蛋糕更冻结
在2020年夏天，有多个cakesin my freezer. I know that sounds rather passive—Canarnit，蛋糕精灵必须再次潜入厨房窗户- 但他们都没有真的在做。一个是栅格的残余物ice-cream cakea friend had brought for my husband's birthday and several of us sneaked off to the kitchen to festoon with rude little piped-icing drawings as per our group's tradition. Another was the lion's share of a grocery store蛋糕that just he and I nibbled at on my birthday, just several days later as COVID cases spiked around us and it felt dubious and delusional to celebrate much of anything—especially over a shared dessert. A couple weeks later, two separate Caroline's tins showed up, laden with the South Carolina bakery's signature seven-layer焦糖蛋糕-one标准，以及一个无麸质。但我没有大部分胃口。他们被送往哀悼蛋糕在记忆我的妈妈who fell sick from COVID the day after my birthday. God, she loved frozen cake. Pepperidge Farm Frozen Coconut Layer Cake, to be specific, but no one knew that. Frozen cake is a solitary pleasure.
这是冻结蛋糕的一件好事：它保持。我在技术上都没有知道多长时间，也许我只是一个毛茸茸的怪人，剩下的遗骸。但在我的朦胧，悲伤的概念中，一对已婚夫妇可能会在他们一周年纪念日吃一些冻结的婚礼蛋糕，它被视为一种甜蜜的仪式而不是一个不健康的囤积情绪剩下的留下留言，所以我和那样去了。
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Not that a frozen cake is going to last an entire calendar year in my house. I make work of it, not unlikeMelinda Mae., the heroine of Shel Silverstein's poem of the same name, who as a small girl sets out to eat an entire whale out of sheer bloodymindedness. It takes her 89 years to accomplish the task, but she gets there. A frozen cake is a goal where the reward is the task itself. The great thing about eating a frozen cake—which by the way, you eat while it's still frozen—is that it lends itself to incremental pleasure, anywhere from days to months. A thickly-iced cake freezes solid in a way that makes it easy to shave off just a whisper-thin slice and, sure, you can have another if you so desire and another after that. But I find a slim slice—maybe a quarter-inch thick—generally sates whatever my brain is screaming out for, especially if it's got multiple layers. If it freezes just so, and it inevitably does, a slice of frozen cake contains such textural pleasures, turning the icing into an ersatz ice cream, and gentle ice crystals crunching ever just so with each nibble of the solid sponge. The chill muffles the sugar shock a room temperature portion might normally unleash upon your senses—ideal when it's 2 a.m. and you're too damned exhausted to sleep, but still stressed or sad or restless to be awake and eating cake.
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I don't usually eat frozen cake in front of people. Not out of any shame or worry of judgment, but just because it's my private joy, or sometimes solace. I never actually saw my mother do it either. I'd gone off to college by the time she found this ritual, and her reasons for it were her own. I'd go back to visit and see that Pepperidge Farm box in the freezer, and I never dreamed of touching it. We never talked about it, but something in me knew. Sometimes, especially in the wee, small, dark, weird, lonely hours, it's up to you to celebrate yourself.