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FOR ONE YEAR, I LIVED IN A SMALL ENGLISH VILLAGE and nearly forgot I was American. I had married an old beau. The night before Lent began, what locals called Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday, we gathered in the church hall of 14th Century St. Mary’s in Higham-Ferrers and gobbled up the most delicate pancakes. They were lighter and more crepe-like than the American flapjacks I knew back home. We sprinkled them with sugar and lemon zest and rolled them up one by one and popped them into our mouths. Many things about that time in England felt small and quaint— the homes, cars, lanes on the highways, and those little pancakes. But some things were grand—the churches, the country’s history, the walks, gardens, the Queen, and the sky and how blue it was just moments after a morning rain passed. I miss those days. Travel gets you out of the familiar and into new places and cultures. It opens doors not just to recipes but different ways of thinking.
Three years ago this time, I was writing about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and baked a lemon cake to acknowledge it. Yesterday, I rebaked that Ukrainian cake to mark The Oval Outburst. Maybe revisiting a much-loved cake and sharing slices with others would help me forget Friday’s White House dressing down of Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky. But as good as the cake was, it didn’t. I can’t get that exchange out of my mind, and I’ll bet you can’t either. Zelensky is a hero not just for fighting off Russian aggression but for defending the free world. I was embarrassed and enraged by the actions of America’s leaders. Last evening, I learned the Trump administration has paused military aid to Ukraine.
This lemony Ukrainian cake recipe, above, found in The Moosewood Cookbook (1974) tells a family’s story. Author Mollie Katzen’s grandmother was born to Ukrainian parents in a covered wagon en route to Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1893. The family members were guests of a German Jewish philanthropist, Maurice de Hirsch, who was setting up colonies to protect Jews from rising antisemitism in Eastern Europe. Mollie’s grandmother would live her life in Montreal and become an avid baker who loved poppy seeds, which she called ‘’mohn’’ by their Yiddish name. She would soak the seeds in milk before baking to soften them and infuse the milk with their wonderful earthy flavor. Just as enslaved people from West African homelands carried benne seeds and planted them for luck as a border around the Georgia cotton fields they worked, displaced Jews like Mollie’s ancestors turned to poppy seeds to remind them of their homeland. Without poppy seeds, it’s just cake. With poppy seeds, it’s place.
Scrolling through Instagram Sunday afternoon, I was fortunate to find a post that educated me a bit more about Zelensky’s family’s World War II and Holocaust legacy that, no doubt, fuels his resilience. Zelensky was an only child. His father Oleksandr worked in mining and geology, and his mother Rimma as an engineer. His parents pushed him to succeed. ‘’You have to be better than everyone else,’’ Zelensky told Time magazine in January 2024. Zelensky’s paternal grandfather, Semyon Ivanovych Zelensky, served as an infantryman in the Soviet Red Army during the Second World War and survived the war. But Semyon’s father and three brothers were executed by Nazis. After the war, Zelensky’s grandmother, who had fled to Kazakhstan in 1941, returned to Ukraine, became a teacher, married Semyon, and raised a family. Zelensky remembered being around the kitchen table as a child and his grandmother talking about the years when Soviet soldiers came to confiscate Ukrainian food and their wheat was carried off at gunpoint. It was a part of Stalin’s attempt in the early 1930s to remake Soviet society and what led to the Ukrainian famine known as the Holodomor, translated to ‘’murder by hunger’’ that killed 3 million Ukrainians. Zelensky’s family has endured atrocities far worse than White House bullying.
Three years ago, when I wrote about a lemon poppy seed cake in this newsletter, I was in my Nashville kitchen devastated by heart-wrenching images of the unprovoked war being shown on TV. It had been nearly 40 years since I had first baked this cake in Atlanta in a narrow kitchen in a rambling old house divided into four apartments. I lived in a ground-floor apartment on the right-hand side and grew accustomed to my neighbors above walking their creaky floors day and night. But in my youth, I didn’t really understand what Ukraine was or what it stood for. Yesterday, I baked this cake again more knowledgeable, more understanding, and out of love. I riffed on the original recipe again, using a simpler method of assembly, yogurt for moisture, extra lemon zest for flavor, and a lemon syrup brushed onto the Bundt cake before slicing. The sun came into my kitchen’s east-facing window at just the right moment, and I quickly took some photos to share with you. In three war-torn years, more than 7 million Ukrainian people have fled their native country in the largest migration since World War II. Ukrainians are the poppy seeds scattered in the wind. Home baking can’t heal the mess we’re in right now. But the beauty of recipes, especially poignant ones like this cake, is how they transport you back a few years or maybe a world away from where you are now. And if empathy starts in one kitchen and spreads from there to another, and if it’s on Fat Tuesday as Christians begin a Lenten season of reflection leading up to Easter, and if they are remembering and praying for other people who don’t believe everything they do, people who might not look like them or worship like them or worship at all, then cake could serve the greater good. As it turned out, I returned to America after that year in England. I didn’t forget I was American. But right now, I’m having a hard time accepting what America looks like to the rest of the world. I’m ready to do as Jimmy Carter said and think about others and extend a helping hand. Please share this post with your friends. I’ve sent it to you, my paid subscribers, first. But I am also publishing it as a free post this afternoon for everyone to read. Happy baking this wonderful cake, and above all, speak up! - xo, Anne
THE RECIPE: Lemon Poppy Seed Cake for UkraineThis new version of Mollie Katzen’s recipe is simpler to make because you don’t need an electric mixer. You choose how many poppy seeds to add. I suggest at least 1/4 cup and no more than 1/2 cup. You can omit the poppy seeds and fold in 1 cup small blueberries if you like. Lemons are the yellow for Ukraine in this recipe, and I upped the amount of lemon zest plus added a lemon syrup at the end to accentuate the flavor and make this cake gorgeous! You can bake this as a large loaf or you could make this into 12 to 16 muffins as well. Makes 12 to 16 servings Bake: About 1 hour
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