Bumpy cake lives!

As we head into the holiday season, the thoughts of some individuals are no doubt already whirling around upcoming holiday activities, such as baking. If your thoughts, personally, are NOT whirling around holiday baking, that's okay: Your thoughts can be directed toward someone else's baking, hoping that they will make way too many cookies and beg you to take some.

I once asked my mom why I did not have, as so many other adults seem to have, fond memories of baking at her side when I was little -- my girlish hands grasping the big wooden spoon to stir the heavy dough, excitedly watching cookies rise through the oven door, licking the bowl.*

"You were never interested," she said.

Oh.

But one thing I WAS interested in when I was little, and which we had in abundance thanks to my mother's job at Sander's bakery, was bumpy cake. Bumpy cake was a rich chocolate cake with little mounds of cream on the top, covered in chocolate. Really, what are memories of homemade baking compared to memories of eating bumpy cake?

Sander's eventually went out of business, though not from lack of support on our part, but happily some of their products continue to be sold in drug stores and grocery stores. And an airport bookstore in Michigan, where I found tiny jars of Sander's famous hot fudge sauce and something called Caramel Pear Sauce. I took one jar of each to the counter to purchase them.

"Today must be Sander's ice cream topping day," the guy said. "Everyone's been buying them. And two seems to be the magic number."

"Well, you know, one jar for me, one for someone else..." I said.

"Oh," he said. "I thought it was TWO for me..."

He seemed to be intimately acquainted with the caramel pear sauce. "You will LOVE that," he said enthusiastically. "It's a little heavy on the cinnamon if you eat it by itself, but otherwise, it's great."

I took it that by "eat it by itself" he meant, literally, "eat it by itself," with the assistance of a spoon and no other accompaniments, such as ice cream. In that case, I wasn't surprised it was a little heavy on the cinnamon.

So sometime soon, I plan to take some time to get reacquainted with a spoon, a tiny jar of Sander's hot fudge, and -- a product inspired by my favorite childhood dessert -- some Sander's Bumpy Cake Ice Cream. And I will make my own memories. And I will definitely lick the bowl.

______________
*For the record, even if I HAD baked with my mother when I was young, there would have been no licking of the bowl. To this day she chastizes me for doing so in my own kitchen, citing vague, dark stories of salmonella poisoning. She does not know any actual persons who became sick from eating uncooked dough, but that does not stop her from citing dark stories. I'll mention to her on the phone that I made brownies, or a three-layer cake with homemade frosting and marzipan decorations, and she will only be interested in one thing: "You didn't lick the bowl, did you?" This is probably the REAL reason I was not interested in baking.