The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

I've been thinking about the ride home, post dinner party. I think I've come up with the perfect parting gift.

I imagine my guests, driving away after a full evening of good food and good wine, inevitably deconstructing the night and sort of relishing the fact that they won't have to do dishes when they get home. Sometimes, if they've had enough wine over the course of the evening, they'll sit in the car with that rather stale mouth-feel, not really wishing for more food, but for a different taste.

That's why I'm sending everyone away with brownies.

One of life’s great truths—one that we desperately seek to avoid with proverbs and catechisms and even magazine articles—is that beneath its surface lies complexity. Our beloved fictions of heroes and villains crumble with scrutiny, leaving only convolution, shifting meanings, and unstable realities. The same is true of things. Even the simplest object has its hidden history of longing, love, and despair. Take, for example, cake. Chiffon cake.

When I was twenty-four, I decided to bake a cake for my boyfriend’s birthday. Matty was a wannabe rock star and the coolest guy I’d ever dated. I really wanted to pull off something cool, something special, something his mother would never have made. The limits of my first apartment kitchen forced my creativity into overdrive. I baked three cakes—chocolate, yellow, and marble—with the only pan I had: a loaf pan. I then inverted these “cake bricks” and stacked them, one on top of the other.