Establishing New Traditions

I know that traditions passed down from family member to family member connect each of us to our heritage and to those who came before us. These traditions give meaning to the strange and sometimes superstitious behaviors or activities we involve ourselves in every year. Most of the time we reflect on family traditions around the holidays and continue the legacy left to us from our ancestors.

However, last year, on New Years Eve, my daughter and I began a new family tradition that I have and will carry out until my dying day. I'll do this for two reasons: one, I love cake and two, I love thinking of those who also used to bake this delicious dessert.

Last year I decided that on New Years Eve I would bake a red velvet cake and that for all of the years to come, on New Years Eve, I will bake a red velvet cake. Now, this isn't no ordinary cake, mind you, and the recipe is one that has been in my family for a long time.

Growing up, my mother would bake this cake for me each year on my birthday, and her mother used to bake this cake each year for her on her birthday. Now, I know that in order to continue on with the 'birthday' tradition of baking red velvet cake, I must still be baking this cake for my daughter on her birthday. If it comes in the near future that she would prefer this cake on her birthday, then of course I will not neglect her wish for this cake; however, because I'm still a child at heart, I want this cake at another time of year as well - not just on birthdays.

Last year I plopped my daughter up on the counter, we measured and stirred and measured some more. We baked and cooled and ate this delicious cake. Now that New Years has arrived this year, we continued with the tradition established last year. Today, I plopped my now two-year old daughter on the counter, we both wore our aprons and while I was measuring the sugar, she was also measuring the sugar (and then eating it). I read the directions line by line very carefully and she would mumble something along with me. At one point she was holding the recipe and, half jokingly, I asked her to tell me what ingredient came next. She scanned the recipe and blatantly told me, "Um...cake." Yes, that was right, cake came next!

Needless to say, the cake has cooled and has been topped with homemade icing and yes, we have already eaten a bit of this cake for lunch. I am anticipating next New Years Eve, with my daughter as my co-pilot reading me ingredients from the recipe and furthering this newly created tradition. In fifty years, when I'm almost 80 years old and she's in her fifties, I'm hopeful that we'll still come together and bake this cake on this day. Possibly then I'll fumble while reading the recipe and when she asks me what ingredient comes next, I'll quickly tell her, again half-jokingly, "Cake."

For the recipe of my Nannie's homemade Red Velvet Cake, see the 'Baking, Crocheting, Creating' column.