Imaginary Cakes
What I've not been baking
Dear Bread Fans,
Have you been baking? In my head, I’m making a million birthday cakes because all the spring fever-made babies (me included!) are celebrating. I’ve made a coconut cake for myself, and a walnut torte for my husband and a chocolate cake for my uncle, and cupcakes for all his Aquarius grandkids. I’ve mentally baked a yellow cake with dark chocolate frosting for my brother, and I may bake this for him next weekend, when we celebrate his fiftieth with karaoke! I have imagined bringing a carrot cake to Naughter’s, my favorite place to eat, and serving it to everyone.
But I’ve not made a single cake. I’ve been tired, recovering from Covid.
However my husband Jack turned sixty (!) so I could not let that pass unsaluted. He is not attached to the idea of cake for birthdays, which a kind of blasphemy to me, but I put my baking compass toward fruit, which he loves. In the freezer, I had service berries we picked last June, and Rose Wilde’s recipes brought the endeavor over the top. I used einkorn flour, with butter & lard, and followed the method for her blueberry pie filling.
The crust was more substantial than my usual pies – and that was great, just to have extra crust. The filling was a real crowd pleaser. If you haven’t tried service berries – aka Juneberries, Saskatoon berries – you might fall in love with them when you do. They have tiny seeds that when baked say, ‘hey, hey, taste that almondy ring?’ These are popular street trees, so there may be some near you.
Another cake I did not bake is Nian Gao! The boys grew up celebrating Lunar New Year by making a dragon parade with my mom, who took up the habit when she taught at a nursery school. At home, I read them the fabulous Runaway Rice Cake, and made us baked Nian Gao from the back. This year they are busy, and, impossibly, I’m out of Mochiko sweet rice flour! However, Brown Butter Bakery was set up at Sunhee’s, making Bungeoppang, a fish shaped pastry.
These are usually made with wheat flour, but Yun Mi Park, a cottage baker, made these mochi style. In the twilight, I walked down and got some. They were filled with either Nutella or sweet red bean paste, and we ate them too fast for pictures. But they sit in my head and heart.
So much of eating, or baking, or life, happens in our heads. This is why I love baking, and why I write: to make a bridge between my brain and other people. I want to connect.
I discussed this impulse when I zoomed in to Ellie Markovitch’s class this week, and described my approach to writing. I wanted to give the students a broad idea of what food writing is – far more than fancy descriptions of restaurant dishes.
I started by showing them the page from my 2nd grade autobiography, which reads: I am Amy Halloran. I have a new baby brother. I am seven years old and I like pancakes. While these sentences seem prophetic, I may have written, I like the color red instead, and not have such a golden artifact. As a kid, I pulled that thing I liked & loved, pancakes, from the sky, and invited the audience – my teacher, parents and grandparents, and unwittingly, my flour-focused future – into my experience.
Writing is an invitation. Come close, and see what I see, see what I’ve noticed. Since we experience life through our senses, exploring the sensory elements of any moment creates a welcome. Inviting Ellie’s students to write, I asked them to begin by closing their eyes and thinking about the physical experience of a familiar food.
Who is cooking? Can you see their hands? Do you remember shopping for ingredients?
After we reflected for a moment, they wrote notes on index cards. I love index cards because they are small, and less intimidating than a blank page, on a screen or in a notebook.
We wrote for 10 minutes and then some of them shared what they were remembering: the smells of the house, full of food already made; the sounds of knives on cutting boards as they made an Israeli salad together; everyone stirring the sauce as they passed through the kitchen, checking that the pasta wasn’t boiling over. They are off to a great start!
After dinner at Naughter’s Friday night, I got to watch a food bridge happen. I was with my friend Jenn & meeting her friend Cybil for the first time. Jenn brought Cybil some maple syrup she’d made, and the two of them tasted it together.
I’ll leave you with these pictures of them savoring the maple. And I wonder, what are you seeing & savoring?
Yours, Amy
yuuuuuuummmm