Brown Sugar Pound Cake

Tax week, which is the least poetic week in the American calendar and which I mention only because Robert, the retired-in-spirit-if-not-in-practice attorney, spent three evenings at the dining table with tax forms spread around him like a legal brief, and Mama sat across from him and sorted the papers by color (she could no longer read the forms but she could sort by color, which is a skill that transcends cognition and lives somewhere in the hands, where all the important skills eventually migrate).

Joy turned forty-six on April 10th. I brought her a peach cobbler at Pathways and we celebrated with Sandra and Diane and the other participants, and Joy wore a crown made from construction paper and glitter and she was, for the duration of the party, a queen — the queen of a small kingdom where the currency is kindness and the laws are simple and the subjects love their monarch without complication. I watched her eat cobbler and laugh and I thought: you are the happiest person I know. The thought was not condescending. It was envious. Joy has achieved what the rest of us spend our lives pursuing — a state of being in which the present moment is sufficient — and she achieved it not through wisdom but through the accident that took everything else and left her with the one thing that matters.

I brought the group home conversation to Robert on Wednesday evening, after Mama was asleep. I said it plainly: "I think we need to look at group homes for Joy." Robert listened. He did not react immediately, which is his way — the lawyer's way, the way of a man who processes before he responds. After a minute he said, "Tell me what you've found." I told him. He listened more. Then he said, "We'll visit them together." The "together" was the answer. Not the group home. The together. The we.

The guilt is enormous. Joy has been family-cared-for her entire life — thirty-five years since the accident, first by Mama and Daddy, then by Mama alone, now by me. The family has always been the structure. The structure has always been the safety. And now I am considering dismantling the structure, not because it failed but because I cannot hold it and hold Mama too, and the holding of both is breaking something in me that I need to keep intact.

I made Joy's birthday cobbler with the last of the canned peaches from August — the ones Mama and I labeled together, "Peaches, August 2018, Naomi & Carolyn." The label is in my handwriting. The peaches are in the cobbler. And the cobbler is in Joy, who ate three servings and did not know that the peaches were canned by the hands of a woman who can no longer remember canning them. The not-knowing is a mercy. The knowing is mine to carry.

The cobbler I made for Joy’s birthday used the last of the peaches Mama and I put up together in 2018 — and I already know that when next April comes around, there will be no more jars with our two names on the label. When that day arrives, I want something just as golden and just as generous: a Brown Sugar Pound Cake, dense enough to carry to Pathways in a covered dish, sweet enough to deserve a paper crown, and simple enough that I can make it on a Tuesday evening after Mama is asleep and Robert is still sorting papers at the dining room table. Some recipes are not about the occasion. They’re about the person you’re carrying the dish to.

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 1 hr 10 min | Total Time: 1 hr 30 min | Servings: 12

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
2 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
5 large eggs, room temperature
3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup whole milk, room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon butter flavoring (optional but traditional)

Instructions

Preheat and prepare. Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a 10-inch tube pan or Bundt pan thoroughly, making sure to coat all the crevices.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and shortening together on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the brown sugar and granulated sugar gradually and continue beating for another 4–5 minutes until the mixture is pale and very fluffy.
Add eggs. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Mix dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Alternate wet and dry. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture in three additions alternating with the milk in two additions, beginning and ending with the flour. Mix just until combined after each addition — do not overmix.
Add flavorings. Stir in the vanilla extract and butter flavoring until just incorporated.
Bake. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake at 325°F for 65–75 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean and the top is deep golden brown.
Cool. Let the cake cool in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes before carefully inverting onto the rack to cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar before serving if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Brown Sugar Pound Cake — The Cake I’d Bake When the Cobbler Is Gone