The Dark Night of the Home Baked Goods
Like many other people at that time, I began baking in the spring of 2020. I’d avoided much baking in my tiny kitchen in West Baltimore, using the lack of counter space as an excuse. But when it became obvious that the pandemic was worsening, and Amazon Fresh delivered everything I needed from eggs to flour to nuts, I listened to the voice in my head that said, fuck it let’s do this, and got my cookie sheets out of storage.
I’ve done a decent share of baking in the past, though much of it was from a box going back to my tween and teen years. Whenever my dad got a craving for sweets, which wasn’t super often, he would call out from the den, “Cori, would you make your dear old dad some brownies?” If I wasn’t feeling super angsty, and if we had all the ingredients – including chopped walnuts Mom kept in the freezer; he always wants brownies with nuts in them – I would oblige.
My favorite box-cake-based recipe going back to childhood was a double orange refrigerator sheet cake, made from a Duncan Hines Orange Supreme cake mix, orange Jello, Dream Whip and French vanilla Jello pudding. That orange cake mix was easy to find on store shelves in the ‘70s through the ‘80s, then got progressively harder to locate, but in the last few years I have found it again. And yes, the cake is still one of my favorites.
I’ve always known that baking is a comfort activity for me. It’s a tightly controlled, yet creative, process. Measure out the ingredients in these proportions, combine them using these specific tools, bake at this temperature for this period of time, follow the process for cooling and final presentation, and if you did all these things and didn’t make any substitutions that weren’t mentioned in the recipe, you’re likely to net positive results. I don’t have to make it up as I go along. That’s for cooking soup or a pasta sauce. Or moving through life.
Yes, the symbolism is obvious. Why else did all these people start baking in March 2020? Why did I? Because in a world that’s out of control, I want to find the things I can control, and that is the number of teaspoons of baking powder to make the apple walnut muffins rise beautifully, or the perfect plain Greek yogurt for a moist lemon loaf cake to rival the one from the coffee shop you can’t visit with your bestie Johnny because fucking COVID.
I didn’t make baking my primary pandemic project, though. It came in third place, behind getting more physically fit (and yes, I still managed to drop weight, keep the weight off AND enjoy delicious home baked goods, don’t @ me) and revising my novel. In year three of the pandemic, however, I feel much more untethered and lost, so I keep coming back to the baking. Because more than ever, as I watch my debts mount, my dental health deteriorate, and my businesses flounder, I need baking. It seems as if many people I know have moved on to other things – jobs, relationships, new houses, grad school, babies, retirement, traveling. One friend got her dream job. Another got a book deal. Yet another found a fulfilling romantic relationship.
I found – what? Flour-covered counters? The value of using SNAP funds to buy the high-quality vanilla extract? That I prefer to use canola oil instead of butter in an eight-inch chocolate cake because it makes the cake much lighter? How mug cakes are a waste of time and energy?
In my new place – a basement apartment in the suburbs – I am constantly taking over the kitchen with a new baking project. Today, as I mourn the 13th year without my mother, on the weekend she would have turned 80 years old, I baked a hummingbird cake. It’s three layers of a quick bread-like cake, filled with crushed pineapple, chopped bananas, and toasted pecans. It was my first time baking and assembling a layered cake from scratch. And as I prepped ingredients, measured out flour and sugar, and softened cream cheese and butter in the microwave, I thought about my novel, The Girl from Galax, and the scene I wrote where hummingbird cake is served at a dinner party, and how it affects the heroine, Belle, as well as her father and brother:
Sam returned to the dining room, carrying in his hands a frosted white cake on a glass stand. “Now, I can’t say I’ve ever had hummingbird cake before, but this bakery makes the most delectable confections, so I expect this will be just dandy.” He placed the cake on the table and they all stared at it for a minute. If there were ever a sign that Momma was with Belle in spirit and watching over her, this would be it, for hummingbird cakes were Annie Johnson’s favorite ever since she saw the recipe in Southern Living magazine back when the kids were little and begging for sweets. “All the fruit makes me feel less guilty about giving you cake when it’s no one’s birthday,” she told her family as she sliced them wedges of the moist, flavorful cake, covered in cream cheese frosting. Sheila always picked out the pecans and gave them to Daddy, who often refrained from eating desserts, but Rocky and Belle loved hummingbird cake and requested it for their birthdays every year, with the exception of the year Rocky demanded an ice cream cake shaped like a Dodge Charger.
Rocky reached under the table and grabbed Belle’s hand, squeezing it hard. She didn’t look at him, because she knew if she did, both of them would start crying. Daddy thanked Sam profusely. “Wow, it’s been a long time since we had one of these, right, kids? Thank you for thinking of us.” He fidgeted with the dessert fork Charlene handed him, nodding as Sam put a plate with a hefty slice of cake in front of him. “This looks delicious.”
“Yes, it’s very Southern, thank you.” Belle could barely get the words out. She let go of Rocky’s hand and took a bite of cake. Not as moist as Momma’s, but still quite good, with a hint of nutmeg mixed into the sweet blend of pineapple and banana. Rocky ate his silently, closing his eyes in between bites. “Really good, thanks, Sam,” he uttered when he was done, then excused himself.
“My wife actually made this cake for our family over the years,” said Daddy, smiling at Belle, who looked down at her plate in response. “It was a Johnson favorite.”
Sam clapped his hands together and laughed. “Isn’t that wonderful? I just knew it would be perfect!” He glanced at Belle. “Would you like another slice, dear?”
“No, thank you.” She got up from the table. “Where is your restroom, please?” Charlene gestured toward the hallway on the opposite side of the room. Belle wanted to dart away, to find her brother and see if he had a pack of cigarettes with him. The cake triggered her grief way, way more than she could have foreseen, and it seemed to have done the same for Rocky. She poked her head into an open door, which was a bedroom with a private, enclosed patio. The glass door to the patio was open, Rocky standing outside of it, pacing, cigarette dangling from his lips.
“You got another one?” He handed her the pack of Marlboro Lights, then his lighter. She stuck a cigarette in her mouth and inhaled as the end glowed orange. The smoky exhale took away some of her angst.
“That cake, man. The motherfucking cake.” Rocky ran his hand through his hair. “I can deal with damn near any memory when it comes to Mom but that?” – he gestured toward the dining room – “That cake gets me every fucking time.” He took a long drag on his cigarette.
I could hear Rocky’s voice in my head as I turned out all three layers onto the wire cooling racks. I cried as I frosted the first layer, then placed the second and third layers, adding the cream cheese frosting in between them. I cried again as I frosted the entire cake, adding or subtracting frosting as I attempted to cover the sides evenly. My mom never made hummingbird cake that I’m aware of – I’d never even tried it before I visited Galax in summer 2018 – and I don’t know that she’d eaten it, herself. I knew I wanted to make it this weekend, though. I thought perhaps the process would be healing.
But even as the baking of the original Southern Living recipe soothes me during this long dark night of the soul, making something I know I will enjoy eating and sharing with the people I love, the cake gets me every fucking time, too. The sweetness is fleeting, the fork will eventually clink against the bare plate. I will need to start again, find another recipe, another project. Another me.
