Penny Stock

Grandparents, Guilt, and Cake

My grandfather, Jerome Fishman, was a shul Rabbi for most of his professional career. In the later years of his life, before he retired, he was a social worker (when he was alive, he would joke that he and Rabbi Weinreb took opposite career paths). He was a loving husband, father and grandfather. For the last three years of my grandmother’s life, after she had a stroke, he became her sole caregiver. Somehow, even though he was extraordinarily busy throughout his life, between professional and familial obligations, my grandfather also took time out to bake and cook. My grandmother was sick most of her life and certain every day tasks fell onto my grandfather. Luckily, when he was single, he spent his summers working in the kitchens of hotels in the Catskills and he learned to cook and bake then.

If I had to choose something that my grandfather baked that I loved, it was his honey spice cake. In my memory, we never spent Rosh Hashana with my grandparents growing up but I guess one time my grandfather made this cake and I loved it. After that, he taught me how to make it. I have vivid memories of the two of us standing in his two-by nothing kitchen in Kew Gardens Hills, NY baking honey spice cakes. My grandfather would make it whenever I came to see him. He even made me honey spice muffins and sent them to me in camp when he was living in Boston taking care of my very sick grandmother. To this day, I have a hard time eating honey spice cake without thinking of my grandfather, of blessed memory.

Like most kids, I never appreciated my grandparents while they were still alive. I lost 3 out of 4 of them by the time I was 16. I will always carry around certain guilty feelings about the way I treated those grandparents while they were living. To this day, I feel guilty that while I was staying with my grandparents in New York for a few days when my parents went on vacation, they were nice enough to buy me honey nut cheerios because they knew I liked that cereal. Yet on an excursion to Waldbaums, I noticed for the first time that Cocoa Puffs were newly kosher so I asked them to buy them instead of the Honey Nut Cheerios. I know that isn’t a majorly guilt inducing scenario, but to the nine year old that I was, the guilt wracked me for a while. I feel guilty that I used to avoid my other grandfather when he tried to hug and kiss me in shul. I feel guilty that I didn’t take advantage of the infinite wisdom that my grandmother had, even after she had a stroke and had difficulty speaking. I feel guilty that I still have one living grandmother (yibadel l’chaim) who I don’t speak to nearly often enough and whom my children think of simply as the woman who gives them Gushers.

One thing I don’t feel guilty about though is the honey spice cake. I have taken that legacy from my grandfather and I fully intend to pass it on to my children and grandchildren. For some reason, every year around this time, I go to the store and without thinking I buy the jars of honey. I have taken it upon myself to keep making the honey spice cake every Rosh Hashana. I make it for my parents and my sister. They know if I don’t make it, no one else will, because it was my special thing with my grandfather (oh and also the fact that I was my grandmother’s favorite grandchild which he told me right before he died…but that is neither here nor there, just something I like to get in). I may not have the love for learning my grandfather had, or the interest in all things “The Rav” related. I may not be the advisor or friend that he was to literally thousands of people, I am helping to pass on the legacy that was my grandfather though. I do this by making his cake.

So without further ado, I offer you the family recipe of Zadie Yirm Fishman’s Honey Spice Cake:

Ingredients:
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
½ cup oil
½ cup honey
¾ cups instant, already made coffee
1 ½ cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
ground cloves
nutmeg
allspice
cinammon
vanilla

Instructions:
Pre heat the oven to 350
Process the sugar and the eggs in a food processor for two minutes
Add the coffee, flour, baking powder, baking soda and spices to taste.
Mix all the ingredients together and bake for 40 minutes. Test for readiness with a toothpick. ENJOY!!!

Posted by peninah at September 16, 2006 09:28 PM | TrackBack