It was a shorter cake than I anticipated, but very dense and intensely flavorful. Next time I would have added more cherry. The coffee overwhelms the cherry a bit, and I can see Cherry hide in the corner as Coffee bullies it to the side and devours the tastebuds inside our mouths, hardly leaving a single bud for Cherry.
And my buttercream was so thick, it broke the bag twice as I tried to squeeze it through a decorative frosting tip! Alas, the process is always a learning one.
And indeed I look forward to that process each time I take out my mother's stainless steel mixing bowls with the little finger loop that jangles on the side every time a bowl moves. I have a love hate relationship with these bowls, for they are quite special to me, but quite a burden! They were, first, my grandmother's bowls on my mother's side, Nina (or Nanny ). And of course I've been using them since I was a wee little gal.
I didn't even think to ask my sisters if they wanted the bowls as I snatched them up and hid them away from their consideration. They are my memories, my link to memories of my mother's as well.....
But they are such dreadful buckets! They are so light and slippery that one must always have a firm grip on the bowl with one hand, a finger looping through the loop. This makes it quite difficult if you are supposed to mix with one hand while pouring the milk slowly in with the other, and then the sugar, and then back and forth. I must release my grip from the bowl to grab the sugar, so I must stop mixing with the other so as not to knock the whole muddy contents of the bowl onto the ground or send rotating globs flinging to corners of the counter and wall, no longer safely clinging to the twirling mixing paddles.
And for that very reason, I love and hate the bowls. I imagine my mother having the same conundrum as she tried to flip the page of the recipe book, or try to break an egg with one hand (something I plan to perfect but am far from such a delicate finely tuned skill!). I'm certain she spludged more than one or two spludges of batter onto the counter or the floor or the stove top. I'm certain....I see the crusty pages from her cookbook, and you can always tell which recipes she used the most from the cleanliness (or..well...not-so) of the page! ; )
Yet one more of the vast forms of communion, communion with the dead as well as the living. Ancestry, relatives, those humans who have also once done the same many things we do, the ones we've never even known. We carry their movements in our own, and we pass pieces of them down the line and across lines or in circles or however time works. "At peace, of a piece, internally at rest" the poet tells me.
When I die and go to that mysterious place, I hope I will be allowed to bake. Maybe then, my communion will continue to cross those unseen boundaries. For who says that death's life come's after earthly life? Maybe we will live throughout time and during all time, and be aiding the communion and spiritual embrace of those still experiencing gravity. Afterall, isn't this what the Body behind the Bread does?
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