Dominican Cake
Annecy Báez
photo credit: Jena’s Creations
I grew up in the Bronx, waking up to the scent of coffee brewing and my sister’s Dominican cakes baking. A widow with two children, Tita sewed for a local factory and, on the weekends, baked cakes for extra cash. Eighteen years older than me, she was more of a mother than a sister. When Tita started selling her Dominican cakes, I would help her by watching, and later by doing. But to watch was to be guided, to be taught the craft while we talked about love and life. The joy of making the cakes bonded us in a beautiful and eloquent love.
Like most Dominicans, el Bizcocho Dominicano was at the center of all our celebrations, from weddings to baptism, birthdays and graduations. The cake came in many designs representing people, places or things with elaborate decorations, edible flowers, children’s cakes with Disney themes or Barbies smiling inside a decorative dress. The Dominican cake was not just any cake. It was a homemade masterpiece—a culinary Van Gogh envisioned and crafted by a master baker and decorator, like my sister. El Bizcocho Dominicano was special for its airy and moist texture, which would melt on one’s tongue; for its filling, often tart pineapple or sweet guava; and for its decorative icing, that we call suspiro, but which is actually an Italian meringue (not to be confused with the Dominican Merengue). All of this creates the magical, fluffy, creamy lightness of the Dominican cake.
Then there’s Love.
Tita’s Dominican cake was made with so much heart and artistry that those who ate it inevitably fell in love. If they were depressed, they recovered a sense of joy and excitement. If they were “dis-eased,” they found ease in the sweet taste of her cakes. I always said that her cakes cleansed old wounds, recovered lost parts of the soul, allowed some to find new love and others to reconnect with the love they had lost. Some women even boasted of becoming pregnant after eating one of her cakes, which became a boon for business.
In the morning, Tita would prepare all of her ingredients: all-purpose flour, baking powder, unsalted butter, sugar and eggs. All laid out to settle to room temperature before mixing. Then there was lime peel, vanilla, evaporated milk, or orange juice. As in life, the set-up for success required organization, discipline, determination and faith.
Tita would mix the flour and baking powder, sifting while sharing her thoughts. The flour, she said, was the foundation of the Dominican cake--and we needed a strong foundation to sustain us in difficult times. While beating the butter and sugar, she’d remind me to give others validation, sweet consideration. A fearless egg cracker, I would watch her with admiration. The eggs would pop out without shattering the shell. She’d remind me that in life you had to do things with conviction, to know what you truly value and be true to your beliefs. The mixing and whisking—all a meditation in action.
The truth was that making a Dominican cake became my foundation—the center of my meditations and my yoga practice, every whisking movement an Asana, then stillness, then breath. Tita would urge me to breathe when I helped her whisk the suspiro. Respira! she would say. You cannot make a suspiro without breathing. I would burst into laughter, knowing how I tended to hold my breath, thinking that if I breathed too hard, the suspiro would not fluff up smoothly.
Suspiro.
I always loved that word. In English it means to sigh, but in Spanish it means a profound, strong, and deep inhalation, followed by a powerful exhalation accompanied by a heart-rending sound that often indicates deep despair, or the satisfaction of desire. The suspiro wrapped around the Dominican cake like an elegant dress. Suspiro: a word that encompasses both the joy and the sorrow of living and loving.
Dominican cake.
I loved the mindfulness it took to create it, the artistic thoughtfulness to decorate it. I remember Tita’s two-layered Dominican cake: the icing a draping of lattice patterns, tiny Swiss dots in a diamond, and pink flowers surrounding its edges—her staple for my birthday. Even now, I still dream of it and think of her.
Suspiro
source (and recipe): Sidechef
Annecy Báez is an educator, and psychotherapist, author of My Daughter’s Eyes and Other Stories, and winner of the 2007 Marmol Prize in fiction. Her stories and poetry have appeared in various anthologies and periodicals, such as Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers and Callaloo. @annecybaez