Ready or not?

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A house up the street from a few years back.

I wonder if everyone is ready for Christmas....I am...almost. I still have a few things left to wrap. And actually need to get gifts for the little kids next door. And I have yet to get in all the fixings for Christmas dinner. But that is not that much left to do.

Neal and I were talking the other night...our talks always include talking about childhood and the things we remember. I was telling him, the one memory that really stands out in my mind is all the cakes mom would bake at Christmas. There was a metal cabinet that had two shelves up top behind glass, and those two shelves would be full of cakes! I could not remember if it was just a year or two that she did that, or every year.

He said he thought it was every year, and that he helped her bake them. So, I told him I didn't remember actually eating them...he thought that she gave most of them away. Which makes sense...I just can't imagine not remembering eating them.

I cannot remember the variety that she made, but know she almost always made a jam cake...it tasted sort of like a spice cake if I remember correctly, and she always made a caramel icing for it. She also made a stack cake...at least that is what we called it. She had no written recipe, and did not measure a thing....but she made this dough. I know it had eggs and sugar in it, and other than that I can't recall what else. I know I liked the dough raw, better than baked.

She would divide take a dough ball about the size of a fist or maybe just a bit bigger....she would pat that out flat in a greased iron skillet. She kept two iron skillets in the oven and would make anywhere from 8 to 12 or 14 layers.

For the filling in between the layers, she used dried apples and cooked them down to something similar to apple butter but with more texture if I remember correctly. ( I know water and cinnamon were added to the apples, but think there were other spices, just don't recall what all.) That was a cake that company always enjoyed. I have never seen the cake made by anyone else, but I did find a recipe that sounds right here.

Thinking back, that is one of my favorite memories.