The Monday Night Cooking School - By Erica Bauermeister Page 0,18

bodice. Her hair fell to her shoulders in waves. The music began and Helen’s friends were commandeered by their various beaus. Helen stood, watching them.

“Where’s Mr. Debate Team?” Carl asked as he walked up.

“He’s out of town. Leastways, he says he is.” Helen continued watching the dancers, her face steady.

“Care to practice some steps with me?” Carl asked, lightly. Helen considered him, a question asked and discarded in her eyes, then turned into the circle of his arms.

It stunned him how easy it was, after all that time waiting, to slip his right hand along her back and feel his fingers fit perfectly into the curve of her waist, to feel her fingers slide along the palm of his left hand and then rest softly in place. She followed his lead like water and his feet moved as if answering instructions from a far better dancer. Without thinking, he pulled her closer to him and felt no resistance, only the slight incline of her forehead toward his shoulder. She was warm, and her hair smelled like cinnamon.

When the dance was over, he kept her close to him, her hand in his like a flower he had picked. She bent her head back slightly to look up at him.

“You’re home,” he said. She smiled and he leaned down to kiss her.

“IN MY OPINION, a cake is a lot like a marriage,” Lillian began, as she brought eggs, milk, and butter from the refrigerator and put them on the counter. “Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of experience,” she remarked, holding up her ringless left hand with a wry expression on her face, “but I’ve often thought that it would be a great idea for couples to make their own wedding cakes, as part of the preparation for their life together. Maybe not so many couples would end up getting married”—Lillian smiled—“but I think those that did might approach it a bit differently.”

She reached into the drawers below the counter and pulled out containers of flour and sugar and a box of baking soda.

“Now, cooking is all about preference—add a bit more of this or that until you reach the taste you want. Baking, however, is different. You need to make sure you have certain combinations correct.”

Lillian took the eggs and separated the yolks from the whites into two small blue bowls.

“At its essence, a cake is actually a delicate chemical equation—a balance, between air and structure. You give your cake too much structure, and it becomes tough. Too much air and it literally falls apart.

“You can see why it would be tempting to use a mix”—her eyes sparkled—“but then you’d lose out on all the lessons that baking a cake has to teach you.”

Lillian put the butter into the bowl and turned on the mixer; the paddles beat their way into the soft yellow rectangles. Slowly, in an impossibly thin waterfall of white, she let the sugar drift into the bowl.

“This is how you put air into a cake,” she commented over the noise of the machine. “Back before mixers, it used to take a really long time. Every air bubble in the batter came from the energy of someone’s arm. Now we just have to resist the urge to go faster and turn the mixer speed up. The batter won’t like it if you do that.” The waterfall of sugar ended, and Lillian stood, waiting patiently, watching the mixer.

The paddles continued their revolutions around the bowl, and the class watched the image in the mirror above the counter, entranced, as the sugar met and mingled with the butter, each drawing color and texture from the other, expanding, softening, lifting up the sides of the bowl in silken waves. Minutes passed, and still Lillian waited. Finally, when the butter and sugar reached the cloudlike consistency of whipped cream, she turned off the motor.

“There,” she said. “Magic.”

AFTER THEY WERE MARRIED, Carl and Helen decided to move to the Pacific Northwest. Helen had heard stories about tall trees and green that went on forever; she said she was ready for a change in color. Carl delighted in her sense of adventure and the idea of a new home for their new marriage. He got a job as an insurance agent—selling stability, he called it, giving his clients the luxury of sleeping through the night, knowing that no matter what happened there was a net into which they could fall, mid-dream.

The Pacific Northwest was dark and wet for much of the year, but Carl