Devil’s Food Cake
Let’s just get this out of the way, cards on the table: did I make a birthday cake for Nigella Lawson? Yes. On McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, they used to have a column called “Open Letters to Persons or Entities Unlikely to Respond.” This is a bit like that.
I love birthdays. I love my birthday. I love my best friend’s birthday. I love office birthdays (RIP). I probably love your birthday. When I realized late last night that today was Our Lady of Perpetual Indulgence’s 61st* today, I decided I’d celebrate a little. I don’t like to make myself a birthday cake (that’s for someone else to do, and I am not sorry), so I made her one instead.
I’ve liked every age I’ve ever been, and I’ve never really felt sad about not being younger or eager to be older. Some chapters of my life have been better than others, sure, but it’s never really been a thing I worry about. I don’t envy twenty-one year olds. I already got to be twenty-one. I was really good at it. They’re having their turn now! That’s great. Eventually they’ll be seventy and someone else will be having their turn at twenty-one. I think this is what Elton John meant when he described the circle of life.
I’ll be turning 32 in a few weeks, a thing for which I am very excited. Now, I know what you’re thinking: people born in the 80s cannot be turning 32 this year. In light of having blacked out for parts of 2020 and most of 2021 plus a trend piece in Mel magazine, I’m just redoing those years. It’s not really lying about my age (which is dumb), it’s more that I want to experience them and never got to. I was trapped inside my house, mostly. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t really see anyone. It was very cold, except for when it was very hot. I was living in a weird funhouse mirror version of reality, more so even than everyone else living through a global pandemic and once-in-a-generation social protests.
My last birthday in particular was so, so bad. I don’t think I need to tell you there wasn’t any cake.** The one before that was during the first days of the pandemic, and while there was some cake, it has been revealed to me, in the fullness of time, that it was one of the worst weeks I’ve ever had. So yeah, I just never got to be 32 or 33 and we’re going to try anew. Since I cannot get everyone to delude themselves collectively into declaring it 2019 again, I’ll do it alone. I’m very brave like that. A maverick, if you will. You’re more than welcome to join me in this endeavor if it appeals to you.
This is not my most eloquent post. I’m snowed into my house, I tweaked my neck while on a long drive, and I’m drying out after a week away from the internet, responsibility, and sobriety, which I will detail later in a post I actually planned before I realized it was Nigella’s birthday. The cake I made, while cute, is terrible and I don’t know why, though I have some suspicions. I’m going to make it a couple more times before I share the recipe I made out of an older Nigella book that presented itself to me in the basement of a rural North Carolina antique mall. I wish you all a very happy birthday, whenever that may be.
*how is this possible, look at her skin
**though there WAS a book tour Zoom call with Chani Nicholas, thanks to my friend Sarah. It was fueled by a sidecar made possible by birthday cognac delivery from our beloved Nikki from the About page, so it wasn’t all bad, but it was still very bad. Oh, also, lots of people sent me flowers. Like a lot. More than the rest of my life combined, and I’m a woman who loves to get flowers. I’m not saying you should have a life crisis and seem maybe like you’re teetering on the edge of baseline functionality, but I will say a lot of people sent me flowers which I loved.