Honey Cinnamon Bars -- The Sweetness of Nine Years of Practice

The week after the wedding, and the house has returned to two — Robert and Naomi, the default, the resting state, the marriage that has been the constant through every expansion and contraction of the past decade. James is married. Elise is family. The family tree has a new branch, and the branch will someday bear fruit, and the fruit will be grandchildren, and the grandchildren will eat the she-crab soup, and the eating will be the chain extending, and the extending will be the life.

The Librarian's Table manuscript has reached one hundred and twenty pages. The writing is good — not because I say so but because Robert says so, and Robert's editorial standard is the standard of a man who reads carefully and who considers the careful reading a form of love, and the love-reading has produced the feedback that the book needed: tighter, cleaner, the fat trimmed, the bone exposed.

I have been thinking about the blog — the RecipeSpinoff blog that I might contribute to, that I discovered while researching food blogs for the cookbook. The idea of writing for a community of food lovers appeals to me — not the solitary writing of a book but the communal writing of a blog, the sharing of recipes and stories with readers who respond, who cook, who taste, who recognize their own lives in the food I describe.

Carrie returned to Emory after the wedding. She is finishing her junior year. She will graduate next May. She will become a teacher. The becoming is the life she has been designing since she was fifteen, and the design is almost complete.

I made Mama's benne wafers — the sesame seed cookies, the oldest Lowcountry recipe, the African-Charleston connection that spans three hundred years. The wafers were thin and sweet and perfect, and the perfection was the practice, and the practice was nine years old, and the nine years were the life.

The benne wafers reminded me, as they always do, that the best recipes are not made in a moment but across years — and that sweetness, whether in a marriage, a manuscript, or a cookie, deepens with time. These honey cinnamon bars carry that same quality: simple, warm, and made better by the patience you bring to them. They are not Mama’s wafers, but they belong to the same family of recipes — the ones that ask very little of you and give back something that feels, somehow, exactly right.

Honey Cinnamon Bars

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 24 bars

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup honey
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
• Powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven. Heat your oven to 350°F. Grease a 9x13-inch baking pan and set aside.
2. Cream butter and honey. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and honey together until light and well combined, about 2–3 minutes.
3. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla extract until the mixture is smooth.
4. Combine dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
5. Mix the batter. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, stirring just until combined. Fold in the chopped nuts if using.
6. Bake. Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for 22—26 minutes, until the top is golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
7. Cool and cut. Allow the bars to cool completely in the pan before cutting into 24 squares. Dust lightly with powdered sugar if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 138 | Protein: 2g | Fat: 5g | Carbs: 22g | Fiber: 1g | Sodium: 95mg