tamarjacobson

In a deep glass bowl I combine 4 ounces of butter with one and a half cups of sugar. I pound at the mixture with a wooden spoon until I can get it to be as smooth as possible. Then I add three eggs and stir and stir, sometimes whipping it as quickly as the wooden spoon allows. Now is the time for a cup of flour, three quarters of a cup of shredded coconut, three quarters of a cup of chopped walnuts, one teaspoon of vanilla essence, half a cup of baking cocoa, and about nine ounces of plain yogurt. All these ingredients are added in one at a time. This takes muscle to mix it all together – at first gently so that stuff doesn't get shaken out of the bowl, and then making much stronger stirring motions – round and round, and folding in with large circular movements. 

Now I prepare the baking pan by wiping it all over with butter, and then shaking over a light covering of flour so that the batter won't stick. Oven is heated up to 350 degrees and the cake is placed into the oven for about thirty five to forty minutes. When I take it out, I have to cut just a tiny piece, piping hot with steam coming out the inside, and taste it to be sure it has come out the way I remember. Sometimes it feels a tad dry, and others just right. The walnuts are an addition to the recipe only since I live in America. In Israel, when I used to bake this cake almost every Friday in preparation for Shabbat, I used "shemenet" instead of yogurt. In the States, I changed to yogurt as I wasn't sure what the equivalent to the Israeli milk product was. 

When I was a young mother living in Israel I wanted to create a home for my son. A place of comfort and stability. I was not really sure how to accomplish that. Did I imagine it from movies or books I had read – or perhaps from visiting friends in the neighborhood? Am not sure where I got the idea that cake was a way of making our small apartment a home. An old friend gave me the recipe, and for decades, until my son became gluten and sugar free in his diet a couple of years ago, he had always loved the chocolate cake. 

In any event, it has been years since I made it , and this summer I started baking it again – consistently – every ten days or so. Only this time I made one and a half the quantities so that it could fit into a larger pan. That way it would have to cook in the oven for forty to fifty minutes instead of thirty five to forty. Plus, it seemed to come out richer, more wholesome in taste. It has been going down well at home and in the neighborhood. A couple of people roll their eyes and say things like, "Oh my God. This is delicious!" And, it certainly is tasty early in the morning with our usual cup of coffee.

But, more than all that, it makes me think of days gone by, years and years ago, when my son and I lived alone in our tiny apartment in the little town of Ramat Hasharon, Israel, in a place called home.