ETHIOPIA: Marie Antoinette Edition

I have been eating a lot of cake. Sometimes just as an afternoon snack with a cup a tea but mostly for breakfast, also with a cup of tea. There is a small café on my way to the office that has good cake. The cake I have been indulging myself with is a small pound cake. Just plain looking cake shaped like a small yellow brick, although occasionally there may be the faintest trace of powdered sugar. Not enough sugar to be a tease. The amount that makes you wonder why they even bother. How much time was spent trying not to place any sugar on the cake? There are different types of cake available and also other pastries and donuts. But I have been sticking with the pound cake.

The first time I ordered a pound cake the waitress went to place it the microwave. She glanced at me and paused. I must have had a quizzical look on my face. She feigned placing it into the microwave indicating she needed my approval before doing so. I gave her a glance telling her I don’t know why she is doing that then followed quickly with a shrug of the shoulders that said that I didn’t really care. This is how I communicate in Ethiopia. Through nods and gesticulations. I’ve tried to learn some common words but I butcher Amharic too much. I butcher it so it is completely incomprehensible that I might as well be talking a different language. I am not even understandable when I say something like mango. I pronounce it as the month of May. They pronounce the “a’ sound as in mama. So I am in a juice bar and I order a mango juice. Blank stare back at me. I ask what type of fruit they have. The waitress goes down the list and comes to mango and pronounces it in the Ethiopian way. I repeat their pronunciation with an affirmative. She turns to the other waitress, saying something in Amharic but I distinctly hear “mayng-o” just like how I first said it. They smile at each as if this was the craziest thing in the world they have ever heard. Ambo is the common term used for mineral water. Just look at that word. Not many different ways to mispronounce it. But I have been though them all. I still can’t get it right. So if I am butchering mango and ambo you can just imagine me with the 5-syllable words they have in Amharic.

But back to cake. Interestingly, the microwaved cake had no discernable difference in taste or texture that the subsequent non-microwaved cakes I have had. It was hotter but that’s it. No more or less enjoyable. I haven’t been back to the microwave pastry shop since I moved to a new place and it is no longer that convenient. The new café I have been going to does not microwave. I kinda miss it. Not because it added anything to the cake but because of that first experience I had with microwaving cake. What started as a peculiarity I had hoped would become commonplace. The cake itself, heated or as is, is good. I can’t explain why but I look forward to my morning cake. It is crumbly without being stale. It is by no means moist but I am hard-pressed to describe it as dry. It is not sweet yet tastes like cake should. When the fork goes through the outside it gives off like it would be crusty yet it still possesses a certain buoyancy. I ponder all this while eating my cake and drinking my tea. Take all these parts separately it should be bad cake. It is tantalizing how it all comes together into an enjoyable snack. Perhaps that is why I continue to eat my cake. I hope the next forkful to enter my mouth will elicit its secrets unto me.