My Aunt Harriet, like my grandmother, is a great cook, and she had four children to cook for. With that many taste buds to tweak she used a few different spices to mix up her almond cake recipe, so that hers was a surprise in more ways than one.
Ingredients
- 1¼ cups sugar
- 1 egg
- 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1½ teaspoons pure almond extract
- 2/3 cup milk
- 1¼ cups flour
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- 1 stick melted butter
Method
- Grease an almond cake pan.
- Beat the sugar, egg, almond extract, cinnamon and milk together in a bowl.
- Add the flour and baking powder and mix well.
- Add the melted butter and mix well.
- Bake at 350°F for 40 to 50 minutes. The edges must be golden brown.
- Cool in the pan before removing — the cake will break if you turn it out too soon.
- Sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.
An eighth of a teaspoon
That is the whole of Harriet’s change — a pinch of cinnamon, beaten in with the wet ingredients rather than the dry so it disperses evenly. It is not enough to taste as cinnamon. It is enough to make people ask what is different, which was rather the point.
The family argument, in full
Mrs. Olson’s is the original, brought from her mother Hilda in Sweden. Grammy Greta’s adds a teaspoon of vanilla. Harriet’s adds cinnamon. Kathi’s changes the sugar, the milk and how the pan is greased. Four cakes, one recipe, and nobody conceding anything.