Thursday, May 7, 2009

Reviewed: Yellow Cake

My wedding cake was white--delicious and gorgeous all at once--but I have no idea where it came from. Since our wedding took place in New Orleans just 7 months after Hurricane Katrina, a lot of the details were left in the hands of the thoroughly elegant and lovely general manager of the Hotel St. Marie. The cake appeared, we cut it and everyone else ate it, so it wasn't until a week later I realized how awesome it was.  


Now I work at a bakery and it seems at least once a week someone comes in from somewhere ridiculously far away to gobble up some nostalgia. "I had this cake at my father's 70th birthday party, ten years ago!" they say. Or, "All my mom wanted for Mother's Day was to have a piece of your cake again." Our specialty is chocolate cake, the famous Brooklyn Blackout, but if that's not your cup of tea we make yellow cake. Not white cake, yellow cake. 

People want it to be named differently, I can tell. Especially the snobs in the bunch. They say, "is it vanillla cake?" or "is there a little bit of lemon in this?" and I imagine saying, "Nope, that thar's just the yeller cake" to make them flee the store. Everyone wants to feel special.

The customer that makes me feel special is a high school kid who loves yellow cake with chocolate frosting. He comes in almost every day. Sometimes I save the good slice especially for him. I wish I could go back in time and be 17 again and have him be my boyfriend. He's got these incredibly nerdy glasses and an incredibly nice smile. 

He never comes in with friends like some of the other kids do--the boys talking loud and obnoxious, asking us in their most manly voice which cookies cost 50 cents, the girls that crush on them sipping hot chocolates and giggling. If he was part of that group, I would totally flirt with him in front of them. And I wouldn't even mind if he told them he was 'doing me'. I hope some 17 year-old little lady pretty soon figures out how awesome he is.  

79 stars.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Love this post. More of this, please!!

My favorite is also yellow cake w/ chocolate icing.