For me.

There is such comfort in familiarity. Velvet Spice Cake, page 614, Joy of Cooking. I sold my first Velvet Spice Cake when I was fourteen. Thirteen years later it was my daughter's first birthday cake. It was the cake I chose to make recently for her Bride's Cake. I made it again even more recently to be perched alongside of a small Groom's fruitcake and a gorgeously delicious Victoria Sponge Cake made by the Bride for their first "at home" party.

I imagine it was inevitable. Three days home and no newlywed festivities in sight, I felt a longing. Not a longing for cake per say, a longing for everything to just keep going as it has been. The strong feeling of connection between a one year old and her Momma, the lovely give and take between a bride and her Mother. The feeling of having a place in someone else's life.

There is nothing comforting about a cake. The comfort comes in making of the cake, the sifting, measuring beating and frothing of egg whites. Fold, fold, fold. A warm oven, the scent of cinnamon, clove and nutmeg tinged with the faint pungency of fresh buttermilk, that is comforting. The cake, sitting on my counter looking ever so much like a crown, reminding me of the days a princess reigned and I got to stand back and watch the sparkle.