Cake Weather
I only got my Nana’s recipe right once, but that didn’t stop me from trying
The declaration that my grandmother’s coconut cake is “haunted” is the kind of statement that requires immediate expansion before any other words can be got in edgewise. Our corner of Appalachia is rich in superstition, but even among friends it’s not the kind of thing you can just lob into conversation and expect it to be left alone where it lands. Well, it’s the recipe that’s haunted, really, if you want to get specific. No, it’s just the maker of the cake that’s afflicted, not the cake itself, if you want to assuage those glancing nervously at the buffet table. Eat it. It’s fine. I didn’t bleed in it, not literally.
There’s a short version of the story you can tell and have it over with pretty quick, if cornered and compelled, which goes like this: My father’s mother, my Nana, made this cake at Christmas for as long as I can remember and for as long as he can remember before me, this towering confection of coconut and pineapple and fluffy spun meringue, and in the last year of her life she tried to teach the other women in the family how to carry on with it after her time, only none of us could do it, and by “none of us could do it,” I mean “this not-at-all-difficult recipe is absolutely guaranteed to go sideways under anyone else’s control,” sometimes literally…
