I was talking to a friend today about cakes and childhood. She said that she started baking cakes when she was a young girl. One of her favorite literary heroines—Harriet the Spy—ate cake every day. My friend’s parents did not bake, and so she taught herself how to make her own cakes. I like to imagine her tiny self standing on a stool stirring a giant bowl of batter.
Here is Harriet the Spy walking home to eat her cake and milk:
I remember my mother reading Little Women aloud to me when I was about eight or nine. Throughout the book the girls ate stale cakes, cold cakes, and finally toward the end, a cake with pink and white ice cream, fruit, and “distracting French bonbons.”
I became a serious devotee of the 1994 film version of Little Women (let’s just say I was a slightly nerdy teenager) . The scene where Meg and Jo bicker about Meg’s engagement, all while Meg makes a Christmas cake, has always stayed with me.
Here it is (skip to 7:15 and watch until 8:20):
I love how the cake is the nucleus in this scene, holding the family together. I remember watching Meg dusting sugar, making a simple cake suddenly beautiful, and I thought, “I want to do that.”
What cakes do you remember from childhood books and films?
From my kids’ childhood, I think about “In the Night Kitchen” by Maurice Sendak, when the bakers cry “Milk! Milk! Milk for the morning cake!”
I always wanted to try the vanity cakes Ma made for the country party in “On the Banks of Plum Creek.”
I always imagined that the Turkish Delight Edmund eats in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” must be the most delicious temptress cake in the world.