My mom was an immigrant. She moved as a young woman to Chicago from a small town outside of Hamburg, Germany. She was fun loving and adventurous. She took us camping and taught us to water ski. She baked cookies with us and threw amazing birthday parties. We traveled together in Germany and France, reveling in the opportunity to drink local wine, eat new favorite foods, and sit in cafes.
When she became a grandmother — Oma, in German — she embraced her new role with enthusiasm. She met me in Santa Fe when I returned home with her first grandchild, Elena, who is adopted from Belarus. When she went home to Vermont after helping out for the first two weeks, she told my dad that they needed to move to Santa Fe to be closer to Elena. Elena grew up with her grandmother close by. They gardened together, made art together, read books together. They built snowmen together in winter and swam together in the summer.
She often told us that when she died she wanted us to celebrate her life with a party. No mourning for her! She wanted us to remember her with joy and good food.
My mom died suddenly over the summer. She had been feeling increasingly tired and old (she was 93). When she went to the doctor, we learned that she had advanced cancer. We followed her wishes and had a great celebration. Lots of red wine and Sekt, German sparkling wine. Baguettes from Maison Kayser and a good variety of cheese. And a number of desserts that were inspired by her German heritage. We got out her favorite dishes and toasted her life and legacy.
I made a pflaumenkuchen (plum tart), brown butter linzer cookies (the recipe is posted last winter in this blog), a bienenstich, and a Schwarzwalder Kirsch Torte. All are served or made with lots of butter and cream.
I made the plum tart from the New York Times. This is really close to the plum tart my mom used to make.
- ¾ cup sugar
- ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 cup unbleached flour, sifted
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- Pinch of salt
- 2 eggs
- 24 halves pitted purple plums
Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the flour, baking powder, salt and eggs. Beat well.
Put the batter in a greased 10 inch springform pan.
Place the halved plums with cut side up on the top of the cake. Sprinkle with sugar and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 1 hour.
Serve with whipped cream.
This is an amazing cake. It translates as “bee sting” cake. It is a yeast cake that has honey and almonds baked into the top. It is then sliced open and filled with a lucious pastry cream. I didn’t have a recipe for this cake from my mom. I searched the internet for a recipe that I liked. Many of the recipes used a brioche type dough for the cake. This results in dryer cake than I remember. The recipe for the cake from Smitten Kitchen was close to what I remember. I ended up not using their recipe for the topping. Instead, I warmed up about 1/2 a cup of good honey and then mixed it with a large handful of slivered almonds.
When I was little, my mom, my siblings and I spent two summers in Germany with my mom’s family. Food was an important part of the summer holidays. We would go to the country to pick huckleberries, eat cherries from the cherry tree, and have cookouts with potatoes roasted in the embers and grilled bratwurst. A special treat was to go to the konditorei for kuchen mit schlag sahne – whipped cream cakes. I remember the cakes with hazelnuts and marzipan. But mostly I remember Black Forest Cherry Torte — chocolate cake, dark cherries, and lots of whipped cream.
Principal of Cooking 