Lemon Cornmeal Cake

Let’s just say it wasn’t all that bad.* The cake, that is. I made it on a Thursday evening a few weeks back. It’s a lemon-cornmeal cake but there’s also 1 and 1/2 cups of chopped almonds so I don’t know why it’s not called “Lemon-Almond-Cornmeal Cake.” I guess you can’t fit everything into a title. Besides, it’s good to have a little surprise: Oh! Here I am slicing myself a lemon-cornmeal cake and my goodness, are those coarsely chopped almonds I’m tasting? I didn’t know that would happen. My, my, my, isn’t life funny?

I bake when I’m troubled or I can’t write. Or, I’m troubled because I can’t write. Or what I’m writing about troubles me. Something about whisking eggs, rolling out dough, and sliding a spatula away from a freshly baked cookie so it can rest on a cooling tray satisfies me.

I told Gary Schmidt once that I bake when I’m having trouble writing. This was maybe twelve years ago and I was in a van Schmidt was driving. We were paying a visit to Patricia Polacco, who was going to talk to us about storytelling. When we pulled up to her home, she came around the side of her house to greet us, and a bunch of baby goats hopped about and trailed behind her. We sat on her porch and she rocked in her chair and she told us about walking into editors’ offices in New York city and passing along her stories. She took us to her studio, quaint quarters separate from her home, and I admired a long white drawing desk, cups of color-coded markers and pens, and her sketches. I don’t remember much else about the day except the baby goats, sitting on Polacco’s porch, and deciding I wanted color-coded cups of markers and pens on my desk.

And I remember telling Gary Schmidt that I bake when I can’t write.

“You bake?” he asked looking at me in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah,” I said, and I went on to explain how baking is the perfect remedy because you follow a set of directions and end up with something (usually) delicious in a short amount of time. Unlike writing.

“That’s a good point,” he said, and I know it was maybe twelve years ago, but I swear that’s what he said. Or maybe it was, “That’s a good idea.” It could have been, “Mmm, hmmm,” but he mmm hmmed with conviction. I swear it.

The recipe I used called for grated lemon. If you grate the entire peel of lemon you’ll have about a tablespoon. I learned that from Martha Stewart. A couple of turns of the lemon and you have a teaspoon. I only needed a teaspoon but luckily I needed the juice from the lemon, too. I write “luckily” because I hate using parts of an ingredient. It’s why I won’t bake anything that only calls for egg whites.  Throwing the yolk away makes me sad. Also, I tend to forget which part is the “white” and which is the “yolk.” Stupid, I know. It’s so obvious, but I crack the egg and I hold the two halves of it and I think, “I know I’m supposed to get rid of something but what is it? Doesn’t Jesus say something about a yolk in the Bible? Surely I shouldn’t get rid of that part.” And so I stand there and I forget which is the part I need to use and which is the part I need to throw away.

I suppose that’s one of the tricky parts of telling stories: figuring out what to tell and what to throw away. What should I catch, and what should I release? And if I’m going to use it all, which I tend to do, how do I write it so people will walk alongside with me? Because that’s what I’d like, for you to sit down and read my stories thinking they’ll be about one thing and realizing they’re about something else, and my, my, my, isn’t life funny?

Anyway, the cake wasn’t all that bad.  Thank you, Chrysta, for giving me the first line.