Cake is in the house.

The felicity conditions for cake:

• butter in the refrigerator
• fresh Meyer lemons
• a recipe that has crossed one's path
• eggs
• a new Kitchenmaid stand mixer, preferably apple green in color.

Meet my new kitchen pal. She's apple green and also a powerhouse. And also super cute. #stuff

A photo posted by Lisa Bickmore (@megastore) on Jan 8, 2016 at 9:30pm PST

Also:

• one's writing group is coming over for lunch.

P.S. having a poem ready for one's writing group is evidently not a felicity condition, or even a necessary condition. Having a poem ready for one's writing group is extra. I.e., not required. 

Let us pause to reflect on the glory of the stand mixer in comparison to the hand held mixer:

1. The hand held mixer is powered by little mice running around in existential despair.
2. The hand held mixer is nigh unto powerless before the unwrapped egg white or unwrapped heavy cream. Too viscous! say the existential mice. Too heavy!
3. The stand mixer, however, is stalwart. 
4. The stand mixer is jaunty, also, because of the apple green aspect.
5. The stand mixer takes your eggs and sugar and whips them until they are light. 
6. Whereas the hand mixer, and by extension, literally, one's arm, says, complainingly, is it light yet? NOW is it light? when it is not light, not at all. 
7. But the weary mice and existential arm, despite all the whipping and timing and carrying on, just don't have the stuff. In the end, they give up. They are not prepared to go the distance.
8. Whereas the stand mixer is. The stand mixer will go the distance, and how.

Whilst the stand mixer kept beating air into the eggs and sugar until they truly were light and pale yellow and a phenomenon that I had never truly witnessed except in dreams, I was able to walk around in the kitchen, gathering whatnot and what have you, spooning in flour from a little bowl, adding splashes of cream, grating the meyer lemon zest, and so on, until I had a batter the likes of which had never been beheld in my kitchen. Praise the Lord!

Then I poured it into my fancy bundt pan and baked it. In my new oven. It was basically baking ecstasy around here.

I served the cake with whipped cream and raspberries and it was grand. Everyone had some, we all loved it, and now--and now! there is leftover cake at my house. I can have a little sliver. I can have a fat piece. I have wrapped it lovingly so that it won't dry out. I figure we have a few more days of the peace of mind that comes from having cake in the house. 

The cake diaries.

Today at poetry group, we all had the great good fortune of having a piece of our hostess's Sicilian Cassata, a truly divine cake comprised of two layers of genoise, between them a layer of whipped ricotta studded with candied orange peel and chopped dark chocolate, all covered in a layer of green tea marzipan and decorated with elegant cutouts of candied orange peel and Meyer lemon peel. There was no talking about poems during the consumption of this cake, as it was so elegant, so delicious and complex, it deserved one's complete and rapt attention to its attributes and aspects, making their statements and counterstatements in the mouth. Our hostess is famous for her splendid cakes, but this one was my favorite so far.

This led to a lot of speculation on my part: did the hostess estimate that, on a given day in her household, there was a high probability, a fair chance, or a rather limited chance that there would be some cake, somewhere? What was the cake part of the cake, and what was the filling? We had a brief discussion of the qualities of genoise as the cake in fancy cakes. We also established that Rose Berenbaum Levy's book The Cake Bible is, indeed, the canonical work for cakes. The Meyer lemons came from California. The candied peel cutouts were made with truffle cutters. I think we may have discussed nearly every pertinent aspect of the cake by the time we had all finished, lingeringly, the last bite.

"Thank you for the inspirational cake," I said, as we were leaving.

"You've given Lisa another entry for her cake diary," joked another poet.

"You're assuming I don't actually have one," I said. Which I don't, actually, though I do have a diary of menus and recipes, recording who was present at a party, etcetera, which I use to brainstorm parties and future menus. All of this rumination about cake has led me to the following conclusions:

1. It's time to have a dinner party.
2. That party should involve a delicious dessert, probably cake.
3. I need a copy of The Cake Bible, and probably The Pie and Pastry Bible, as well.
4. How does one manipulate marzipan? (not a conclusion)
5. With regard to how this cake was beautiful and also sublimely delicious:

Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.

Also:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Listen: it was really, really good cake.