Three generations in the kitchen

This past weekend I had the privilege of working in the kitchen with my mom and grandmother. My grandma is visiting from St. Louis; we have enjoyed lots of fun together and many of our conversations have revolved around food. I come from a long line of VERY good cooks, I aspire to cook as well as these ladies some day. I thought it would be fun to make my great-grandmother's coffee cake recipe together. As my mom tells the story, her grandma (my great-grandmother) would always have one of these coffee cakes in the freezer, ready to pull out for an easy dessert when she would come over for lunch.

Here is a photo-journal of our experience.

Mom and grandma looking over the recipe before we get started.

Grandma rolls out the dough. This is a very important step. The key to this coffee cake is a thin crust.

Meanwhile, mom greases the pans. we pulled out everything we could find - cake pans, pie plates, anything round. This recipe make a LOT of cakes. We made 9, but if we had rolled the dough thinner we could have had twice that!

Grandma and mom fit the yeast dough into the pans just right.

Now the fun part, putting on the toppings. Anything goes with these coffee cakes. My grandmother's classic choices are apricot, plum, crumb, and cheese(think cheesecake). Other options would be apple, cherry, or blueberry.

Into the oven they go. Now we have to wait. That's okay though; we got to sit around the table and share more recipes.

Times up! They are almost done, one final step....the icing. Yum!

We made cheese, crumb, and apricot cakes. Don't ask me to pick a favorite; I loved them all. Once they were finished we called the boys in to help us sample them all. What a sweet treat this was for me. I am so thankful for my heritage of good home cooking. I love you mom and grandma, thank you for a very special afternoon.