As a child, I was no stranger to desserts. My parents were always baking treats for us on the weekends. My Mamaw has never bought a cake from a store. And my Grandmama bakes every single dessert so perfectly, so precisely, that an entire afternoon should be cleared for the creation of a birthday cake.
Every birthday and holiday memory I have has a different signature cake, pie, or cookie. My wedding cake was a tower of vanilla cupcakes, with each cupcake topped with an orange fondant circle that had "Mr. and Mrs." stamped into it. We have a chocolate bundt cake at my grandma's every year on my brother's birthday. He loves it so much they named it "The Jake Cake." For the big Junior Prom pre-dinner, my dad made my Aunt Deanna's legendary fruit pizza for dessert. It was sweet and tasty, but light enough not to be suffocated by those tight prom dress corsets. The desserts we ate are just as important as the songs we heard and the jokes we told on these monumental nights.
This past Sunday evening, another memory was made, one that I will remember forever: I baked a pie for the first time. We ate it in bed with vanilla bean ice cream. It was apple, to be exact. And it was good. Damn good.
