All your childhood dreams on a platter, the fluffy whipped cream clouds of pink, the dainty roses in the garden. And who do you have to thank for these fantasies?
A French man perhaps, with a broken heart, after you left him weeping, or him perhaps seeing you, with your pretty blonde head into the basket falling. The slave in the field reaping, the hen in the courtyard pecking, the maids in the barnyard a milking. Who could have thought that all these animal things would turn into your most luscious dreams making real all the pink, blue and lavender hued fairies in the garden, smelling of strawberries, raspberries, peaches, and plums, figs and kiwis, pineapples, mangos and passion fruits from faraway islands…….
All the ladies now are dancing, in rooms with tables dripping in lace, piled high with towers of confections in pinks, whites, creams, and lavender blues….. yellow like cream from Jersey cows, or buttercups in Swiss Alps where mountains of chocolate grows.
Someone in the kitchen is beating eggs, whipping them into a froth with sugar white as snow. Crushing cocoa beans into velvet powder to make the silky ganaches, caramels, puddings and creams, where all your sticky fingers, teeth and mouth will go….
Creme Anglaise, buttercreams, bavarois and mousses are being churned and turned, layered in to all the cakes on all the tiers of Antoinette’s boudoir, and all the guests are wearing pink, lavender and blue, even the men, young and old and in between…….
The patissier is crushing almonds, walnuts, pecans and hazelnuts, all the sweet meats of ancient trees, and while he rolls out the marzipan we can only dream of Alice Toklas’ haunting perfumes, her intricate layers of pistachio/chocolate/mocha/vanilla, the liquors and elixirs she poured out of her heart into the tortes that she made for all those artists, writers, and painters so long ago………. gathering all the fragrant strawberries, raspberries, black currants and figs from her beloved garden before the stomping boots of soldiers came……
Cake Cake Cake “Let them eat cake” said that silly woman and yet maybe not so silly a million bayonets ago…
The beautiful blonde courtesan with hair piled high on her head like whipped cream, rosy cheeks like tiny strawberries little Alice picked in forgotten fields … all the nice things all the sweet things– sugar, cream, butter, eggs, cherries and blueberries darker than autumn wine, and a little rum…
Mama always said “Cake needs a little rum…” and chocolate… dark, milk, and white, or lemons divine, and then the whipped cream, more and more and more, you can never have enough whipped cream…. big bowls to lather, slather and pile high and higher still over lemon tarts like mini suns smiling, over ganache like dark pools of ice gliding into your ravished mouth..
Oh the apricots, peaches and plums of late summer leaving, oh the Kirsch, Champagne, Chartreuse, and Cognac that perfumed the Riz a’L’ Imperatrice Eugenie and Louis ate so long ago, that Kings and Queens devoured after battle, after love, after cleaning up all the blood and tears, after all these years of culinary triumphs, fascinations, permutations, misinterpretations, even now as the savage Kings and Queens come to reign again and again it is still “Let them eat cake” cake cake cake……
whennothingworks 