Never have I been so reluctant to return a book to the library than Yossy Arefiās Snacking Cakes: Simple Treats for Anytime Cravings. Most of the recipes are mixed in a single bowl, and use simple ingredients. I baked my way through that book, making the cute little cakes. I started with chocolate, then graduated onto oatmeal chocolate chip, lime-coconut, and finally plum-cardamom. Each cake reminded me of my time as an exchange student in Germany when I was in high school. Most afternoons, my host family would take a break at about 3 oāclock in the afternoon. Out would come the coffee pot, or tea, and just a little bit of cake. It was a tradition that I found absolutely wonderful, to put down whatever you were working on to relax, refocus, and have a small sweet treat: Kaffee und Kuchen. It felt special to sit down properly at a table set with real dishes and silverware for a break just as the afternoon doldrums were starting to set in.
After returning the book, it finally dawned on me: there wasnāt really anything special about those snacking cakes. They were good recipes, yes, but if you really looked at the recipes, they were just regular cake recipes with all the ingredients decreased by half. Cakes, only smaller.
It made me realize that if the book had been called Big Cakes to Feed a Crowd, I wouldāve left it there on the shelf. I donāt want a lot of cake, I want a snack cake. That sounds so much cuter and infinitely more special.Ā
When I was a kid, my older teenage sister was very conscious of her weight. She gallantly suffered through meals of celery and rice cakes and other tasteless diet foods. But she also sneaked into the ice cream occasionally. How did I know this? I never actually saw her do it. But sometimes Iād take the lid off a carton and see neat, tiny trenches carved into the top of the butter pecan or the fudge swirl. She used a baby spoon, and why not? It stood to reason that those tiny bites with the tiny spoon would have fewer calories!
My Instagram feed reveals my affinity for things that are cute and little. Tiny houses! Seaside cottages! Baby animals! Baby humans! Pygmy goats ā sometimes wearing sweaters! The obsession began as a kid, the way I coveted my older sisterās dollhouse with its tiny furniture and impossibly adorable tableware and cutlery. I had to be careful, not to knock over or break anything ā I knew if I did, my dollhouse privileges might be revoked. It calmed me to peer into the lives of the little doll family living in a two-story Georgian home constructed from wooden crates. That tiny family seemed to have things figured out. They looked content, the smiles permanently etched onto their faces.
Small is about simple pleasures and complete absence of overcomplication. It isnāt lost on me that when something is easy, we say itās āa piece of cake.ā I need things to be a āpiece of cakeā when I forget to slow down and un-busy myself.Ā
Dollhouse days are behind me, but the adult me still feels drawn to simpler, likable small things. Overwhelmed with a big project? Break it down into bite-sized steps. Do you want to watch a 10-hour movie? Absolutely not! But divide it up into episodes and call it a ālimited series,ā and suddenly, it gets a lot easier to carve out the time. Giant sheet cake with layers of gooey frosting? No thank you. Good things really do come in small packages. Iāll take my sweet little snacking cakes. Just one slice, arranged neatly on a dessert plate at 3 in the afternoon beside a strong cup of coffee is like opening a gift.
