Crumb

A very wise cool kid suggested that it might be a nice idea for some of us slacker bloggers to blow the cookie crumbs off of our keyboards and post something again. I think the notion was that there is enough scary shit out there right now on the internet, and maybe just a few more stories about nothing in particular might be a decent distraction. Since I am nothing if not a people, or in this case possibly one person, pleaser...here we go!

Let's talk about baked goods, shall we? My daughter and I made sure to purchase some extra butter in case we wanted to make cookies, as we were watching other people crowd around the toilet paper and cleaning supplies. There is nothing quite like a warm chocolate chip cookie to make you feel like things are right in the world, for at least the time it takes you to chew. I do realize that is a lot to ask of brown sugar and flour, but I am hoping it works when we need it. 

I would like to step outside the realm of homemade to talk about a simple white box from a simpler time. Entenmann's. I admit that one of my favorite things to see on the kitchen table at my grandparents' house when I went to visit was the Entenmann's crumb cake. (Here is another post about their kitchen table-complete with more links and photos!) The color of the crumb topping didn't make complete sense, but my gosh I loved that stuff. You could just keep chipping away small pieces, hoping nobody noticed. Actual decades had gone by, yet I could still conjure the taste of that perfect sweet treat for the kid who didn't like frosting.

I have obviously passed by the white boxes with the blue letters numerous times over the years. I am always filled with nostalgia and smile at the memory of my grandparents. I manage to resist adding a box to my cart, as I convince myself that nine inch cake is no more a single serving size for a grown adult than it was for a seven year old child. Maybe my family would enjoy sharing, but maybe I didn't want to take the chance that the crumb cake would be underappreciated. 

Longing for my younger days has been making the walk past those boxes more difficult. My mother and I pondered whether the crumb cake would freeze well, suggesting I would have the discipline to cut single serve portions, package and find them a place of honor in the freezer. Then there was this...

...and I was confounded. Would something be lost without the foil pan, or ability to select my own portion size? Would the taste not match my memory and be disappointing like every sip of Coke or Pepsi I have had over the past twenty years? I left the store without, and soothed myself with whatever emergency miniature candy bar was in the bottom of my purse. I told my mother about my finding, and the look on her face told me what I guess I already knew...they must be mine.

And so on our mission to buy some actual food to make a few dinners, I looked at the conveyor belt and noticed that nothing made me happy nor brought any sense of comfort. I quickly ran to the aisle where I had seen the box, shrugged off the price, and raced back to complete my order. I put that box on my kitchen table, smiling every time I passed by. I let it sit there for nearly 24 hours before I finally had to know.

The crumb topping looked to be a little thinner, but that could also be the mind of a child playing tricks on me.  I did almost have to get a knife, just to relive the joy of cutting myself a piece, but opted for just breaking it. It tasted just as I expected it would. Kudos to you Entenmann's for not messing with something that was fine just the way it was, allowing me to savor a very sweet bite of nostalgia.