The mixer beaters came out of that bowl dripping with frosting, and I was already elbowing my brother out of the way for the first lick. Mom never even looked up. She just kept smoothing that knife across the top of the cake like she had all the time in the world. There was no can involved, ever. Just butter softening on the counter, a mountain of powdered sugar dusting the whole table, and a splash of vanilla she never bothered to measure because she didn’t need to. She built that frosting the same way she built everything else in that kitchen—from scratch and without a shortcut in sight. You could always tell whose mother baked from scratch. Ours never had to say a word about it.
