Memories make things taste better

Over the weekend, a reader sent me an email telling me how much they enjoyed one of my recent columns.

“Enjoyed reading your breakfast article this month!” he wrote. “May I try your grandmother’s secret biscuit recipe? What flour works best?”

Hearing from readers is always nice, especially when they write to tell you how much they enjoy something you’ve written, and if they have a request, I always try to accommodate them, whether it’s looking something up for them in a back issue, supplying a photo or two for a memorial, or even sharing a recipe.

Unfortunately, I was unable to help this time. My grandmother’s biscuit recipe is no longer available — and to be honest, I’m not so sure it was ever “secret.”

It just didn’t get written down. After my grandmother passed, the only person who knew how to make biscuits they way she did was my mother, who — perhaps unsurprisingly — also failed to write it down.

When she succumbed to complications from the COVID-19 virus in 2020, what I can only presume to be a long, apparently oral tradition of biscuit-making goodness was lost.

I’m not especially upset about it. I’m fairly certain that a good portion of what I remember is based on nostalgia and good memories of my grandmother’s warm, friendly kitchen.

Even if you follow the recipe religiously, nothing ever tastes as good as when your mom or grandmother makes it — assuming they’re a good cook, that is. Sometimes it’s Dad who rules the kitchen, or Grandpa. In one case involving a high school friend of mine, it’s her 16-year-old son.

In my admittedly limited time in the kitchen, I’ve learned one thing: That old saying about cooking being art is 100 percent true, as is the bit about the secret ingredient being love. It doesn’t even have to be love for a person. Sometimes the love of the art is enough.

It doesn’t hurt, though. Based on my personal experience, you never want to eat something made by someone who doesn’t like you.

Good cooks can alter things on the fly, adding or subtracting things as they go. The recipe is never the end. It’s just the beginning.

That old saying I mentioned? There’s a second part, one I’ve also found to be true. Cooking may be an art, but baking is a science. I learned this the hard way.

Years ago, while my wife — a trained pastry chef — was working, I was home, trying to think of a way to make her birthday just a little bit better. I’d gotten her a present, but I felt like I need to do something more.

Naturally, I decided to bake her a cake. “That’s easy,” you say. “Just follow the directions on the box.”

If we had a box of cake mix, I would have done just that. Remember the part where I said “pastry chef?” Boxed cake mix wasn’t allowed in our — her — kitchen, and she had the car, so I couldn’t just run to the store and get one.

So I decided to bake one from scratch. How hard could it be? I found a recipe online that looked pretty good and I started in. Halfway through, I realized we didn’t have all the ingredients.

Substitution is a thing, right? It’s always served me well cooking. Why not baking? As it turns out, substitution in baking is a thing, but it helps to have experience.

I made the cake and even tried to make homemade chocolate buttercream frosting.

The cake looked OK on the plate. It was a little lopsided, but that’s not too terrible.

When she got home, I did all the birthday things, wrapping it up with the presentation of the cake. She gave it a dubious look, but proceeded to cut it and give it a taste. I wish I could describe the face she made — or the one I made after I tried a piece myself — but let’s just say it didn’t taste anywhere close to how it looked.

All the love in the world couldn’t help this monstrosity.

After we both got the awful taste out of our mouths — and she stopped laughing at my explanation or what I did — she thanked me heartily for making the effort, then told me to never do it again.

The next day, a few boxes of Duncan Hines cake mix, along with some frosting, magically appeared in the cupboard.

I know how to take a hint.

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Robert Cox is associate editor of Carroll County News. His email is RCox@cherryroad.com