The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister Page B

don’t have a lot of experience,” she remarked, holding up her ringless left hand with a wry expression on her face, “but I’ve often thought that it would be a great idea for couples to make their own wedding cakes, as part of the preparation for their life together. Maybe not so many couples would end up getting married”—Lillian smiled—“but I think those that did might approach it a bit differently.”
    She reached into the drawers below the counter and pulled out containers of flour and sugar and a box of baking soda.
    “Now, cooking is all about preference—add a bit more of this or that until you reach the taste you want. Baking, however, is different. You need to make sure you have certain combinations correct.”
    Lillian took the eggs and separated the yolks from the whites into two small blue bowls.
    “At its essence, a cake is actually a delicate chemical equation—a balance, between air and structure. You give your cake too much structure, and it becomes tough. Too much air and it literally falls apart.
    “You can see why it would be tempting to use a mix”—her eyes sparkled—“but then you’d lose out on all the lessons that baking a cake has to teach you.”
    Lillian put the butter into the bowl and turned on the mixer; the paddles beat their way into the soft yellow rectangles. Slowly, in an impossibly thin waterfall of white, she let the sugar drift into the bowl.
    “This is how you put air into a cake,” she commented over the noise of the machine. “Back before mixers, it used to take a really long time. Every air bubble in the batter came from the energy of someone’s arm. Now we just have to resist the urge to go faster and turn the mixer speed up. The batter won’t like it if you do that.” The waterfall of sugar ended, and Lillian stood, waiting patiently, watching the mixer.
    The paddles continued their revolutions around the bowl, and the class watched the image in the mirror above the counter, entranced, as the sugar met and mingled with the butter, each drawing color and texture from the other, expanding, softening, lifting up the sides of the bowl in silken waves. Minutes passed, and still Lillian waited. Finally, when the butter and sugar reached the cloudlike consistency of whipped cream, she turned off the motor.
    “There,” she said. “Magic.”
     
    After THEY Were married, Carl and Helen decided to move to the Pacific Northwest. Helen had heard stories about tall trees and green that went on forever; she said she was ready for a change in color. Carl delighted in her sense of adventure and the idea of a new home for their new marriage. He got a job as an insurance agent—selling stability, he called it, giving his clients the luxury of sleeping through the night, knowing that no matter what happened there was a net into which they could fall, mid-dream.
    The Pacific Northwest was dark and wet for much of the year, but Carl liked the mist that blanketed the trees and grass and houses. It was liquid fairy dust, he told his children when they arrived, two in quick succession starting in the third year of his and Helen’s marriage. Their offspring were native north-westerners, raising their faces to the damp skies the way tulips follow the sun. Carl marveled at how the rain seemed to nourish them, watching as they sank their roots deep into the soil around them.
    Helen found ways to sneak summer into the dark months of the year, canning and freezing the fruit off their trees in July and August and using it extravagantly throughout the winter—apple chutney with the Thanksgiving turkey, raspberry sauce across the top of a December pound cake, blueberries in January pancakes. And she always claimed the shorter winter days with their long stretches of cool, gray light were conducive to writing. Carl had bought her a small wooden desk, which fit as if built for the nook at the top of the stairs. Helen always said, though, that she was a sprinter when it came to