That Magical Cake
I was 8 years old when I first tasted the chocolate cake.
I was invited to my friend Mirela’s birthday for a second consecutive year on October 23rd. Her mother, Fimia, liked me and enjoyed it when Mirela spent time with me since she had no siblings. Usually, she baked a large whipped cream cake for her birthday – I did not like that cake, and her mother had noticed this the previous year. So she baked the chocolate cake as an alternative – especially for me. It was topped with powdered cocoa sprinkle and its deep chocolaty color made it seem like a truffle that was luring you to take a bite.
I savoured each spoonful as if each was my first – and I have not had a better chocolate cake since.
When I moved to Bucharest, Mirela’s mother entrusted me with the recipe, under the condition that I keep it secret.
According to the legend, the recipe came from the kitchen of the Royal Family. Though the recipe did find its way to a few other people, very few managed to understand the true secret of the recipe and recreate the texture and that refined royal taste of true chocolate. I accepted the recipe and the responsibility, promising to cherish it and to keep it secret, though I couldn’t quite understand why something so good had to remain a secret.
When I first baked the cake, it was for my husband’s birthday and I could only think about how to recreate the taste that I remembered so vividly from my childhood.
I asked my mother to send me some fresh organic eggs from her own chickens and I searched for the cocoa and used only the best of ingredients. Baking this cake, I was also transforming myself. I knew the ingredients, but I had to prove that I understood what I must do with them, thereby showing that I am worthy of this secret. I followed the recipe carefully, and I cherished every step of the way. I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was right. The cream was quite soft and runny at first, which frightened me, but then I noticed that as my confidence grew, the cream also thickened and became more elastic and dense. The cake wasn’t perfectly round and the cream was sliding down the sides, but the taste brought joy to my taste buds and made them dance – and I felt that each bite would bring happiness to those who taste it.
My mother is a fantastic cook. When I was young, I used to sit with her in the kitchen for hours on end. She was always happy, singing, and she would be endearing to me while stirring the stew. Although she never asked me to cook, only to help with the small chores, when I moved away and started doing things myself, I found that I already knew how to do quite a number of things in the kitchen. I never used recipes when cooking, preferring to create something from whatever ingredients I had available.
Once a year, my mother use to bake a three-story cake so that my two older sisters and I could pose for birthday pictures. In this way she only needed to call the photographer over once per year.
The chocolate cake recipe was the first recipe I ever followed carefully, but it was also a recipe that made me learn certain things on my own. In time, the effort required to keep the secret was greater than the effort required to bake it. Every time I baked the cake, someone would ask me for the recipe. At times, I felt that my refusal was taken the wrong way, but some understood my reasons. I always told people that I would gladly bake the cake any time and that’s how I started bringing a cake with me to all my friends’ parties – it was my gift and it brought smiles to all.
And, after all these years, it feels like something magical is involved in the process, because each time I venture to bake the cake, I learn something new about it – whenever I think I know everything about it, I discover something unexpected. And even though I use the same carefully selected ingredients, the cake turns out a little bit different every single time – but always just as delicious.