Christmas reflections

 

A piece of coffee cake, from Connie's recipe, thawed for 24 minutes. Our family celebrated Christmas with the standby egg casserole and the cake we used to wait for on Christmas Eve.

This Christmas, my mom, dad, brother and I celebrated at my parents’ home in Mission Viejo, Calif., with a traditional breakfast with two components that hold special appeal: egg casserole and and a coffee cake that returned to the table.

It wouldn’t be Christmas without mom making the egg casserole, a recipe she got from my Aunt Gayle that is as much a tradition on Christmas morning as unwrapping the presents after breakfast. The casserole is a concoction of bread, cream of mushroom soup, Jimmy Dean sage sausage, mushrooms, cheese and eggs. Think breakfast bread pudding. It has the consistency of thick soup. My mom assembles it in advance, so all that’s left Christmas morning is cook it in the oven.

Something sweet accompanies the casserole. This year we had Connie’s coffee cake, an ode to years past. Connie lived one street down the hill and had two sons, Jake and Kyle, who my brother and I befriended and played games such as “tackle the person with the ball,” and the less-physical touch football. Every Christmas Eve, our family would wait for the knock at the door and either Jake, Kyle, maybe with their younger sister Caroline, holding a plate with the round coffee cake underneath colored plastic wrap. I loved that coffee cake. This year, I had the opportunity to make it. This coffee cake bakes in a bundt pan and uses store-bought biscuits in the can. Picture lots of butter and sugar-laced cinnamon. The bottom biscuits bake and soak up butter. The cake inverts onto a platter and reveals the top layer of butter-bathed biscuits with a deep golden, caramel color. Some of the sugar hardens and turns into little crisps that fall inside and around the circular cake. The best way to eat this is to combine a thin, crusty sugar layer with the doughy biscuit.

The egg casserole and coffee cake carry special meaning for our family. My mom experimented with different breakfast sweets, but I think Connie’s coffee cake will always be No. 1 for tradition’s sake and remembering the expectation. Sort of like waiting for our Savior’s birth, which is the most important expectation.