The Monday Night Cooking School - By Erica Bauermeister Page 0,22
will make you take the second bite, and the one after.
“That’s why an all-white cake is especially tricky. We can’t get our contrast from flavor, not in any obvious way. We have no options for chocolate in our frosting, or raspberry preserve filling. No strawberries or lemon zest scattered across the top or hiding between the layers—although any of those could be fun another time.
“A white cake is the opposite of fireworks and fanfare—it’s subtle, the difference in texture between the cake and the frosting as they cross your tongue. It’s a little harder to accomplish”—she smiled at Helen and Carl—“but I have to say, when it works, it is sublime.”
IT WAS A SATURDAY AFTERNOON, almost two years after Helen first told Carl about the affair. The kids were off preparing for Mark’s high school graduation. Carl came up the basement stairs and heard a voice in French, with Helen’s halting repetition afterward. He reached the door of the kitchen and looked in. Helen was standing with her back to him, a tape player balanced precariously on the window ledge, ingredients for a chocolate cake laid out on the counter around her. Helen had never been a particularly tidy cook, and the evidence was everywhere, flour dusting down to the floor, in wide streaks on her apron, melted chocolate dripping across the counter.
The tape stopped and Helen, deep in concentration, didn’t notice. Cakes had always been an elusive prey for Helen. Diligently she had made them for every birthday and celebration—flat, misshapen, rock-hard, molten; Laurie still talked about what she called the volcano cake from her fifth birthday. And yet Carl knew Mark had begged for one; his graduation was that evening and it wouldn’t be a celebration without a cake from Helen.
Carl stood at the door to the kitchen, not moving, watching the late afternoon light filtering through the window and across Helen, coming to rest on the black and white tiles of the floor beneath her feet. He looked at the flour print on her hip where she had placed her hand while reading the next step in the recipe, at the white that was beginning to slip into her hair, strands that he loved and thus didn’t tell her about, as he knew she would pull them out. He looked at her, without speaking, and as he looked, he felt something shift and come to rest inside him, a movement as small and quiet as the tick of a watch.
He walked up behind her and softly touched his lips to the back of her neck. Helen turned to face him, meeting his eyes for a long moment, as if measuring the weight of something within them. Then she smiled.
“You’re home,” she said, and reached up to kiss him.
THE CLASS STOOD companionably around the wooden counter, trying to navigate forkfuls of cake into their mouths without losing a crumb to the floor. The frosting was a thick butter-cream, rich as a satin dress laid against the firm, fragile texture of the cake. With each bite, the cake melted first, then the frosting, one after another, like lovers tumbling into bed.
“Oh, this is delicious!” Claire looked across the table to Carl and Helen. “I can’t believe I made James choose chocolate for our wedding.”
“Definitely beats lamb cake,” Ian commented with a grin.
The fragile-looking older woman stood quietly, savoring the bite in her mouth. Lillian leaned over to her. “Penny for the memory, Isabelle,” she said.
“Oh, my memories cost more than that these days—supply and demand, you know,” Isabelle said with a chuckle, then continued. “I was thinking of Edward, my husband, when I was younger. He was so handsome on our wedding day, so solicitous. It didn’t last—but it was nice remembering.”
While the others continued talking, Carl and Helen stood next to each other, eating quietly. She was left-handed and he was right; as they ate, their free hands would find each other and let go, while their shoulders brushed against each other gently.
One piece of cake lay on the plate at the end of class; Lillian wrapped it in foil and handed it to Carl and Helen as they left the class.
“For you to take home,” she said. “A symbol of a long and happy marriage.”
“Or maybe…” Helen looked at Carl, who smiled and nodded. Helen took the foil package and went quickly out the door. Lillian and Carl watched as she caught up with Claire at the front gate. The two women talked for a few moments,