Words by Sharon Hunt

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”

So said Julia Child, and like Child, my father had a what-the-hell attitude in the kitchen, one he never lost in the more than six decades he cooked and baked.

He — Oswald Hunt — took to the kitchen early, after his mother fell ill and was confined to bed for a year. Because of her illness, he and his siblings took on extra chores, and at the age of 10, Dad’s biggest one was feeding his family. He had no experience in this, but knew what it entailed: three hearty meals daily, baking bread for the week, always having cookies and loaves in the freezer and ensuring there was dessert to finish every supper. It was an enormous challenge, but he was a fearless child and so he threw himself into this new adventure.

Little did he know that the adventure he began at 10 would be a lifelong one for him and, later, for me, his first-born daughter.

Like many Newfoundland kitchens, his was the largest room in the family’s two-storey, biscuit box house. The oil stove was huge, and at first, Dad was intimidated by the six burners, two ovens and three warming compartments. The stove’s fierce heat had to be controlled or else everything burned, as he quickly discovered. Adding to those challenges was the fact that there were no recipes to go by, his mother, like female relatives before her, seeming to have been born with an innate sense for making delicious food, without the need of written instructions.

After taking over the kitchen, Dad’s first few days were spent at his mother’s bedside, asking question after question.

“We had some bread, butter and tea suppers, before things got up to speed. Dessert was the jam on top of the butter,” he once told me, laughing.

Still, every failure made him more determined not to let his mother down.

After she recovered, he relinquished the stove to her, but continued as her assistant. Years later, he took over his own stove, my mother happy to cede it, since she hated cooking and baking.

I inherited Dad’s interest in the kitchen, although during my early years on Bell Island, where my parents were born, I didn’t spend much time with him in that room. After we left Newfoundland, I had a hard time fitting into my new neighbourhood and stayed closer to home. It was then that

I became more curious about what he was doing, especially when he baked, but only as a spectator, at first.

The aroma of vanilla, apples, chocolate and oranges, among others, drew me in. So did what looked to me like a science project gone awry: the kitchen table covered with measuring cups and spoons, spatulas and greased pans awaiting batters being mixed by his Sunbeam Mixmaster. Known as “the mother of all mixers,” it whirred along for hours before its bowls and beaters were washed and everything put away for next time.

In the midst of all of this stood Dad, in one of Mom’s gingham aprons, the same Dad who spent his weekdays as a mechanic, crawling around and repairing giant machines used to create nylon polymer. He was a wizard at work and in the kitchen, and I became his apprentice at the same age he had become his mother’s.

We had a cherry tree growing in the back garden of our new home, and the sweet, juicy fruit meant that Dad had a new ingredient to bake with, unlike the glace cherries available to him in Newfoundland.

Excited about this, he began teaching me how to encase the cherries in his perfect pie crust, although it took me forever to make pastry as flaky as his. He showed me how mixing flour with the cherries, before folding them into a batter, suspended the fruit throughout the cake instead of sinking to the bottom.

When a neighbour to whom he had given some cherries made us a cherry clafoutis as a thank you, we were soon off in another baking direction. The dessert was not only delicious but unlike anything we had ever eaten, and it piqued Dad’s interest. He wanted to learn more about Julia Child, whose recipe the neighbour had used, and also about French desserts.

With a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, along with a couple of other cookbooks featuring French desserts that our neighbour lent him, he had a great place to start. While we continued making the clafoutis, which became a family favourite, while adding other desserts to our repertoire. Crème brûlée was tricky when trying to make the sugar on top bubble without reducing the custard underneath to liquid. Dad solved this problem when he brought home a small blow torch from work. Pâte à choux, for cream puffs, took a lot of arm strength to achieve the perfect consistency. I grew exhausted just watching him beat the stiffening mixture with a wooden spoon, but the resulting pastries, filled with whipped cream and dusted with confectioners’ sugar, were worth the effort, we both agreed.

At Christmas we made chocolate macarons with our own cherry preserves, for Christmas, to accompany the shortbread and thumbprint cookies he had been making since he was a boy. A maple-frosted bûche de Noël — from a recipe cut out of a magazine — was as successful as his mother’s plum pud- ding smothered in rum sauce.

The French desserts, a hit with everyone, led us to Italian cookies, such as chocolate biscotti and almond amaretti, my favourite. German strudel, apple, mostly, soon followed, after a co-worker gave Dad a slice of his wife’s strudel one day.

Each new addition was interspersed with old favourites like the butter tarts that disappeared so quickly from the cooling rack that Mom forbade us from making them more than once a month.

Some Saturdays, Dad and I went to a specialty food shop for ingredients we couldn’t get at our local grocery store: chunks of dark chocolate, fresh figs, ground almonds, kosher salt and jewel-coloured spices. We marvelled at other ingredients we had never heard of and imagined new baking worlds awaiting us.

When I moved out on my own, Dad and I had less opportunity to bake together, but still shared a kitchen at Easter, Thanksgiving and especially Christmas.

After Mom died, he spent more and more time in the kitchen, with baking becoming a balm for the loss he would never get over. He made fewer sweets and more breads. Kneading the dough helped him work out some of the anger he felt at losing the love of his life so early. He tried his hand at sourdough and, when he finally made a loaf he was pleased with, taught me how too.

My move to a new city prompted him to sell the family home — our wonderful cherry tree long lost to rot — and move into mine. There, we had almost a decade more to bake before he, too, was gone.

Now, alone in my kitchen, I remember him always wearing one of Mom’s gingham aprons even though he had been given more chef-like ones, how he cleaned as he went, instead of letting dishes pile up, and his caution about never doubling a baking recipe because the finished product would not turn out as well. He was right; it doesn’t.

Mostly, I remember that although this adventure of mine might have begun with a cherry, it was nurtured and sustained by my Dad and his what-the-hell attitude.

Dad’s Cherry Loaf

We had a cherry tree growing in the back garden of our new home, and the sweet, juicy fruit meant that Dad had a new ingredient to bake with.

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Course Snack

Ingredients

  

• ¾ cup butter, softened
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted into a small bowl
• 2 more tablespoons all-purpose flour, set aside for mixing with the cherries
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ¼ cup orange juice, bottled or fresh
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 cup fresh cherries, washed, dried, pitted and cut in half

Instructions

 

• Preheat the oven to 350℉ and move a rack to the centre position. Grease a 9 by 5-inch loaf pan and line the bottom with greased parchment paper. Set aside.
• In the large bowl of a stand mixer (or use a hand-held mixer), beat the butter at medium speed for 1 minute. Add the sugar, ¼ cup at a time and beat well after each addition.
• Using a spatula, scrape down the sides of the bowl as required.
• Beat the mixture at medium speed until it is pale yellow and the sugar has melted or is no longer gritty (about 5 minutes). Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition, until they are fully incorporated.
• Add the orange juice and almond extract and beat for 30 seconds. Add the flour, ½ cup at a time, and beat until all of it is incorporated. Do not overbeat.
• In a small bowl, coat the cherries with the remaining 2 tablespoons of flour. Gently fold the cherries into the batter. Pour the batter into the loaf pan, and smooth the top with a spatula.
• Place the pan on the centre rack of the oven and bake until the top of the loaf is golden and a tester inserted into the centre comes out clean (about 45 minutes to an hour). Cool the loaf in the pan, then remove and enjoy.

Keyword baking, cherries, loaf