Let Me Eat Cake by Leslie F. Miller

Author:Leslie F. Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

“Oh, please don’t ask me that.” But he is going to, so I make a deal. “How about this: What does it look like it cost?”

“Two hundred dollars.”

I think we’re cool.

But the moment of truth comes the following evening. On my dining room table are four cakes: a white chocolate cheesecake (cream cheese pie, really, as it’s crust and filling) I made using a ten-year-old Bon Appétit recipe, which calls for nearly a pound of white chocolate (which my mother says…)—half used as ganache —raspberry jam, and sliced almonds; a marshmallow cake covered with toasted coconut; another coconut cake so delicious that it has already been devastated by the just-one-more-little-piece thieves prior to cake cutting; and the ceremonial cake, star of my show.

I cut it while someone snaps a picture that will, later, make me swear off carbs for life (though another cake event—and there are many—will force me back far too early). I give everyone a slice, and we all taste it together. No one wants to say anything. It’s good, but good isn’t what you say of a two-hundred-dollar cake. You say, “WOW! Holy shit! Boffo!” Or you say nothing and keep chewing and moaning.

This is a moist cake, but it’s almost candylike with the fondant. And without it—well, I might as well eat a muffin, right? There’s barely any icing left beneath the marshmallow fondant, and what’s there has melted under the heat of this polyester-ish top. The white cake is a little more crumbly than other cakes I’ve eaten. But there’s nothing to distinguish it from a box mix, really.

It’s my fault. I could’ve chosen mint chocolate chip. Next time. And to be fair, there should be a next time, shouldn’t there? Even though frosting is my passion?

But if there is a next time, won’t I worry that Duff would be pointing to my cake and telling some visitor to his shop, “Yeah, but I hate the person that cake is for. Freakin’ bitch”? I will have to pretend to be someone else.

While we continue to nosh and nibble and drink more beer, my friend Kim removes a few of the cake’s decorations and applies them to places on her body. I slice another piece of cheesecake.

Within a couple of days, I do what I’ve not done with a cake in forty-three years, and I am somewhat ashamed: I toss it, “frosting” and all. I guess my taste buds, at least where birthday cake is concerned, have arrested development.

I long for a Safeway cake. I want to eat all four corners. In private.

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