Let Them Eat Cake

As a person who stress-bakes to cope with schoolwork, this book, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender, really hits home. However, the spin of the novel is its use of magical realism, which allows for the protagonist, a nine-year-old girl named Rose, to discern a person’s emotions by the food they cook for her. The family unit of the book consists of Rose, the protagonist, the father who is a workaholic and is barely seen, the mother who stays at home mostly to raise the kids with the occasional, odd part time job, and the older brother who is disinterested in his family. The book focuses on Rose and her mother’s cooking as the mother goes through a period of being unsatisfied in her life and marriage. This ultimately leads to her decision for a divorce. The daughter is able to sense this spiral of unhappiness through her mom's cooking even though she is too young to fully understand her family's issues. This book eloquently combines the ideas of food and the emotions that are inherently baked into them. These descriptions are so tantalizing that they made me want to bake them for myself. 

“The room filled with the smell of warming butter and sugar and lemon and eggs, and at five the timer buzzed and I pulled out the cake and placed it on the stovetop.  The house was quiet. The bowl of icing was right there on the counter, ready to go, and cakes are best when just out of the oven, and I really couldn’t possibly wait, so I reached to the side of the cake pan, to the least obvious part, and pulled off a small warm spongy chunk of deep gold. Iced it all over with chocolate. Popped the whole thing into my mouth.”

Specifically, I wanted to bake and eat the lemon cake described in the first few chapters, and, like the mother in the book, I spent a lot of time looking for the perfect recipe. Thankfully, the internet did not disappoint me, and there was a brilliant recipe for lemon cake. However, chocolate frosting was harder to find, and the ingredients were not in my fridge, so I settled for a chocolate ganache (this honestly is not a sacrifice–if any frosting recipe can be replaced with ganache, do it).  

So with my online recipe in tow, I started to bake. I creamed together eggs and sugar, then began to mix in the dry ingredients making sure not to spill the flour all over the kitchen. It is my absolute favorite thing to watch the ingredients come together. Lastly, I added the lemon juice and zest to give it a rich flavor. Pouring my batter in pans, I remembered that I never pre-heated the oven and then needed to wait a little longer until I could bake the cakes. During the wait I watched some TV and started the messy process of making a ganache. I failed at being clean at this moment and spilled chocolate all over the stove top.  

Thankfully, when fully assembled, my cake did not taste like a spiral into divorce but of the unique citrus and sweet that comes from mixing fruit and chocolate, reminding me of a summer day. However, due to Rose being able to taste her mother’s emotions, she was unable to enjoy the baked goods as they were intended. This then brings up questions of the book itself and its use of emotions. What would it be like if this cake tasted like my emotions? Would they taste stressed and overworked like all of the school work that is piling up behind me while I cook, or would someone taste the work I put into it and the relaxation this offers me. Could they taste that the act of cooking has a way of grounding me? 

March 2022