Life From Scratch (7 page)

There’s no denying it—this cake is a lot of work. German bakeries resort to a rotating spit to “paint on” nearly two dozen layers. Mom knew the best way to tackle it is over two days: one for baking, another for decorating. While the layers broil, I set a timer and make a game of cleaning in bursts. By the time the last layer browns, the kitchen sparkles
.

For the batter:

14 ounces almond paste (a tightly packed 1⅓ cups)

6 tablespoons half-and-half

12 tablespoons (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, softened, plus more for cake pan

1 cup sugar

10 large eggs, separated (put the whites in a large bowl)

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup cake flour

¾ cup cornstarch

¼ teaspoon salt

For assembly:

Apricot jam (about a 10-ounce jar)

Slivered almonds (1 cup or so, coarsely ground)

For the chocolate glaze:

6 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon dark rum

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

2 tablespoons light corn syrup

6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips (1 cup)

Grease and line a 9-inch springform pan with a round of parchment paper.

For the batter:

In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the almond paste with half-and-half, one tablespoon at a time. Start the mixer on low, then increase to medium until smooth. Beat in the softened butter until the mixture is fluffy, then beat in the sugar. Scrape the bowl as needed. Incorporate the egg yolks—one at a time—and the vanilla extract. (At this point, I dab a little vanilla extract on my wrists, just like mom.)

In a medium bowl, whisk together the cake flour, cornstarch, and salt. Beat it into the batter in thirds on lowest speed, scraping the bowl as needed. Finally, use a hand mixer to beat the egg whites in a large bowl until they form medium peaks. Fold the egg whites into the batter in thirds, until it looks like an almond paste cloud.

To bake the cake:

Preheat the broiler for a few minutes.

To make the layers, use a ⅓ cup measuring spoon to scoop a heaping mound of batter into the prepared springform pan. Use a pastry brush to spread the batter all over the bottom of the pan, right up to the edges. Place under the broiler and cook until browned. The key is to get the batter deeply browned so that the layers show when the cake is sliced; this takes about a minute per layer for me. As the cake gets taller (and closer to the broiler), the layers cook quicker so adjust accordingly.

Every few layers, brush on 1 tablespoon of apricot jam (save half the jar for later). Continue in this way until all the batter is used up. Let the cake cool to room temperature in the pan, then wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight.

To decorate the cake:

For the glaze, melt the butter, rum, vanilla extract, and corn syrup together in a small pot. Simmer for one minute, then remove from heat and add the chocolate. Cover and let sit a few minutes. Meanwhile, run a knife around the edge of the cake and release from the springform pan. Spread top and sides with remaining apricot jam to seal the crumbs.

Whisk the chocolate glaze until smooth and glossy. Working over a cooling rack set over a baking pan, pour the glaze on top of the cake and spread evenly over the sides. Decorate with ground almonds by pressing a palmful onto the sides of the cake. Alternatively, sprinkle them over the entire cake.

Chill to set the glaze. Serve slices with hot tea or coffee. A bit of whipped cream is a nice touch.

Enough for 10 to 12

CHAPTER 5

Fallen Bran
c
hes

M
ICHAEL AND
I
MIGHT HAVE PLODDED
along relatively unscathed through childhood; certainly Mom’s inventiveness kept things upbeat. But my mother tends not to hold her tongue when convention defies her notion of logic. And she will not sit silently on the sidelines, despite the repercussions.

Mom made a point to question even the most conventional wisdom. Gingerbread cookies weren’t just for the winter; in July and August, she’d make them into ice cream sandwiches that we’d enjoy after a run through a spraying fire hydrant.

She insisted that no child of hers was going to wear a seat belt. “If we’re in an accident, we need to be free to jump out of the car to protect ourselves. An uncle of mine did that, and lived. The person wearing a seat belt didn’t. I won’t have you living with a false sense of security,” she declared. If Mom got a parking ticket for taking the only open spot by our apartment, thereby blocking a handicap ramp, she scoffed at the court clerks: “I
am
handicapped, I have
kids!
”

Nothing was sacred. Everything could and should be questioned.

Mom kept me away from kindergarten, saying it was much too soon to take a child from her mother. She’d tried it with Michael and hated how they’d forced him to lie down when he’d refused to take naps years earlier. “There’s no humanity in the system,” she’d say. “Why can’t they just let the energetic kids out to play instead of treating them like mummies?”

But by the mid-eighties there was no more putting off school; I was six years old. It should have been a wonderful experience: Great Aunt Fina helped pay for Michael and me to attend the small Catholic school around the corner, Our Lady of Lourdes. This was a luxury Mom could never have afforded on her own, and one that her father would not have offered (being of the very Hungarian mind-set that now she was in her 40s, she should pull herself up by the bootstraps).

