The Cake Baking Ramblings of a Control Freak

Traditions are nice printed off on photo paper, and in the vintage filter of the memory. Especially when you are the kid. They look different when you are the mom.

Here we are again, eleven o’clock at night. An almost full moon for company, and a bunch of shining measuring cups. The bones in my legs complain about making the Autumn Equinox cake. We could just buy a cake at the store… I eyed the lasagna bought frozen from the store that was still sitting on the stove—that was enough of an offense. Frozen lasagna in this house is a sin. My great grandmother would be repulsed. Food is serious business. There will be no store bought cakes.

Alright, alright, argued my aches and pains, make a scratch cake then, but why is it necessary to make such a pain in the ass cake, every single year?

Tradition, silly. I popped the bottle on the Guinness. Can’t make the Guinness chocolate layers of a Guinness Chocolate Pumpkin Cake without Guinness. The rich brown mixes nicely with the soft cocoa powder and yellow butter in the sauce pan, until it looks something like thin, slippery mud. There was half a bottle left, it seemed a shame to waste it. I took a tentative sip.

Yep, as disgusting as suspected. You stay in the chocolate where you belong. I’m not good at drinking. I get weird. I thought it over as I stirred the concoction, watching the island of butter slipping deeper and deeper into the growing ocean of mud.

Normal people open up after a few drinks. That is not necessary in my case, I’m already an open book—just consult the index, and all of me is easily referenced. The first several stages of intoxication progress like a normal person for me. First, the heavy arms. A hundred and fifteen pounds and no alcohol tolerance, and I get those heavy arms pretty quickly. Then we transition to the happy buzz. The meaning of life is at my fingertips; I am the butter melting gleefully into an ocean of mud that is perfect—absolutely perfect, life is perfect, everything in existence is perfect and very, very funny and then—oh god. The tiny step beyond the happy buzz, and into ugly territory: Control freak territory.

I don’t like the term control freak. It sounds a certain way. I like freak of control better. So anyway.

I am a freak of control because I can’t not have control of my faculties at all times. Paranoia sets in. I could be sitting in a chair in a room full of people looking totally normal, meanwhile: Are my eyes not focusing? Yep, we are done here. Liver is closing shop. I am not butter. I don’t like mud. Life is definitely not perfect.

Now, onto measuring out the flour. I spoon the powder like a princess spoons her soup. Light and delicate, perfect flutters of flour snow become a perfectly measured cup. One cup, and done. Don’t pour it into the mud pan, bad idea. Pay attention! Don’t pour it into the mud pan, that would insult the cake. Nobody wants a cake that faints into a fit, falling flat on its face.

The legs are protesting. Further justification for all this is needed.

It will all be worth it tomorrow, I think. The Autumn Equinox is an offering to teach kids about nature, and remind ourselves about the passing of the year. It is a perfect time for close friends to visit, let little kids play games, and then, when all attention spans are spent, for adults to linger around a table eating Guinness Chocolate Pumpkin Cake and alcoholic beverages. The philosophizing, the commiserating, the sugar high, the happy buzz. It’s lovely, but freaks of control just have to stay out of the ugly territory.

Two cake pans of muddy Guinness Chocolate, two cake pans of brilliant pumpkin orange are set onto cooling racks. And now for the pie…

The leg cramps translate loosely as: Good god I am never going to bed tonight.