A couple weekends ago, we had a few friends over for some Saturday morning socializing. Now that we have a new oven, I wanted to bake something tasty. I'd been thinking about cinnamon bread since Easter, so I wanted to bake either a New York Crumb cake or a cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread. Joy the Baker's pull-apart bread won.
While baking the bread was baking, John commented that the kitchen smelled like Cleveland. Meaning, it was smelling like something my Mom would bake (apple pie, anyone?). My Mom and I were texting back and forth at this point and I told her what I was baking and John's observation. She responded that Grandma (her mom) would have loved it.
And it clicked. My grandma would bake and bring cinnamon bread to brunch-y family gatherings like Easter or Mother's Day. While we had strata at Easter, there wasn't any cinnamon bread.
Like John, the smell of the cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread reminded me of my Mom's baking during Thanksgiving and Christmas. And it had me thinking, what sort of scented memories will we create with our daughter? I imagine the cookies and pies we'll bake together in the future. And I bet the smell of garlic and onions will permeate her childhood.
As for the pull-apart bread, I didn't make any changes to Joy the Baker's recipe, so here it is for your baking pleasure. The only thing I recommend doing is placing a baking sheet below the loaf pan while the bread is baking. The cinnamon sugar and butter between the layers of dough bubbled over started smoking...oops.
Do you have any favorite smells from childhood?
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O.M.G... that sounds amazing. Have saved the recipe, thanks for that! And, what a lovely thing to be thinking about while you bake :)
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