Ever eaten and savored a homemade pound cake? Recently everyone in my parish was invited to bake a cake for the annual parish Fourth of July Festival. As a member of the Parish Staff and someone who enjoys baking, I was happy to oblige. Every volunteer was given a cake mix to bake at home and a cake carrier to transport the finished product back to church.
As I prepared to use the cake mix, I began reminiscing about my mom’s delicious pound cake, a family favorite she called her “Miracle Cake,” and I wondered if I could possibly bake her “Miracle Cake” for the festival in place of the cake mix. Sister Tonette settled the question by encouraging me to be creative and make the “scratch” cake. I’m so glad she did! Not only did it connect me with my deceased mom and help our efforts for the festival, it also brought me a sense of the sacred and a deep joy by simply baking a cake to be enjoyed by others.
I had always been fascinated by the name “Miracle Cake,” because it seemed to underscore what I intuitively felt: baking is about transformation. Cookbook author and food columnist, Barbara Kafka, once said that very thing, “Turning flour into cakes, eggs into custard, ideas into something real, is all about transformation.”
As I gathered pans and ingredients for baking, I found my mom’s recipe very straightforward and simple. A traditional pound cake recipe contains four main ingredients: a pound each of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs (and some kind of flavoring!). My mom’s recipe cuts down on the flour and sugar, and uses more eggs than the traditional recipe. I remembered she liked to use almond flavoring instead of vanilla, so I did the same.
As I measured the flour, sugar, and butter, and cracked the eggs, I began to think about how each of these ingredients came to be in our kitchen. Who raised the chickens, who processed the butter, who milled the flour, who crystallized the sugar? I began to reflect on how many people’s efforts make the most basic and simple things of life possible for others. I felt a sense of gratitude for this web of connections and reflected upon how my life and the lives of all of us are more interdependent than we scarcely realize.
Over the years my mom had told me that the secret to a great pound cake is in the mixing technique, and in using fresh ingredients at room temperature. It’s important to cream the butter and sugar thoroughly, add the eggs one at a time, and alternate the eggs and the flour, the dry and wet ingredients. I did my best to follow these time-proven best practices. Baking takes time, patience, and a certain mindfulness. It can become, as I was experiencing, a deeply spiritual practice, if done with love and joy.
Baking a pound cake or baking in general is an amazing process. No matter which recipe is used, what amounts are measured, or what ingredients are added, something always happens to the mixture when it is baked. A chemical reaction of air, heat, liquid, and natural elements somehow results in a transformation—a miracle cake emerging—that can be delicious, full of flavor and aroma, and a delight to the senses. Flour, sugar, butter, and eggs—all individual ingredients—have become forged into a new reality through an unseen chemical process. This amazing process gave me so much to ponder!
My miracle cake, coming hot out of the oven, was teaching me how God is always acting within simple elements, and by analogy within ordinary people, to transform all things anew. Everyday miracles abound: in the kitchen, in nature, in our sacramental world, in our families and communities. If God can make miracles happen in ordinary cake batter, cannot God transform our lives, our hearts, our communities in ways far greater than we can imagine?
(As a final note, my miracle cake adventure reaped good results: the cake baked beautifully and sold at the parish Festival. I was told it was delicious! Below is the recipe I followed.)
Miracle Cake Recipe (from Virginia Contorno’s Kitchen)
Grease and flour bundt pan. Pre-heat oven at 350°.
Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter or Crisco
6 eggs
2 cups flour
1 tbsp flavor (vanilla, almond)
Cream sugar and butter for 20 minutes. Rotate flour and eggs. Add flavor. Mix thoroughly for another 20 minutes. Place in pan and cook for 50-60 minutes.
Enjoy! Especially good with strawberries and whipped cream.
By Sister Madeline Contorno, OSB