Ever since reading Aimee Bender's novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, I have wanted to make my own version of the life-changing cake. In the story, Rose's mother makes a lemon-chocolate cake for her ninth birthday. When Rose eats a piece of the cake, she realizes that she can taste her mother's emotions in the cake. It is not a pleasant experience. The rest of the novel is about how Rose deals with her new found gift and with her heart-breaking family life.
I was probably interested in making the cake because I've been looking at this book cover for weeks and craving cake. But also because it is interesting to bring fictional objects to life.
My Objects of Lit prof would be proud of all the object theory thoughts my endeavor has created: What happens when you take an object in literature and make it tangible? An object created by words, and an object created by hands. Different but the same. A replica. A cake that I have placed special meaning on because of a novel I read. Thinking about objects, and thinking about how I think about objects makes my head spin.
Andbutso, I decided to make my lemon cake. Started searching the interwebs for recipes and ideas. Aimee Bender has a recipe for her cake (a tad altered because she doesn't use chocolate frosting); little did she know that chocolate and lemon are not a usual combination. Darby O'Shea, a food blogger, has also written a pleasant blog post about this noteworthy cake, with a recipe included. Her recipe for lemon chiffon cake was similar to the recipe I found in our slightly ancient and deteriorating Betty Crocker cookbook, so I decided to stick with good, ole Betty Crocker.
Yesterday, while channelling my inner Betty Crocker, Julia Child, and two grandmothers, I made my cake.
Betty Crocker's Lovelight Lemon Chiffon Cake
Grease and flour: 2 8x1 1/2 layer pans
Temperature: 35o degrees
Baking time: 30-35 minutes
Sift together into bowl:
- 2 1/4 cups sifter Softasilk Flour
- 1 cup sugar
- 3 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. salt
Add:
- 1/3 cup cooking oil or soft butter
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
- 1 tsp. lemon rind
Beat 1 minute.
Add:
- Another 1/2 cup milk
- 2 egg yolks
Beat 1 minute.
Fold in very stiff meringue of:
- 2 egg whites
- 1/2 cup sugar
"On the kitchen counter, she'd set out the ingredients: Flour bag, sugar box, two brown eggs nestled in the grooves between tiles. A yellow block of butter blurring at the edges. A shallow glass bowl of lemon peel" (Bender 3).
Pour la frosting, I used Betty Crocker's basic chocolate butter icing. Because I am determined to use fair trade chocolate, I altered the recipe slightly. The only fair trade chocolate I had on hand was Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate (70%). The recipe calls for 3 oz. of unsweetened chocolate, so I was a tad worried about the extra sugar in the chocolate. But the frosting twas fine. Did not have to make any other changes in the recipe.
Betty Crocker (& Lois's) Chocolate Butter Icing
Blend together:
- 1/3 cup soft butter
- 3 cups sifted powdered sugar
- 3 tbsp. cream (I used nonfat milk)
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 3 oz. Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate (Fair trade!)
Making the cake itself was relatively normal. While baking, I kept wondering what Rose would taste if she had eaten a slice of my cake. Putting the cake together was a bit stressful because the warm weather yesterday made the frosting incredible soft and slippery, resulting in a tippy cake. After a bit of work, we set it right and then plopped it in the fridge to set.
"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 warm spongy chunk of deep gold. Iced it all over with chocolate. Popped the whole thing in my mouth" (Bender 6).
"Because the goodness of the ingredients--the fine chocolate, the freshest lemons--seemed like a cover over something larger and darker, and the taste of what was underneath was beginning to push up from the bite. I could absolutely taste the chocolate, but in drifts and traces, in an unfurling, or an opening, it seemed my mouth was also filling with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected with my mother, tasting a crowded sense of her thinking, a spiral, like I could almost even taste the grit in her jaw that had created the headache that meant she had to take as many aspirins as were necessary, a white dotted line of them in a row on the nightstand like an ellipsis to her comment: I'm just going to lie down. . . . None of it was a bad taste, so much, but there was a kind of lack of wholeness to the flavors that made it taste hollow, like the lemon and chocolate were just surrounding a hollowness. My mother's able hands had made the cake, and her mind had known how to balance the ingredients, but she was not there, in it" (Bender 10).
Twas a very successful cake. And not sad and hollow, at least to my knowledge. Just lemony and chocolate. I think that I would be very infused in my cake, not empty like Rose's mother. So much of my thought and energy went into my cake yesterday, all my cake thoughts and my other thoughts. Lemony, chocolate, and Lois then. A particular deliciousness.
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