On a Monday night, I dance around my apartment and listen to Frank Sinatra sing about potato chips while trying not to think about the pain in my arm as I whisk cake batter for nine minutes. I like New York in June, how about you? I like a Gershwin tune, how about you? I hum myself through the tight circular motions of the whisk immersed in absurdly thick mixture. I focus on my breathing. At five minutes, I wonder if perhaps the batter is stirring me, but I continue to hug the plastic bowl to my ribcage, continue to check the stopwatch at regular intervals, and I wait for my mind to land on a wish.
I felt superstitious about this cake before I even purchased the ingredients to make it. The cake, a Greek dish called phanouropita, is a class assignment. I read its history and learned that centuries of Orthodox women have made this cake to honor St. Phanourios, the finder of lost things, so he will reveal to them something missing. When I learned this, I knew my own rendition of the dish would have intention behind it. I want to use my cake to find something lost.
What I want to find is a piece of myself. Since arriving to graduate school, I have felt that I lost something vital. I have not been able to pinpoint the exact time and location of the loss, nor can I name suspects or motives, but after an ugly breakup and a stressful start to my summer, I know I need change. Anxiety has taken up residence in my stomach lining. I worry about money and my future, I worry about love, I worry about my unending to-do list that accompanies a masters program. I want to shed all of this worry with the possibility of phanouropita. I want to be saved by cake.
What I think about now as I shuffle my feet across the tile and whisk to Frank’s voice is that maybe I just want to find my confidence again. I want to believe in my life without needing to control it. This epiphany feels subtle amidst my burning forearms, but also important. It feels like a wish.
Frank finishes singing, I finish stirring, and I transfer my dough and intentions into the pan. I mentally wind the epiphany into a tight ball as I slide my cake into the hot oven. I don’t cross myself or say a prayer, but I do blow a kiss to the heap of dough resting in the pan before I close the metal door. I set my timer and wait.
Soon the cake pushes out warm cinnamon air and I smell the other ingredients start to braid together in confectionary harmony. The aromas make me realize that I have not baked in over six months, maybe longer. When I cook for myself lately, I tend to use the stovetop. I stir and taste constantly and am always an active member of the process. It feels odd now to walk away from the kitchen while my cake bakes. It feels odd to leave it alone.
Inevitably, I burn my saint cake. I slid a knife into the center three times before I took it out, but the bottom has still been edged in dark shadow. I saw into the thick loaf and find the center doughy and slightly uncooked. I understand now that baking is less about control and more about trust, which perhaps unearths the reason that it has been absent in my life. I don’t trust the process anymore.
I try a piece of my cake anyway. The charcoaled bottom tastes of smoke but the inside feels soft and plump. The texture holds as I bite into it and a layer of spiced sweetness covers my tongue like autumn, like Christmas, like memories of mulled cider and home all at once.
I look at the triangular portions of cake steaming their plastic bags and know that to believe in this tradition is to believe that St. Phanourios will reveal good fortune. And before I even have to give it away, I feel the cake’s effects. Just to bake this thing and give it a purpose meant to have confidence. I trusted in my cake—trusted that I had whisked enough or added enough baking powder or used enough orange juice. I trusted the heat and the timer and the knife through the rounded top, and even though my phanouropita did not turn out as planned, I at least believed in it.
I think of the current ingredients of my life—writing and school and teaching, waitressing shifts and half-marathon training, long-distance friendships and my role as Maid of Honor to my sister. I envision them all going into a large plastic bowl stirred together. I slide the mixture into the pan and blow it a kiss. Now I must walk away and let it bake.
