Cake for Ted Kooser

Ms. Rachow usually likes to flash plastic at Jeannine’s and leave with a pink box containing a cake so sinful it forces guests to question the wisdom of low-carb diets.

Ted Kooser is living proof one can live in rural Nebraska, have a career as an insurance guy, and still win a Pulitzer. Recently I had the honor of chauffeuring this former U.S. Poet Laureate around town. I’d been chosen for two reasons: One, my speech has a Midwestern twang, so it was thought I’d be able converse with someone from the heartland. Two, my car was clean.
Turns out Ted Kooser inspired me to bake.
The last time I’d made a cake was 29 years before -- a three-layer, devils-food, the kind of birthday confection that might’ve directed me toward a career as a pastry chef. Or I could’ve retired from baking, aglow with the knowledge I’d made that one perfect cake. Fate quickly made the decision for me. Moments after the guests licked the last chocolaty butter-cream from their forks, the earth moved.
I’d read that chocolate could improve one’s love life, but this was a G-rated birthday party, for criminy-sake. Nevertheless, the floor undulated, furniture toppled, and china crashed. Whew! That was some dang good cake.
It was also the August 13, 1978 Santa Barbara earthquake that derailed a freight train, knocked mobile homes askew, and emptied the UCSB library shelves of books, most likely including three by Ted Kooser.
I can’t be sure it was my cake that caused the earthquake, but my mama didn’t raise a stupid kid. It’s best not to take chances. No more baking for me.
I’d kept my vow all these years, and then along came Ted Kooser. Before we left the airport parking lot Ted said, “Gosh, your car’s so clean,” and we were onto the subject of dogs too fond of skunks and the many women who’d influenced our lives. Ted told a story about his thrifty mother, and that reminded me of my thrifty grandmother who made burnt sugar cake.
If Jeannine’s Bakery made such a thing, they’d call it “Cake Caramel” with a French accent. Back in Nebraska we understood caramel is nothing more than burnt sugar. And we knew better than to give a cake a fancy name, lest it draw the attention of the gods and cause some cataclysm.
I drove Ted Kooser safely to his gig at the poetry workshop put on by the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. Poets had come from all over the United States (and even a few from Canada) to hear this highly respected poet speak and give a master class on crafting poetry. While he dispensed considerable wisdom on polishing one’s writing, I decided I’d like to bake him a burnt sugar cake.
Alas, some things aren’t practical. Famous poets have planes to catch, and cake doesn’t travel well by mail. To get my mind off cake as we drove back to the airport, I asked what kind of music he liked.
Without missing a beat, Ted sang the old song, “When I was a lad, and old Shep was a pup, over hills and meadows we’d stray…”
There’s nothing like a baritone voice delivering a sad song about a faithful old dog to make a girl forget about cake…at least until I was in the middle of giving a talk on how to get your poetry published, and I held up Ted Kooser’s “The Poetry Home Repair Manual.” This book offers practical advice on how to write a publishable poem and happens to have a cover the same caramel color of burnt sugar cake.
That’s how I came to find myself stirring granules in a skillet today. With the flame revved, I watched the sugar clump before meltdown, and then grow darker, until I beheld a bubbling brew. I poured in boiling water. It sizzled. I added flour, eggs, vanilla, and, voila, I poured the golden batter into my grandmother’s speckled enamel tin.
The oven did its best, I’m sure, but when I took the cake out it was a half-inch high, about the same thickness as the book on writing poetry that’d inspired it. And nowhere on the Rumford baking powder can does it explain that leavening used in August 1978 for perfect devils-food won’t work well for making a cake in 2007.
A normal person would throw this flat thing out, but anybody who still uses her grandma’s pan is too thrifty to toss a perfectly good cake just because it didn’t rise. So I’ll use poetic license and dub this “Ted Kooser’s Burnt Sugar Torte.” It’s solid, and it’ll do fine in the mail.
First published in the Montecito Journal August 9, 2007