Even in this homogeneous environment, where uniforms and French braids bobbed in neat rows along the waxed hallways, I stood out as different. For first grade, Mom lowered and fringed the hem on my pinafore until it fell clear down to my calves, asserting that anything above the knee was for “hussies.” She didn’t let us buy the school lunches, either; they were, she explained, charity for people who didn’t know how to cook.

At every turn Mom challenged the school principal, Sister Margaret, a tight-lipped, round-bottomed schoolmarm who spent most of her days holed up in a shuttered office. At the end of the year, when Mom challenged her for allowing sex education videos into elementary school, the resulting hollering match echoed through the halls. Mom said she didn’t want her six- and eight-year-old learning about sex at school; that was family business.

Word traveled fast: When Mom showed up to the next PTA meeting, she was met with whispers and sidelong glares. One of my classmates told me that
her
mother said
my
mother was a troublemaker.

Mom couldn’t catch a break. Her unconventional way of seeing the world was misunderstood by our neighbors and the authorities; the same went for her tone, Italian and insolent. As though to exact vengeance on my mother for her apparent transgressions, Sister Margaret called the Department of Social Services during the last week of school and slapped Mom with a 51A, reporting her for child endangerment as an unstable mother. A trim social worker in a tweed suit plucked Michael and me from our classrooms right in the middle of final exams. She said she was taking us to see Mom, and then drove in the opposite direction.

Michael detected the lie first. He unfastened his seat belt, twisted in his seat, and kicked at the car door. I held my breath, wondering if it would swing open or the glass would shatter, but nothing happened. Without slowing the car, the social worker reached back and refastened Michael’s seat belt. Michael slumped in defiance, fighting the tears that spilled down his cheeks. “You’re a liar!” he yelled.

When I realized what was happening, I pressed my face and hands against the window and began to cry, watching as strange houses flickered by. I blubbered that I didn’t want to go; I wanted my mom. She was going to wonder where we were; she needed us. The lady just pursed her lips and kept on driving.

We ended up a mile away at a turquoise town house with plastic-covered sofas. Our room was in the attic. There were four beds with sagging middles, two of which were already claimed by other foster children.

Before the social worker left, I asked how Mom would know not to pick us up from school. The woman assured me that someone would call her from the courthouse. She put her hands on my shoulders and added that everyone really did have our best interests at heart.

We lived there six weeks. One of the other foster kids was moved almost immediately, leaving us to bunk with a 14-year-old boy who’d just been released from a mental institution. “He’s in transition,” the social worker told us, “so be nice to him.”

At night I’d wake to the boy pressed against me, muttering. One time I saw him climb in Michael’s bed. I didn’t sleep much after that.

During the day Michael and I took to playing stickball with fallen tree branches and rocks. One day Michael’s rock landed square in the center of our roommate’s forehead. Michael said it was an accident. The boy left for stitches and never came back. For punishment, the man of the house, José, handed Michael a bar of soap and told us that from now on, if we wanted a bath, we should run through the fire hydrant. Michael didn’t talk back; he’d seen a gun on the man’s mantel.

We were always hungry. One afternoon Michael and I wandered into the kitchen and asked José for a snack. His enormous back was to us, his fat pressed into the crevices of a small vinyl chair. At the sound of my voice, he ran his hand through his black hair, narrowed his eyes, and started yelling in Spanish. He reached into the basket on the table and began throwing apples at me.

Though he didn’t stand much taller than me, Michael didn’t run. He puffed up his little chest and half-rushed the man, who stood up, dwarfing Michael. When José came at him, Michael grabbed an apple off the floor, took my hand, and pulled me outside.

When she heard about the incident during visitation, Mom turned the tables and filed a 51A on the foster home. She won. It was almost unheard of for a parent to fight the system, let alone successfully. In light of Mom’s determination to hold the foster home accountable, accusations that she was unfit no longer held water; the judge agreed to move us in with one of our Italian cousins as a stopgap measure until justice could be served. In late fall, four months after Sister Margaret had us pulled out of school, the court finally allowed Mom to bring us home—but not without assigning a court-ordered therapist to our family.

Mom requested that Michael’s therapy be supplemented by weekly sessions with a priest at our local church. “The boy needs all the fatherly influences he can get,” she said. “I want his spirit to be tended, not just his mind.” But shortly after the sessions began, Michael warned me to stay away from open confession with “that priest.” When I asked him why, his eyes were stormy. “Just
don’t
Sash.” He was in tears when I ignored him. I couldn’t understand why—the priest had me in and out of his office in a few quick minutes before ushering in the next boy.

That year we attended a large public school on the other side of Jamaica Plain, but the challenges continued. One night in March, Michael and Mom had a big blowup over some stupid no-big-deal thing, as kids and their parents are wont to do. Michael stormed out of the house in his pajamas and plunked himself down on the icy curb, arms crossed, fuming. He had no socks or shoes on. Mom wasn’t bothered. She said he needed to cool off, and that he’d come back in when he realized it was 30 degrees out. A few minutes later a social worker drove by on his way home from work.