Lesson #41: Conquer the family recipes

Last night, I had the ingredients for a few different baked goods options.  When I asked Lyndon which one I should make, he replied with, "Uh, coffee cake.  Duh."  As the mixer was working hard and I was adding the necessary ingredients, I thought back to my first, terrifying experience with making coffee cake.

Lyndon comes from a family of wonderful women who are wonderful cooks.  He has fond memories of eating all the delicious meals and treats they always made for him.  My mom has a few cooking tricks up her sleeve, too, but she's worked full time as an elementary music teacher since before I was born.  On top of that, she's always had a job at church.  She's a busy lady, so 100% homemade meals weren't always an option.  My family was always doing something.  There was always a rehearsal or a school event or a contest that we had to go to.  If it was fine arts related and wasn't sports related, we were a part of it.  We were like chickens running around with our heads cut off because we were so busy and involved.  We always ate together, but my Mom didn't have the time to spend a few hours making dinner.  I have no complaints; that's just the way it was.

When we got married, I realized that I would actually have the time (when not about to drown in school work) to make meals.  It was a strange yet exciting concept to me.  One thing that Lyndon wanted right away was coffee cake.  He didn't want any old coffee cake recipe either.  He wanted the coffee cake that his mom makes.  And what coffee cake it is!  The recipe was in a little recipe book that I was hoping to avoid for as long as possible: the family recipe book.  A few years ago, one of his grandmas compiled a list of her recipes based on family recommendations.  I didn't have very many cooking skills at that point in our marriage (truth be told, I still don't).  That book made me nervous.

It took a while for me to finally try this coffee cake recipe Lyndon had been asking for.  I avoided that book like the plague.  Around a month had passed before I decided it was time to face my fears.  I opened up to the right page, read the recipe, and was completely lost.  There weren't precise directions for me to follow, including a total lack of an ingredients list at the beginning of the recipe.  I was not off to a good start.  I ended up having to call Lyndon's mom for help, and she was nice enough to answer all of my questions.  After a time of exploding flour and my first experience with shortening (mega gross, by the way), the batter made it into the oven, safe and sound.  That first coffee cake won Lyndon's approval, and my cooking confidence soared that day.

I've had plenty of cooking success and cooking failure since we got married.  That fateful, coffee cake day taught me that the family recipe book is intimidating but conquerable.  I've since tried a few more recipes from the book with mixed reviews.  I guess I'll have to keep trying, especially since that coffee cake I made last night burned a little bit.  Oops.