Our Fake Family Tree

Today is "Family Heritage" day at my daughter's elementary school. Last week, Camber's kindergarten teacher sent home a letter requesting that each student contribute to the festivities by preparing a short report about the country of his/her ancestors' origin and bringing in a related visual aid.

Camber is extremely unlucky because both of her parents' ancestors come from a country known for bad teeth and fish & chips. I was in the process of helping my daughter make the only visual aid that I could think up on such short notice--a map of the world with colored dots marking all of the places that this country colonized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries--when my husband interrupted our fun with the declaration that "we can do better."

I have to reach pretty far back on my rather crooked family tree to get to Sweden, but I get there eventually. By the time that I remembered my great-great-great-great grandmother from Stockholm, Ikea had already closed for the night, forcing me to come up with something other than a catalog of assemble-yourself furniture to display to my daughter's classmates.

A search for Swedish desserts online revealed that real Swedish cooks rely heavily upon two ingredients that are not in most Pennsylvanians' pantries: lingonberries and almond paste.

At 7pm, I found a recipe for a Swedish chocolate cake that serves twenty.

"That looks an awful lot like a Texas sheet cake," observed my husband.

Camber looked at me for reassurance.

"It's a SWEDISH sheet cake," I said firmly as I covered the lone star insignia on the recipe card with my hand.

Tim rolled his eyes.

"It's either this," I said, pointing at the cake, "Or the imperialist map. Take your pick."

He picked the cake.