Tea at Grandma’s

Threading Together

Sunday tea with the grandparents was a regular feature of life when our own children were small.  My mother, would bake her staples of Victoria sponge, rock buns and occasionally a chocolate traybake.  I could imagine her using the same cake tins, spoons and scales that she had used all her married life.  The scales, battered from years of use with chipped cream paint so a piece of grease proof paper always had to be placed on the pan first before adding whatever ingredient that needed to be weighed.  Real, solid, lead weights placed the opposite side to balance, or not! Then the tins, the same ones I had used when practicing for my Brownie cooking badge. Her baking may not have won any prizes but it was always made with love, something she passed on to me and I in turn to my sons.  Of course, when she added shop bought treats like chocolate Swiss roll or cupcakes to the cake offerings at Sunday tea my sons usually headed straight for those, but those delights were short lived whereas the memories from homemade cakes live on.

Sue Cowell