insist and, instead, scooted out of the dorm and into the car, not knowing what to do with ourselves. I mean, we figured it out, we took ourselves out to lunch and then went home and went our separate ways. I got back in bed and stayed there for the remainder of the afternoon. I took a crazy deep nap and woke up feeling like I’d been run over by a truck. I cried a lot. I was FREAKED OUT by how freaked out I was by this event. I’ve always identified as a not very traditional mom. I think perhaps that is a defense mechanism so that I might have more wiggle room to get things wrong. But, at the end of the day, I’m a mom either way and my kid is gone. I’m amazingly proud of her, at UT she’s doing Plan II Honors AND Architectural Engineering AND the Jefferson Scholar’s Program. I mean, hot damn! But, deep down I kind of ache.
My sister, Elisabeth, saves all of her correspondence. She’s got a big accordion folder of letters from over the years. I’m not as organized so I had forgotten that Mom used to write us all of the time when we were in school. Elisabeth has this large treasure trove of postcards with Mom’s recognizable scrawl on the back. Mom totally made an effort, buying cards with cool images (I do remember one of Martha Graham she sent which hung over my bed in 11th grade) and actually mailing them regularly. When we walked into the UT check in area on Saturday I was ushered to the side with the other parents. There was a table where you could write a postcard to your kid and they would deliver it as a surprise. Remarkably, I remembered Luca’s room number. Unsurprisingly, I spelled the name of her dorm wrong. I need to get with the damn program. Be like Dale. I think my sadness is compounded by missing my mom, she was just so good at all of this. I was just telling Luca about Mom coming to pick me up after my 11th grade year at the School of the Arts. Mom parked that metallic camel Chevy Citation diagonally on the grass near the emergency exit, threw down the hatchback, and Tetris-ed the crap out of my belongings, miraculously getting everything in. I have no idea where Dad was but we didn’t need him. Be like Dale.
On a side note, I was also just reminiscing with my sister about how we used to eat peanut butter AND butter sandwiches as children. Seriously, what the hell? How do you make peanut butter even more caloric? That’s how Mom made them. Elisabeth still eats them that way but I gave into societal pressures years ago. Be like Elisabeth.
A few years ago after Mom died, Elisabeth asked the poet, Maya Stein, to type up one of her favorite poems for me for Christmas. I have it taped to the wall in my studio. I thought it was perfect for today.
the quiet, and the cicadas behind it
Maybe you’re feeling it, too,
the largeness of space left by absence,
certain days dizzy with so many molecules spinning in the orbit of memory,
the million conversations you’re still having with the person no longer on the other end of the phone.
How this kind of missing brings certain scents back —
his homemade bread,
the interior of her Lincoln Continental,
fresh laundry drying on a clothespin line in the breeze of a Midwest summer —
and when you lift a glass of cold water to your lips,
you hold that first sip on your tongue longer than you used to.
Maybe you’ll never be done grieving,
or maybe this is what grief is,
stillness echoing with an elegy that holds the particulars of song,
like a late summer evening blinking into fall —
all that quiet, and the cicadas just behind it.
-Maya Stein
So, what recipe goes with today? I looked in Mom’s files for something with peanut butter and came up short with the exception of some Indonesian stuff I’ve already shared. So, I figured I would go for comfort food and one of my Dad’s faves, Caramel Cake. Freaking yum. Mom and Dad know Matt & Ted Lee from Southern Foodways stuff, so I trust the source.
SOUTH CAROLINA CARAMEL CAKE
By Matt and Ted Lee
Mastering the icing is a challenge. Should you succeed, you'll be rewarded with burnt sugar bliss.
Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for the pans
2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus more for the pans
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup whole milk
Icing
1 1/2 cups whole milk
4 cups sugar
10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) butter
2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
hot water
Directions:
To make the cake
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease and flour two round 9 x 2-inch cake pans. Pour about a tablespoon of flour into each of the pans and roll it around, tapping as you go, until the sides and bottom are covered completely with a thin layer of flour. Tip the pans and tap out excess flour.
In a large mixing bowl, mix thoroughly with a whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda.
In a separate large bowl, beat the butter with an electric mixer until creamy, about 30 seconds. Add the sugar in 1/2-cup measures, beating about 15 seconds after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary, until the mixture has lightened in color and become fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the eggs and egg yolks, one at a time, and the vanilla, beating for 15 seconds after each addition.
Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in thirds, alternating with additions of the milk. To avoid overmixing the batter, mix gently with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula after each addition, until the ingredient is just incorporated. Beat until all the ingredients have been incorporated, and then just a few strokes beyond. Divide the batter between the cake pans and spread the tops evenly.
Bake until a cake tester or toothpick emerges clean, about 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and let the cakes cool in their pans on a rack for 10 minutes, then slide a thin paring knife around the edge of the pans and invert the cakes. Turn each cake again so its rounded top is facing up and cool the cakes completely on the rack.
For the icing
Pour the milk and 3 cups of the sugar into a large, deep, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat, mixing with a whisk. Add the butter and the salt, whisking occasionally until the butter melts. When mixture just simmers, cut the heat, but keep over the warm burner.
Pour the remaining 1 cup sugar into a saucepan. Cook the sugar over medium-high heat until it becomes a syrup, stirring every so often with a wooden spoon as it begins to brown, until the sugar syrup is evenly amber colored, 5 to 8 minutes. Pour the syrup into the warm milk mixture, being very careful, as the caramel will bubble and sputter when it hits the hot milk. Turn the heat beneath the pot to high and, whisking gently until all the syrup has completely dissolved into the roiling milk mixture, continue to cook to the soft-ball stage, about 238°F; this may take 8 to 12 minutes.
Cut the heat beneath the caramel and gently whisk in the vanilla and the baking soda. Dip a spoon into the caramel, and let it cool to taste it. Season the caramel to taste with salt, and pour it into the bowl of a standing mixer (or use an electric hand-mixer and a large bowl). Beat on low speed as it cools, 15 to 20 minutes depending on the temperature of your kitchen, until the icing is creamy and thick (between 100°F and 105°F). Remove the bowl from the mixer stand and let cool 5 to 10 minutes more, until the icing is between 95°F and 98°F—it should fall off your spatula in a ribbon that remains discernible on the surface of the icing for 10 seconds.
Set the first cake layer on a rack set over a sheet plan lined with waxed paper. Have an electric hand-mixer and the hot water nearby to blend a teaspoon or two into the icing if it becomes too thick to spread. Pour enough of the icing over the cake to cover the top in a layer about 1/4-inch thick (if it drips over the edge in places, that’s fine; this is an early test of whether it’s going to set in place or not). Top the first cake with the second cake layer and pour the rest of the icing in stages over the top of the cake, letting it run down the sides and using an icing spatula to guide the icing around the cake as it drips, until the entire cake is covered, for a traditional, classic look. (If you prefer the dramatic look of cake layers peeking out from behind a curtain of icing drips, by all means choose that route!) If you need to reuse any icing that overflows into the pan, simply move the cake on its rack temporarily, scrape up the icing from the waxed paper with a spatula and return it to the bowl, replace the rack over the pan and continue to ice the cake.
Once the icing has set, using two spatulas carefully transfer the cake from the rack to a cake stand and let stand at room temperature beneath a cake dome until ready to serve. Only refrigerate if you plan to store the cake for more than 2 days.
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