Okay, so I’m sick. Sick again. Still sick. No matter how I look at it, and I’ve looked at it through every lens possible, I’m sick. And have been for several weeks now. I know, I’ve told myself that I don’t have cancer. And that’s true. No broken bones, etc. Just flu-like, cold-like, sinus-infection yuck. Every joint in my body aching, no energy, stuffy, downright cranky-making yuck.
So now you know. I keep thinking, it’s easier to go through surgery, for god’s sake! At least they give you drugs to manage the pain levels, and mostly, you’re expected to drop out of life for a while. With this, I just get, “Gee, you’re still sick? You’ve been sick for so long.” As if I could change it. And if I could I would. It doesn’t feel good. But for now, I’m just wishing my February away. Because my skin hurts. Because the place where my hair follicles reach into my scalp hurts. Because I’ve gone through two, count ‘em, two, giant pots of chicken noodle soup and if you so much as ask me if I want soup or tea, I might bite your head off. (Please accept my sincerest apologies now.) Because my poor family, starved from lack of home-cooked food, did what any red-blooded American family would do at a time like this: they went to, I kid you not, KFC! And never mind that I hadn’t eaten KFC for approximately 40 years, I asked them to bring me home some. Uh-huh. No wonder I’m not getting well . . .
I’m not the kind of person who wishes time away, much. Too much death at too young of an age really makes me want to cherish every moment of life. Mostly I do. But not now. Right now, I want to be someplace warm (which for a native Californian means over 70 degrees, thank you very much), and I want to feel the air on my skin as warm as soothing bath water. I want to relax all these aching muscles and joints and I want to breathe soft air and be able to drink a cocktail. Alas, I’ll have to wait, and heal, and soon it will be March and so on, and this too shall pass. Yawn. Aren’t you glad I stopped by today?
Well, I’ve had a few good days in the last few weeks, and on those days I have been baking, as usual. Last week my son’s dear third grade teacher had a birthday. I made her a yellow cake (with a touch of white chocolate in the batter), with lemon curd filling and classic lemon buttercream frosting. Highlight of my week to be able to feel well enough to take that to her! I strangely declared (after returning from the doctor’s office later in the day), “I want to make cakes!” And why not, I ask? Cakes are the ultimate everyday celebration food, true? A cake is used to mark birthdays, weddings, parties. Just seeing a cake makes one feel celebratory. They’re kind of like champagne, that way. They scream, “Party!” (Confession: cakes are not actually my favorite kind of dessert to eat, but oddly enough they are my favorite to make. The art and science of them amazes me endlessly.)
All the recipes for this cake are found in The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Sometimes her cake and frostings are too buttery and not sweet enough for tastes these days. (Most of the kids did not eat the buttercream frosting, and some of the adults followed suit.) But the recipes are incredibly well-tested classics, and if you are looking for old-fashioned taste, as far from a grocery-store bakery cake taste as you can get, she’s your gal.
