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My Dad, the baker
Every Easter, for as long as I can remember, my father would use an ancient looking silver cake mold to bake cakes shaped like bunnies. Like most shameful family secrets, it wasn't something we ever discussed and the that fact we only saw it once a year only fueled our denial of its existence.
When I was little, the cake would show up like an uninvited guest to be the star of my birthday spread. It would be disguised as a puppy or kitten but since the only difference was the color of the icing I knew immediately what it was.
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Here I am sharing one of my many birthday parties with the cake. (I'm the cute one) |
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What made matters worse is that my father is severely color blind. "You see this one," he'd say shoving a Polaroid in your face, "That year I used green jelly beans for eyes and I dipped the coconut in brown to make it look wooly." A yellow cake would stare with red eyes. The last year he made one it was wearing a straw hat and had spots. I told him, "They look like bullet holes." "They're peppermint patties," my Dad said, clearly insulted. And the comment prompted me to put one between it's eyes and fire off an imaginary gun. "Bang, it's finally dead." He didn't find it nearly as funny as I did.
Eventually I moved to Seattle and Easter, like most holidays, became just another day. There have been some that have come and gone without me even noticing. It was only recently that I began to incorporate my own traditions into holidays and out of that I felt the need to make my owe bunny cake. It just wouldn't be Easter without one.
My father gladly mailed me the cake mold and explained in excruciating detail how to perfect my own bunny cake. I didn't listen and, like the way you can distinguish an artist by their brush stokes, my cake came out clearly as my own unique creation. Whereas my father's style is expressed in his painful attention to detail and odd colors, mine is marked by its distinct "suckness." Yes, my cakes, no matter how much I try and despite two years of fine arts classes, always comes out looking like a mangled Bichon Frise. What can I say, they're a lot harder to make than they look.
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Me and my cake |
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So now the cake is my owe hideous creation and I can honestly say I've come full circle to embracing it as part of my life. Not every holiday has to be pretty but they certainly must be my own and the cake is my way of incorporating the old with the new. And I guess, in that respect, it will always be beautiful.
