Once upon a time, I was a little girl living far away from my grandparents. I craved my grandmother, Popo’s, Mississippi Mud Pie, and when she came to visit one summer, I asked her to make it. She did, and when I was biting into this layered dessert all was right with the world.
Food is a love language. It has the power to heal, comfort, recognize, seduce, satiate, and surprise. What happens in a kitchen is a type of magic that I’ve enjoyed exploring in my fairy tales. Food is an expression of love. It’s something that can be shared. It’s something precious and fleeting. It inspires and delights me multiple times daily, and yet the masterpieces that I make, that Popo made, that my siblings make, are destined to disappear. Still we toil to make them.
Now, food is fashionable and susceptible to trends. My grandmother’s Mississippi Mud Pie is a miracle of mid-century modern food technology–instant chocolate pudding packages, cool whip, etc. When I was thinking through the story of a man who was celebrating his one-hundred-eleventh birthday I thought of a very different cake, one that I could imagine somehow existing in Europe hundreds of years ago. An heirloom recipe. Something more rustic than a desert that has an entire layer of cool whip beaten into cream cheese and powdered sugar.
This might be a good time to mention how much I love nuts. I didn’t used to. I thought they ruined everything they touched when I was little. I avoided the crust of Popo’s Mississippi Mud Pie like it was toxic, but now? Oh my goodness, I don’t even know where to begin. Writing the passage in Clever, Cursed, & Storied about how much Kate loves pistachios was semi-autobiographical. And pistachios aren’t even my favorite nut. That honor goes to pecans, in case you’re wondering.
My daughter loves all things French, and she has a cookbook about a little girl in France. In this unusual cookbook there is a recipe for an almond cake. “You don’t say?” I believe were my actual words when we were flipping through the recipe index. Naturally, it was the first recipe we made, but over the years we’ve tweaked it to make it our own.
It’s beautiful and delicious and homey, and completely belongs in a fairy tale.
Sleeping Beauty is a fairy tale that I explored briefly in Clever, Cursed, & Storied. I didn’t think I had anything else to say about the story, but over MLK Day weekend this year, I started wondering about who else in the castle was frozen in time along with the sleeping princess. And who on the outside was missing them terribly? How would that emotion show up? Who do I want to see reunited after one hundred years?
This last weekend my sister was in town with her family. Naturally, we made our grandmother’s famous Mississippi Mud Pie. I have a picture on my phone of five of Popo’s great-grandchildren enjoying this sweet treat that I’m going to keep forever along with Popo’s handwritten recipe card. Because there’s magic in heirloom recipes, even if they are unfashionable or have nuts in them. And while Mississippi Mud Pie is completely delicious; it doesn’t photograph well. So here’s one more beauty shot of my almond cake instead.
My short story inspired by the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, “Heirloom Alchemy,” comes out April 15, 2025 in The Fairy Tale Magazine‘s Briar and Thorn Issue. You can click on the button below and read it now for free! You can also find it, along with all my other short stories, on my short story page via my website menu.
Just find the box and click to download your free PDF copy. I hope you enjoy this short story and find some time to appreciate the alchemy, heirloom or otherwise, in your life. And if you feel like sharing, I’d totally be up for swapping recipes. My contact form heads straight to my personal inbox.
Amy’s Almond Cake
Adapted from Fanny in France: Travel Adventures of a Chef’s Daughter, with Recipes by Alice Waters
2 cup sliced almonds, divided
1 and 3/4 sticks butter, divided
1/2 of a lemon
1 and 1/4 cup sugar, divided
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla, divided
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
Line a 9 inch cake pan with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. In a sheet pan, spread 2 cups of almonds and bake for 6 minutes. Remove from oven and cool.
Meanwhile, brown 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter in sauce pan over low heat until golden. Takes about ten minutes. When butter is done cooking remove from heat and add the juice of 1/2 a lemon.
While butter is doing its thing, brush some of it over the parchment in the pan and add 1/2 cup of the roasted almonds and 2 tablespoons of sugar.
Grind 1 cup of the roasted almonds in a food processor until it is the consistency of wet sand. Mix in flour and salt.
Return remaining 1/2 cup of sliced almonds tossed with two tablespoons of butter and two tablespoons of sugar to oven and roast for five minutes or until golden. Remove from oven and cool.
With an electric mixer, whisk eggs and 1 cup sugar on high for five minutes or until they have thickened and tripled in volume. Sprinkle half the ground almond flour mixture over the top and fold in by hand until incorporated. Repeat with remaining ground almond mixture. Fold in browned butter, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and almond extract. Poor batter into the cake pan over the sliced almonds and bake for 30 minutes or until golden and done. Remove from oven and let cool on wire wrack.
Meanwhile whip heavy whipping cream with 2 tablespoons of powdered sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla until stiff peaks form. I enjoy piping my whipped cream, so I often beat it until it is the consistency of frosting.
Once the cake is cool flip it over onto a pretty cake stand and peel off the parchment paper. Frost the top with the whipped cream and garnish with the candied almonds. There will most likely be candied almonds left over for snacking. #SorryNotSorry