Cozy Book Basics: Baking and Writing

A century ago Marcel Proust was inspired to write A Remembrance of Things Past as he sat staring at a Madeleine cookie. I can relate to that, since memories of Strawberry Socials, Harvest Suppers and Silver Teas prompted me to write the continuity for Eating at Church. In Words with Power Northrop Frye explores the mechanism that conveys emotions from  writer to reader. I wonder if that includes from baking to writer to reader?

No feeling surpasses that of getting up in the morning, baking a cake and visualizing yourself carrying it off to a birthday dinner party later that day.

 “First you steal a dozen eggs …” Zsa Zsa Gabor’s recipe for a Hungarian sponge cake recipe admonishes. So, surreptitiously, I sneak five Omega eggs out of the fridge and separate them with help from a plastic contraption the Dollar Store sells. I don’t stop whipping the whites until they are stiff and shrink from the sides of the bowl. I had left each of the five yolks sitting pretty in one of its half shells but I now mix in one of them at a time, along with a heaping tablespoonful of sugar. I fold in five level tablespoonfuls of flour individually, pour the batter into a 9” x 9” cake tin lined with parchment paper, and put it on the middle rack of my oven, preheated to 350° F.

My test for knowing when it is done is to go back upstairs to my computer. Few things can drag me away from my writing but the smell of a cake rising does. In about a half hour I get the aroma summons. The cake is browned beautifully and the skewer I insert in the center comes out clean.

I can hardly wait to see my granddaughters looking at their father’s birthday cake tonight.