The secret ingredient

I've been wanting to bake something for awhile, but it wasn't until tonight that I fired up the mixer. I have to give a hat tip to Jenn for bringing my attention to this cupcake recipe. I followed her slightly modified version and also excluded (yikes) the whipped cream and doughnut on top. I used a large muffin pan and the regular chocolate chips I had on hand. I made a glaze, but I don't think that it's needed. One of these hot from the oven is terrific.

Baking reminds me of my paternal grandmother Lova, and it's not just because I have her KitchenAid mixer. She cooked a lot, whether it was making cookies and pies that my brothers and I would enjoy after school or preparing meals every Tuesday night for the Rotary meetings at church. I can remember the homemade noodles laid out to dry on almost every surface in her tiny kitchen and in another room. Returning to college or where I lived post-college almost always meant being sent off with an individual sized pie or a small pan of apple dumplings. She was not a talkative woman. She best expressed her love with what she produced from her oven and how she doted on us boys.

She lived a small town block from us in the home her husband built. The white house with the red and white aluminum awning was across the street from the grain elevator, the family business that my grandfather also built. I assume she was actively involved in the business when he was living. I know she was after he died some time in the 1960s. Even into her 70s she was doing the books, waiting on customers, and carrying feed bags to their cars and trucks.

I never knew either of my grandfathers--both had passed before my parents met--and my maternal grandmother Ruth died when I was in second grade, I think. I can remember her, but she lived a couple hours away. Obviously I didn't see my mom's mother as often as my dad's, who was the only babysitter we ever had and someone I probably saw on a daily basis.

My brothers and I spent plenty of time at her house. We would hide in the basement pantry where jars of home canned items lined the shelves and knock pool balls around on the pool table with fallen cushions. In the wood paneled attic we would flip through The New Book of Knowledge collection and my dad's old Bowman baseball cards. And of course we would raid the kitchen for whatever she made or the red hots tucked away in a cabinet.

She was a quilter. I can clearly picture her sitting in the basement under a naked light bulb working on a quilt, something I imagine she spent many evenings doing. I don't remember ever seeing her knit, but in my own knitting I feel a connection to her as a fellow crafter. I feel like I understand what it must have meant to her to make quilts for my brothers and me, her only grandchildren. I'm sure that she would have been surprised that I enjoy knitting. I expect it would have tickled her too.

Thanks to Donna for the remembrance of her grandmother and inspiring this post. This turned out to be a lot harder to write than I anticipated. Memories are powerful things. She's been gone for three years, and it's in writing this that I realize how much I still miss her.