winning hearts and minds cake
As a child, while many of my peers were playing house and imagining their dream wedding, I used to draw elaborate plans of my dream kitchen. I was always hanging around kitchens, watching my mother and my grandmother cook — trying to get some small job, however minuscule it was. There was this one time, my mother gave me scraps of dough and I tried to mold a little person out of it with raisins for eyes and a cinnamon mouth. I was doing well until I decided to put a peppercorn for the nose. Six-year-olds rarely appreciate peppercorns in their baked goods.
When I did, fleetingly, think of my future wedding, it was only in regards to what I was going to feed people, specifically, what kind of cake I wanted to serve.
And if you give me a piece of cake and a cold glass of milk to chase it down, it’s an easy way to win my affections. What I look for in cake isn’t fancy piping or a next-level technique. A simple cake, unadorned, might be my favorite (though well-made buttercream is a thing of beauty, too). And, when it comes to simple cakes that hit the spot, this one might just be crowned winner.
It’s the kind of cake you make to take with you as a gift for your hosts in the North Fork, or cake you make for a friend who unexpectedly shows up for dinner. The kind of cake that, after you send said friend home to bring a piece to her sister, makes that sister demand that cake each time you get together. The kind of cake that wins, hearts, minds and stomachs.
Should you make this cake, you may also want to share it with your loved ones. It’s a dead-simple, no-fancy-equipment-needed, one-bowl marvel of just six ingredients that transform into something truly memorable and special. If ever greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts moniker was appropriate, it is here. It can take on any multi-tiered wedding cake despite being humble and simple enough to whip up on a weeknight. I dare you to find any fault with it.
