Diana Page Jordan | Book Reviews and Inspiration

Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt

by Leslie F. Miller

published April 14, 2009 (hardcover)

The wicked temptress has written a book called Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt. I cannot have any of these, so reading this book is a complete and utter tease.

Wandering back to sixteen candles on my cake, one candle on each of my son’s first cakes, the fifty candles on my now-ex-husband’s cake…all preferable to thinking about the cakes I can’t eat now because of diabetes. Leslie Miller wanders back in time to find the first cakes — she can’t really place it. Maybe Caesar Augustus. Maybe Artemis. Maybe Baby Jesus.

How about the largest cake — 130,000 pounds, of which 40,000 pounds was frosting. I like buttercream the best. When I was growing up, I made all the cakes for my family — always whipping up buttercream frosting. The cake was always Betty Crocker something or other. But the frosting — that I made from scratch. Why? To lick the bowl, and, when no one was watching, the scraper, and the beaters! This was long before I was diagnosed with diabetes, which happened three summers ago. Miller says the first wedding cakes were baked in 1813 or so, requiring the baker to beat in the sugar for fifteen minutes. Buttercream frosting was born in 1908. And birthday candles were born in the late 1800′s.

Oh and there are real cake recipes in this book — her grammy’s sour cream cake and a sponge cake. And the Chocolatetown Special Cake. Arghh! With chocolate Buttercream Frosting. I am losing my will. Miller has some filler in her book — conversations about her uncles and grandfathers and woodworking, puzzle-doing. And, her mother’s refiguring of spaghetti sauce. I have two marvelous legacies from my childhood — both recipes — one written in my mother’s own hand of Cheesecake Pie, and the other typed on her old Remington typewriter for spaghetti sauce. That recipe was handed down from my stepfather’s Italian grandmother.

There is an aroma to this book — can you smell the buttercream frosting? I can, and it’s driving me crazy. I want chocolate. With frosting. Damn the diabetes. Except for the fact that it forces me to be accountable. This week’s test results show I’m succeeding in that. Maybe there are leftover frozen Milky Way bars. I go look.

Let Me Eat Cake is actually a cake memoir. The first I’ve ever seen, although I have seen dress memoirs. Miller says she’s addicted to cake. She takes part in cake competitions. There are cake plays and cake TV shows. She keeps visiting Cake Cottage to take classes in cake-baking and frosting. I learn to buy a hefty cake-carrier, so it doesn’t fall apart like hers does, and end up picking rug dust out of the frosting before she serves it.

I have found frozen triple-A batteries, but no frozen chocolate bars. Which is good, because my mouse is becoming squirrelly, and needs a change of batteries.

If you go to a wedding, you must have a piece of cake, I read. To reject the wedding cake means bad luck for you and the couple. Another piece of trivia — this Saturday, March 28th, is officially Black Forest Cake Day.

Finally, I find a recipe I can make with good conscience — a Low Carb Chocolate Cake — with very odd ingredients like vinegar and xylitol. Four carbs. Vinegar? Maybe I can find a chocolate cake and eat just one bite.

I put down Let Me Eat Cake, and go on another search. There! In the back of the refrigerator! A square of chocolate, 60% cacao, and now I am calm.