Chocolate cake

As I begin writing this, I was just a few minutes ago licking melted dark chocolate from a wooden spoon and pondering.

In my oven just now is a cake... a cake neither of my grandmothers would recognise.

I have written about them both before in relation to other things (Babcia http://sodifferentstuff.blogspot.com/2014/01/imagine-this-re-imagine-this.html and Granny http://sodifferentstuff.blogspot.com/ )

But today I want to write about baking... The everyday kind.

I can not for certain tell you much about the baking of my Dad's mother.... She died the day before my first birthday, but from my father I have heard stories of yeasted doughnuts filled with apricot jam, and poppy seed cake fresh from the oven and still slightly warm with coffee. The thought of both of these things makes me want to book a flight straight to Krakow!

My Granny and I though, we shared an understanding about cookery. I was her helper... not that I was around that much and she didn't really need me to do anything. We both had our places in the kitchen, at some point my grandfather had extended part of the worktop to allow my grandmother a large rectangular surface where she had easy access to the sink and the stove top.
My spot was on a wooden stool at the "breakfast bar" in the corner where I would eat my, specially purchased for the visitation of grandchildren, chocolaty cereal each morning and where over the years to stared at a succession of toasters of different styles colours and levels of gadgetry. One of which I clearly remember the handle broke off and it had to be operated with half a wooden sprung peg.

Anyhow I was Granny's helper, it was unusual for her to have company in the kitchen. The kitchen to my grandfather, like many men of his generation was a strange foreign land from whence they would be shooed when they started to prevent the work of preparation and such taking place. My grandmother had not been a stay at home mother, in fact she worked as a teacher even after she had her children and when I was small she had been retired several years and actually seemed to quite enjoy having her own domain. She had a beautiful view of the garden from her work area, and a chest freezer full of... well everything possible... bread, stewed apples, cuts of meat.

And so it was that I took to sitting often in silence watching my grandmother cook, I was fascinated by the mixer, the slicer, the pressure cooker. We would talk... topics of conversation I forget... but I learnt things about my grandmother's kitchen which came in useful when my mother and aunt were clearing the house after my grandfather's death. We also became quite close as I sat and watched her. I overheard her say to my mother a few times that she greatly enjoyed talking with me. I watched her bake coffee sponges, biscuits, brandy snaps, mince pies... And I'd fetch things from high up places she couldn't reach so well any more...  And make jam clangers with the left over pastry which she taught me to shape and roll.

The last proper conversation I remember us having, alone, was at my grandparents house as we were making preparations to move her to the residential and nursing home where my grandfather moved to after his stroke. They had been married for over 50 years and didn't really know what to do without the other close by. She hated being spoken about... Especially in hushed tone...  She and I were together in the dining room I'd been at the piano and had finished playing and moved over to where she say. Her social worker, my aunt and my mother were in the sitting room. She leant over to me and asked said...  "They're speaking about me again...  Instead of to me...  I wish they wouldn't do that....  I'm not completely unaware." I remember being struck by her tenacity, she was too polite to tell my mother directly that she'd like to be more involved in her own future and she did trust that her children were doing the best things by her, but I knew that the reason she shared how she felt with me was because she saw me as a friend, and she was unsure and frightened.

In the years after, in the home, after my grandfather died I missed us being alone...  We were never alone any more and there was no more baking. There was always someone else there...  In her room my brother, sister, uncle, aunt, father, mother. She became frailer and her command of language slipped from her grasp slowly. In fact her stubbornness meant she refused to speak if she couldn't find the right words.
I spent one last time alone with her before her death. I don't remember visiting again... It actually became to painful to hear my mother rabbit on at her in a one sided conversation. So when I visited the Wirral in 2010 I went both to the Frankly to see my grandfather's grave and to The Manor to visit granny. I had my mobile phone with me... And I have video on there of the choir I was in at the time... I played her a little and I remember how very wide her eyes were. She had no idea about the technological advances of the first part of the 21st century.  From here perspective standing in front of her was a young woman with a tiny television. She never lost her grip...  Not that I remember...  I would always kiss her cheeks as I left her and it would take her hand and squeeze it.  She would squeeze back, and I would lean over and whisper that loved her. If I did she her again before she died I don't remember it clearly enough to recall. I must have done, because she changed rooms in the home... And I remember taking the stairs up to her new room, but I remember nothing else of that visit.

She wouldn't have recognised the type of cake have made but my favourite thing to watch made was her apple pie.. It was large and deep and packed full of sliced apples sprinkled with nutmeg and cinnamon. She did teach me to make it but in the time since I have never have found the heart to try. I suppose I find myself thinking that if I make the pie I have closed a chapter we shared and started a new one of my own... I soon might... Maybe this autumn when there is a fresh crop of cooking apples in the farm shop I will stew them sliced and in layers like she did and when I am making the pie I'll take a spoon and taste the tart unsweetened juice and giggle to myself like we used to together.