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By Root 618 0

that are better than anything you can make at home. I wish there were more foods like that. I really don’t want to spend my life standing over a stove, muttering about the evils of ConAgra and trans fats. It seems a tragic waste to shape one’s life around doctrinaire rejection of industrial food. Which means, I suppose, both insisting on high standards most of the time and then, sometimes, relaxing them.

Moreover, in the United States, at least, it can be hard to feel connected to your mother’s cooking or your grandmothers’ without making some concessions to packaged foods. I’m unwilling to give those connections up, at least not all of them.

My mother wasn’t much of a baker. On the rare occasions when she did bake a cake, she always made the same cake, which we called Skippy’s Apricot Cake. You can find variants of this recipe on the Internet—it clearly wasn’t the brainchild of my great-aunt Skippy, though in our family she got all the credit. I’m quite sure it was an invention of a home economist at the Duncan Hines company, but I’ve never seen the recipe printed precisely as we made it.

I loved this cake as a child, but I grew up to become a high-minded, adventurous, and snobbish baker who disdained cake mix, and when I went to my mother’s house and she would pull this cake out of the freezer and offer me a slice, I would say, no thanks. Didn’t she care that there were other cakes, better cakes, cakes that didn’t involve mix? I wanted her to know I didn’t approve by never once, after the age of fifteen or so, accepting a slice of this cake.

Recently, I was going through my mother’s recipe file and discovered six copies of the recipe, each written out in her own hand on an index card. Why six? Was it in case she lost one? Was it to give to admiring friends who requested it? Why didn’t more people request it? Ingrates. Starting with me. The cake is a wonder, the recipe a treasure. It takes a couple of minutes to stir together, and I make it all the time now, as does my sister. Our children love it. I hope they always will. I would rather it didn’t involve a mix, but it’s an almost perfect cake, a cake that strikes the balance between mindlessly shopping and compulsively making. You must buy the mix to make this cake.

SKIPPY’S APRICOT CAKE

Butter, for the pan

1 box Duncan Hines Lemon Supreme cake mix

1 cup canned apricot nectar, such as Kern’s

¾ cup neutral vegetable oil

½ cup granulated sugar

4 large eggs

GLAZE

1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter a 9-inch tube or Bundt pan.

2. Stir together the cake mix, nectar, oil, and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Pour the batter into the pan.

3. Bake for 50 minutes. When it’s done, a toothpick inserted in the cake should come out clean.

4. Just before the baking time is up, mix together the ingredients for the glaze.

5. When the cake comes out of the oven, immediately turn it out of the pan onto a cooling rack positioned over a cookie sheet or large piece of newspaper—anything that will spare you having to later wipe down the counter. Pour the glaze over the top of the cake while the cake is still very hot. The glaze will melt and flow down the sides of the cake and harden into an irresistible lemony crust.

As my mother wrote on each copy of the recipe:

“Makes 12 large slices, 24 lady slices.”

APPENDIX

CHEESEMAKING SUPPLIES

The Cheesemaker

Molds, cultures, rennet

www.thecheesemaker.com

W62 N590 Washington Avenue

Cedarburg, WI 53012

414-745-5483

New England Cheesemaking Supply Co.

Molds, cultures, rennet

www.cheesemaking.com

54B Whately Road

South Deerfield, MA 01373

413-397-2012

MEAT CURING SUPPLIES

Butcher & Packer

Pink salt

www.butcher-packer.com

1780 E. 14 Mile Road

Madison Heights, MI 48071

248-583-1250

Butcher Supply Company

Pink salt

www.butchersupplycompany.com

1040 3rd Avenue South

Nashville, TN 37210

800-896-5945

BAKING SUPPLIES

King Arthur Flour