Cakes Men Love

I once made a man I loved a birthday cake. This was many years ago when my cooking skills consisted of having my mother make lasagna, freeze it, and then I would heat it in the oven and then present it to whatever unsupsecting victim I happened to be seeing at the time. Since my mother has died, I can only fall back on such staples as popcorn and soup, prepackaged soup that is. But box cakes don't require much either except that I bought frosting and Batman decorations for the top (he had written an elegiac poem about the possibility of Batman being one's friend and how great that would be -- this was his early work; he was in his forties), and I presented it to my then-boyfriend with a great nervousness. He made a bad poo face and said that it was too much and there was no way he'd be able to eat it. I felt as sick as if I'd eaten the entire layer of frosting myself. It stayed in the fridge for weeks, a testament to my stupidity about where we were in the relationship.

Years after this incident, I bought a book called Cakes Men Love. It was a campy little tome from the sixties that I purchased at Recycled Books and Records, one of the greatest used bookstores ever, located in Denton, Texas. Even so, I've never made another cake. My ex and I stayed together for years, years that eventually led to him wanting a birthday cake. He'd tell me his preference time and again, and I could never remember if it was for a white cake with chocolate icing or a chocolate cake with white icing and still can't. I kept remembering the first one as it looked in the trash, all its figures still on it. I usually saved the little plastic guys, washing them carefully in the sink and storing them in a drawer reserved for candles and confetti, all the happy ornaments of celebration. But Batman and his friend Robin went in the can. It seemed that Batman would not be hanging out at our house, not then, and not ever.

Michelle's Spell of the Day

"Our true enemy has not revealed himself." Mario Puzo, The Godfather

Cocktail Hour

Drinking movie suggestion: Broadway Danny Rose

Benedictions and Maledictions

Happy Saturday!