Swedish Raspberry Almond Bars -- Mamma's Kitchen, Carried Forward

Sven and I made our morning circuit — kitchen, back hallway, front porch, lakefront walk, kitchen again, breakfast for both of us. The same circuit every day for years. The repetition is its own grace. There are people who would find such a routine unbearable, and there are people who would find it salvific. I am the second kind. The routine is the rope I hold in the dark, and the rope is what gets me from one end of a day to the other. Mamma's hands shake more than they did last month. I do not point it out. I notice. I notice everything. The shake is small — barely visible when she is at rest, more visible when she lifts her coffee cup, most visible when she is trying to thread a needle. She still threads needles. She still bakes. She still calls me on Tuesdays at 10. The hands shake. The shaking does not stop the doing. The doing is what Mamma is. Karin and I talked Sunday. Stockholm in winter is dark. Duluth in winter is dark. We compared darknesses. We laughed. Karin said: "Linda, do you remember the time Pappa drove us to Two Harbors in a blizzard because Mamma wanted lutefisk?" I said yes. The story unspooled across the phone for twenty minutes. I had forgotten half of it. Karin remembered all of it. The memory was, briefly, complete between us. I cooked Swedish meatballs this week. Mamma's recipe. The ginger. The cream gravy. Always the same. Always perfect. The Damiano Center: the regular Thursday. The soup is the soup. The conversations are the conversations. The week is held by the Thursday. I do not know what I would do without the Thursday. The Thursday is the structural element of the week. The structural element does not collapse if the rest of the week goes sideways. The Thursday holds. The lake was iron gray. The kind of gray Paul loved. He used to say: "That is the gray that means weather is coming." He was always right. I miss being told. I miss being told what the lake means by a man who knew what the lake meant. I have learned to read the lake on my own. I am, at this point, an adequate reader. I am not as good as Paul was. I am better than I would have been if I had not had to learn. It is enough. Paul is not here. Mamma is not here. Pappa is not here. Erik is not here. They are all here in the kitchen, in the smell, in the taste, in the wooden spoon and the bread pans and the marble slab. The dead are not where the body went. The dead are in the kitchen. The phone rings less than it used to. Not because fewer people are calling, but because the people who call are mostly the family, and the family has settled into a rhythm — Peter daily, Anna twice a week, Sophie weekly, Elsa biweekly, Karin Sundays, Astrid Sundays. The phone rings predictably. I pick up predictably. The predictability is the love at this stage of life. It is enough.

When I made the meatballs this week I pulled out Mamma’s wooden spoon, and once the spoon was in my hand I could not stop. I made these bars too — the raspberry almond ones she has made every December since before I can remember, the ones Karin and I used to eat still warm from the pan while Pappa read the paper. They are not a complicated recipe. That is the point. The uncomplicated thing, made the same way every time, is the thing that holds.

Swedish Raspberry Almond Bars

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 55 min | Servings: 24 bars

Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup raspberry jam (seedless or whole-seed, your preference)
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1/4 cup powdered sugar, for dusting (optional)

Instructions

Heat the oven. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking pan or line it with parchment paper.
Make the dough. Beat butter and granulated sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add almond extract and salt and mix to combine. Add flour and mix on low until a soft, crumbly dough forms.
Press the base. Reserve 3/4 cup of the dough. Press the remaining dough evenly into the bottom of the prepared pan to form a thin, even layer.
Spread the jam. Spoon the raspberry jam over the dough base and spread it gently to the edges, leaving a small border.
Add the topping. Crumble the reserved dough evenly over the jam. Scatter the sliced almonds across the top.
Bake. Bake for 30—35 minutes, until the top is golden and the almonds are lightly toasted. The jam will bubble at the edges — that is right.
Cool and cut. Let the pan cool completely before cutting into bars. Dust with powdered sugar if you like. Cut into 24 bars. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days.

Nutrition (per serving)

Swedish Raspberry Almond Bars -- Mamma's Kitchen, Carried Forward