The Catastrophe of a Broken Cake

How do we eat our fears?

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to be part of CPW’s inaugural FEAST (Fostering Eco-centric Art & Science Together), curated by the brilliant Marina Zurkow and Abigail Simon. Today’s newsletter is a peek into the event: my cake installation and a reading I gave.

The catastrophe of a broken cake. Turn on the spotlight in your mind and observe. A multilayer cake adorned with scallops, rosettes, real flowers or golden flakes. You know the one I’m talking about. A beautiful cake. The cake whose sweetness encases our dreams of orderly decadence has slipped and smashed and is something worse than nothing now. The grandmother-salvaged stand was wobbly and the cake leans at an angle that is all wrong. A flower arrangement has punctured its smooth side. Its crumbs burst forth from the frosting like the innards of an animal next to the highway. We should look away.

The broken cake reminds us of precarity when we would prefer to believe in control — a belief granted to us as the reward/punishment of adulthood: We can plan for all exigencies. We can pay for people to take care of things. We can build our future on a spreadsheet and then execute it. As long as there is money in the bank, locks on the doors, a first-aid kit, a fire escape plan, property insurance, medical insurance, car insurance, 401(k)s, a networked home security system, a long-term investment strategy backed by sound financial research, a responsive police force, and a mowed lawn free of ticks, we can be safe.

When the hosts see the cake, their shock turns to shame. Back when the cake was whole, they thought that the universe was on their side. If life was a river, they were swimming with the current. They must be on the correct path, because Look! At all they have! They counted their blessings, but considered them rights. The broken cake mocks their careful planning and well-deserved celebration. It asks them to question everything they suspected might not be theirs.

And the cake belonged not only to the hosts. For the pastry chef, the broken cake is a professional nightmare. So many moments of cautious effort and almost-accident in the days of work leading up to this. It was a piece of art. It was the product of effort and skill earned over time. It was a heart poured into a pan and lovingly groomed into shape. Its creator cannot be faulted for desiring perfection. She inhabited a reality in which this cake was in the middle of her new website. The cake was a window: people who did not know her would finally see her for who she was. She mourns the loss of that reality at the same time as she contemplates the cleanup task that awaits her.

A child approaches the table. Positioned on its stand, the beautiful cake soared miles above his head; he had to squint to see the top of it. Now the crumbs are at eye level and he can examine their buttery softness and the berries that have rolled to the table’s edge. Before anyone can stop him from touching the site of violence, he has taken a handful of crumbs and crammed them into his surprisingly large mouth. He reaches back for more.

A moment of silence while the group reconsiders what confronts them. Then more hands, tentatively at first, reaching forward to scoop up crumbs. Bowls appear (the pastry chef having selected an appropriate vessel to hold this reality), and containers of frosting, jam, leftover garnish, additional fruit. The cake-eaters build plates that are ugly, lavish, delicious. They scoop up disaster and sugar and devour them together.

How do we eat our fears? Is destruction the first stage of digestion? When expectations crumble, can we feast on crumbs?

And the cake? Well the cake is gone. But if a cake could be happy, it was happy. It loved to be loved. It lived to be devoured. It was licked pure and clean and has become dispersed now among many bodies. A wise cake knows its lifespan and hopes only for one moment at the heart of everything. It was enough.

What I’m Cooking

For paid subscribers, things are getting more unusual in the kitchen. I’m beginning to feature chestnut flour recipes, using Breadtree chestnut flour.