Dessert

we start with the icing— layer by layer we peel it off each other’s dense, chewy centres: perfectly round, plump with sugar, pleasant, perfect mounds pleading to be desired. we devour— driven together, digging insatiably deeper with our fingers, tasting our softness with every lick

and once the icing has dissolved or disappeared onto the floor, we look at one another like chipmunks with full cheeks and collapse under the rush onto butter pillows.

Words by Rion Levy Visuals by Kalliopé Anvar McCall

A History of

Cake & Me

Words and Visuals by Maddie Corradi

Content warning: disordered eating.

Since the pandemic started, my brother David and I have settled onto the couch after dinner to watch whatever TV show we’ve chosen to obsess over. Lockdown started something that our previously distracted lives couldn’t: a ritual in a world with nowhere to go and nothing to do. But as things started opening up, the desire to share this time together didn’t go away. Neither did one of the consistent requirements of our bonding: cake.

I have always liked cake. Loved, really. But in the interim between early adolescence and our sibling ritual, having cake once a week—or twice, or three times—only reminded me that I would have to make up for it later. Eating cake started having a clause.

The more I became aware of what food could do to my body, the less I enjoyed it. I started to love baking, but sometimes I would hardly let myself eat what I had made. Instead, I’d break a cookie in half “just to taste it.” I’d make sure to bake a cake for an occasion with guests, guaranteeing there would be no leftovers to be tempted by.

My habits turned into a slippery slope of stress eating, and then worrying about working it off. I had cake out in the open and I had cake in secret moments, unrelated to any kind of hunger or desire. I had cake until I didn’t want it anymore.

The night that I am writing this, David and I have run out of episodes. It’s one of the nights in the last year and a half where there will be no cake and nothing to watch. And even though my brother sits in his desk chair ten feet away from me, there is a great distance between us. I miss him.

The average cake is made of simple ingredients—flour, butter, eggs, sugar—and the rest is up to you. What flavour? What kind of frosting? Layered? Who are you going to share it with? Will you let yourself enjoy it?

A few weeks ago, I purchased a slice from a vending machine for David and myself. With Cake Boss advertisements still haunting me years after keeping up with Carlo’s bakery, I expected the red velvet slice to be stale, crispy around the edges, and have frosting that was as cheap as it was crusty. We broke the packaging into makeshift plates, cut the piece, and took it to the couch. It was surprisingly delicious: decadent, fluffy, crumbly. Perfect frosting.

David tossed me the remote and I pressed play. I baked a cake in honor of getting to share this nostalgic project with him. There are plenty of leftovers sitting in the fridge. When I feel like having a piece, I will.

It took me longer than I had hoped, but after years of slow progress, it turns out spending my nights on a couch eating cake with my brother was the beginning of enjoying it again.