november is for chocolate

November is my birthday month.  The darker season always elicits a preoccupation with going deep….diving into the shadow of things…..embracing Alice’s tumble down the rabbit hole into a wondrous world that is just a bit off kilter….topsy turvy….perhaps uncomfortable….maybe mysterious and intriguing.  My curiosities have recently led me to ideas of reinvention as a creative, out of the box thinking, pushing aesthetic boundaries.  This applies in most aspects of my life, whether I am out in the hills with the orb spider webs questioning the enormity of work they have woven throughout the night or at the barns with the wildness of big creatures so gentle and so unpredictable at the same time.  It pops up in the garden with metamorphosis of insects and special fruit that looks like pale pink caviar…… the bubbling of sugar to make thick caramel and egg whites whipped so hard they make clouds.  To take my dough and decide against the boule and instead stretch it into a form of unregulated design…..it is all surreal.

I have decided that my terms for November are surrealism and chocolate.  It is befitting the season as the light shifts low and sun shines less and less.  The fluff of summer’s cream and berries now takes a deep dive into decadence and chocolate.  For my birthday I always have chocolate cake.

Cake has run rampant in my life the past month.  I have made more cakes recently then I ever have…..of all sorts and for all tables.  It was in Chinatown a couple weeks ago, at a gallery event, that I saw cake in a different light.  Under the candles I watched people cut chunks of cake from every stand.  They did not slice it in a prefect triangular shape….it was not allotted equally or uniformly to each plate.  Instead it was dissected in misshapen form and plopped on paper plates or held in hands for mingling.  I was so happily surprised at the freeform dance among the cakes.  The cake sitting on the tall glass pedestal was no longer precious.  It was relatable to every mood of each person that swiped a piece.  I could see it as an avant garde performance to off beat jazz under the lights of the city.

So I made a cake for myself.  I made a chocolate cake for myself.  I painted eyes in black icing.  It became a companion at the table.  I delicately sliced a piece.  I scooped a piece with a wine glass, I dug at it directly with an old antique spoon.  I put a mess of candles on top.  It was chocolate and it was surreal in the rainy day gloom of my shop as the candles lit the room at noon like it was midnight instead.  November is for chocolate and twisting that which we know into things that we don’t know…..just to see what happens.