My Oma's Blaettertorte

It all began some time ago with questioning my mom about a cake she used to make when I was young. It's not like she never made that kind of cake again; she just found a version she liked better and never went back to the original. Somehow I had a memory of the earlier version and wanted to give it a try. She said she could not find it until, one day last summer, she came up with it, written out on nice paper just for me!

It turned out, it was a recipe from her mom, making it even more special! One day I pulled the recipe from between my cookbook pages and showed it to Kari, excited to try it out. I did, but was disappointed. It doesn't tell you the amount of flour, nor how many layers to roll out or how long to bake them, but my biggest breakthrough was when my mom remembered that it had to be filled with hot pudding, not cold, like I had used. I decided I'd try it again in the new year.

I never knew what kind of inspiration I would get for this at Christmas, when I opened my gift and there was my mom's handwritten recipe burned into a cutting board! In secret, Kari had taken note of where that piece of paper went and sent Ben to our house when we were not home.

So here I was, this past week . . .

trying again with renewed zeal to get it right.

I mixed in flour until it felt just barely right for rolling out.

Shaping it into a log, I cut eight slices to roll out.

I rolled each circle up onto the rolling pin

and unrolled it onto a baking sheet.

Then I used a bowl to cut around it.

I found it kept it's shape best this way.

I baked them for about 10 minutes at 400 F and let them cool before stacking them

with hot vanilla custard.

Maybe I can see why the recipe changed over the years,

but there is something sweet about this story.

I had mom and Abe over for dessert and she said several times,

"this reminds me of my mom."

It seemed like it surprised her how this could be.

And the good thing is

this recipe will not be so easily lost again.