From the Vault: Chiffon Cake

Tomorrow is the spring equinox, one of the two days during the calendar year when the hours of light and the hours of darkness are equal. In this hemisphere it's the first day of spring. The turn of every season is a continuation, but it is also a beginning, and no season makes us think of beginnings more than spring does. Everyone emerges from the dark indoor days of winter to take in the sun at cafe tables, on picnic blankets, on sidewalks and country roads. Even rainy days speak of beginnings, of earth pushing forth the thirsty tendrils of new growth.

For my grandmother, spring heralded the time to throw open the doors and windows, so that cleansing breezes could move through the house (even if, as it was the Oklahoma dust bowl, it meant spending some time with the feather duster after sunset). A few days were spent preparing the garden for spring planting, with burly neighborhood boys tilling the ground in exchange for spending money. My grandmother would ask me to reach down one of the hat boxes she kept on a high shelf in her massive pass-through closet. While the young men worked, she sat in her back porch sewing room, watching over them while she blocked felt and refreshed silk flowers. With these rituals I knew that the special day was dawning for our spring pilgrimage downtown. I would get new clothes (from a store, no less) and a fancy luncheon. She would place orders at the garden center and the cooking store, to prepare for spring planting and Easter candy-making respectively.

And when we got back, she would bake a chiffon cake, as important a rite of spring to her generation as clean curtains and Easter baskets. Here's a post I wrote for Slashfood last spring about welcoming the equinox with chiffon cake.