When A Cake Is Not A Cake | June 10 2022

Friday, June 10, 2022

A Black Cake. Really?

I delivered another cake on Wednesday. The request: chocolate cake, chocolate filling and frosting. The challenge came from the Favorite Characters or Special Interests section of the request form: “Would like a black cake with white writing ‘Happy Birthday [Child’s Name].’ Has requested their name be in graffiti font writing if possible.” There were other cool requests that I won’t share, to protect the child’s privacy. 

As I baked, I kept thinking of one of my students from long ago, short, fierce, and in-your-face with piercings and black clothing. She was so smart, and so sick of being misunderstood by teachers. I imagined someone like her as the recipient of this cake.

But there was so much I didn’t know. Where to find some of the images she hoped to see on the cake, for one. (I told myself that’s why God made Wikipedia, and got on with it.)

For another, how to make black frosting. I have black food gel, but I learned the way to make true black is to start with black cocoa powder, then supplement with the  gel. Whoa, is black cocoa powder strong– I needed to use extra sugar to offset the bitterness.

Then, graffiti, which is not a natural talent of mine. Luckily, there are websites for that. I used Fontspace.com because I could download a picture of my Happy Birthday greeting in a font and use that.

To design the whole top of the cake? I fiddled on a word processing program, pasting the graffiti greeting and some images into a circular design, to fit a 9″ round. I emailed it to the cake store where I took my classes and they printed out the design on edible paper, using edible ink. Then, because I wanted to hide a frosting blemish at the base of the cake (i.e., an unfortunate forefinger gouge) I printed a little animal and made a small speech bubble of it shouting the young person’s age. I attached toothpicks to the back, stuck them in some piles of icing, and hoped nobody would notice the messy patch.

Delivery

Cakes get dropped at schools, agencies, apartments; sometimes we drive a ways to reach the destination. This delivery involved some driving. As I turned onto a back road, I saw a school bus and knew I was close.  The bus dropped off several kids at the bottom of a small dirt road that curved up a hill. I maneuvered past the girls and a woman who had met the bus and started up the road. It turned out to be a long driveway. At the top, I parked in the shade and saw another woman, walking toward the house’s front porch.  I called to her, “Excuse me? I’m delivering a cake…?”

In any place I’ve been, all I’ve had to say is, “I’m here with a cake….” and faces light up. This woman was no different. She exclaimed over the cake, confessing that as she’d typed in the request, she’d been nervous about what would show up.  We laughed and chatted a little. Then I asked why the kids were getting out of school in the middle of the day. She told me they go for an hour and a half a day, for 1:1 instruction. They are special needs kids– CSET kids, she told me. I don’t know what that is, I said. She looked strained for a moment. Then she took a breath. CSET stands for commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking.

While I was digesting that information, the four who’d walked from the bus stop with a counselor approached. “When we saw your car, we thought it might be the cake,” the counselor said. The kids were almost vibrating with excitement. Obviously, this was a Big Event. I could tell the birthday celebrant was dying to see her cake. I held out the box. She looked through the cellophane window and just…gaped. While conversation floated around her, I watched her slowly reach out and stroke the silver and gold birthday candles I’d taped to the box. Then one of the other kids nudged her and whispered, “Say thank you.” Automatically, the birthday kid did. After my wishes for a happy birthday and some goodbyes, they began to walk to the house. I heard her say, “Oh, I love it!”

In my car, I fastened my seat belt.

Had there ever been a birthday cake for this young woman?

A better question might have been, had she ever really had a chance to be a child?

The leaders of For Goodness Cakes always tell us a homemade birthday cake is a much bigger deal than we can imagine. As I drove away, I finally understood: making and delivering a black cake was not really about a cake at all.

I didn’t think it was, at first. I mean, I read every day about people whose cancer progresses despite treatment; I know the prognosis for lung cancer pretty much sucks. Some days, grief is at my heels. Some days, it’s not. Some days, it comes and goes. Sometimes I have a glimpse of my former self, hiding just out of sight.

What I’m trying to say is, shouldn’t cancer be old hat by now?

I’ve also been thinking about a couple of those kids. One, overweight, dressed in black; one in clothes so baggy she looked like a small boy, each of them trying to hide in plain sight. What would happen to them? Could they ever heal?

For the first time since my diagnosis, I’m thinking,  I am so lucky– I only have cancer.

Volunteering to make a difference in someone’s life doesn’t get much easier than black frosting on a  chocolate cake, a box of fancy candles.

The thing is, I’m the one who’s being made different. I’m the one being changed.

 

 

Thanks for reading. I always hope you have cake in your day; today I hope it comes with a bright strip of dawn.

Images

• Birthday candles by Pexels
• Lighthouse by Evgeni Tcherkasski
• Sunrise by Myriams-Fotos