Charms of Hummingbird Cake

Charms of Hummingbird Cake

Within each family, we are all likely to have a secret cake recipe; a grandmother’s sewing basket (even if she only sewed on buttons or repaired hems); a junk drawer, a pantry, a shelf, a closet of foods to ward off hunger; flocks—charms, of stories.

Within our families, we might even find a time for community—a day of communion, to bring our secrets, our grandmother’s heirlooms, our stories together—to light them with a wreath of candles, to make a wish.

In the heydays of Spirit Springs, there were Moonlights, parties under the fullest moon, her glory added to with globes of lanterns hung about the trees—times of celebration even if communicants had unbaked breaks in their hearts, if there were all manner of wars threatening our world.

So, now in our days, someone—family legend might give the credit one day to any or all of us, but the occasion was birthdays where new families are born. We focused on Phoebe’s sixteenth birthday, passed a few weeks, but there were none that her birth mother had known. Doctor Melissa might be a better person than most, or perhaps she just knew about lost occasions, but she agreed to our village Moonlight filled with globes of light and Charms of Hummingbirds Cakes. Agreed to make her cake with her child, her child’s birth mother, the spirits of all of the grandmothers. We all put sixteen candles on our cakes—a small risk of fire, but in Spirit Springs, someone always has water nearby.

How We Find our Charms for a Charms of Hummingbirds Cake:

Find the sewing basket that holds the stray buttons: mussel shell buttons, mother of pearl; a wooden heart with peeling paint; a button with the remnants of crossed over threads in its four holes; the broken leftovers of a charm string. The button will be one of the cake charms. The one who gets the button will be at a crossroads (for we are all always at some crossroads), buttoning against the cold or unbuttoning for summer warmth.

Dig into the basket, past the wooden spools of thread, past a remnant of seam binding, probably past one of Grandmother’s stockings that somehow ending up in the basket, until you find a needle. There might be a whole package of needles, or pin cushion with carefully threaded needles in a rainbow of colors for loosed buttons and torn seams—those were our organized grandmothers. But for those whose grandmothers spent more time soaking in the springs, there will still be a needle somewhere. Any needle will do—naked with an eye at top or bottom. A needle is so necessary that Madam Professor taught us Eve grabbed a needle as she left the garden so that she might sew up the torn world. The one who gets the needle will have blessedness, single or threaded, until the end.

Now, sort through the junk drawer. Find a key, any key will do—spare key or a key no longer fitting any present lock. Guardian of a now house or a house of memory, a whole or broken heart. A skeleton key would’ve fit the door of a hotel now burned. We have all made duplicate keys at the hardware section now inside the Piggly Wiggly, key to give to children who might find their home when we are away. A key thrown at a ghost will block harm. A key kept in the keyhole will hold nightmares at bay. Whoever finds the key will find a world to unlock.

In every junk drawer is surely a lost coin, foreign or domestic, valuable or worth only its penny. Let it represent all lost things: a baby’s tooth; one earring; a grave, a friend, a lover, a dog, a child you mislaid. Whoever finds the coin will again search for treasure.

Finally, we head to the food pantry, shelf, basket that houses the bag of black-eyed peas. Open the bag and gather black-eyed peas like prayer beads that could be strung into the correct numbers. We all know these peas. We would not tempt any fate by not eating them on New Year’s Day. All intercessors, orisha, angel, mother are welcome. Choose one of the prayers as a cake charm.

Ingredients for a Charms of Hummingbirds Cake:

Three cups flour

Two cups sugar: one cup of brown and one cup of white

One teaspoon baking soda

One teaspoon ground cinnamon

One teaspoon salt

One and one fourth cups extra virgin olive oil

Three eggs (brown, blue, or white)

Two teaspoons vanilla

Four ripe bananas, mashed

One eight ounce can crushed pineapple, with juice

One cup pecans, chopped

Strawberry jam, to spread between the layers of cake

Sprinkle of confectioner’s sugar

Some of us, now in our eighties, remember the cakes our grandmothers’ baked cakes with a lightness we have not since tasted. The story goes that Dully Russell, who owned the mill on Full Spirit Spring, after passing the ground winter wheat through silk sieve after sieve, watched the lightest flour float through the air. Too light to be captured even by silk, the cloud of flour would finally settle on the windowsill where Dully would scoop it into bags for his best customers, our grandmothers.

Remembering from their own grandmothers when sugar was precious enough, not yet sinful enough, though perhaps suspected, to be locked in a sugar chest, the key carried by the oldest woman, our grandmothers would bless the sugar they sifted in with that flour. And the baking soda, though they would have known how to beat the eggs until they too would’ve risen a cake beyond the reach of any demons lurking in sugar.

Once salt and cinnamon were gifts of the phoenix. Now they sit waiting on our shelves.

Now, it is so easy to add the ancient worlds of olive oil and vanilla, to take sacred gifts for granted. We buy our pineapple in cans at the Piggly Wiggly, no waiting now for ships across oceans, boats down rivers, to bring us these symbols of hospitality.

But how could Spirit Springs, our little Kentucky village, have once become the crossroads for trains that carried bananas to Fulton and strawberries from Paducah, to the nation after its days of carrying visitors to the springs?

How could Fulton once been known as the Banana Capitol of the World and Paducah as the Strawberry Capitol of the World?

When the first refrigerated railway cars began shipping bananas from South America, the bananas were loaded above 162 pounds of ice. When they reached Fulton with its lone icehouse before Chicago, the ice was replenished, and so seventy percent of bananas in the United States passed through Kentucky. That is why there is a banana festival in western Kentucky, complete with a Banana Princess.

Paducah, until World War II grew enough strawberries to excuse children from school for picking and loading those berries again on railway cars. The Strawberry Festival was last celebrated in 1941, complete with a Strawberry Queen.

But before and after bananas and strawberries, were the springs of Spirit Springs and those who came to them. It has even been said that cakes were offered at these crossroads, as the ancient Greeks offered cakes to that misunderstood goddess, Hecate, at the crossroads. But now we think that that is only a story.

How to Make a Charms of Hummingbirds Cake:

We each have our favorite mixing bowls, our cedar spoons, our dented cake pans. Put the flour, sugars, baking soda, salt and cinnamon into the chosen bowl. Mix. Add the oil, eggs, and vanilla. Stir just enough to mix these worlds of powder and liquid.

Mash the bananas, ripe with bird brown spots. Didn’t one of those ancient Greeks say banana leaves were like birds’ wings? Fold in the bananas and pineapple. Finally, stir in the pecans—the wilder the better.

Oil and flour three round cake pans. Put one third of the batter into one pan mix in chosen charms. Mark this pan with toothpicks to keep it separate—charms are not for consumption!

Divide the rest of the batter between the other two pans. Bake the three layers at 350 degrees for about thirty minutes. A toothpick should come out clean and the cakes will brown and crack for good luck. Be sure to keep the charm layer marked!

Cool the layers for fifteen minutes. Then remove to a wire rack and cool for two hours.

When the cake layers are cool, put the first one upside down on Grandmother’s cake plate. Spread the strawberry jam, as thick as you like, across the first layer. Put the next layer on top.

Dr. Melissa, who has seen too many people swallow too many foreign objects, sprinkles powdered sugar on top; serving this for her cake, and letting everyone just play about with the third layer and dig for the charms. Some of us spread another layer of jam and put the charm layer on the top, being careful to remind everyone to move that top piece and just search for your charm before eating the rest. Refrigerate leftovers.

Now, we all put the lit candles on our cake, wish, and blow, those wisps of smoke carrying our hopes even beyond the land of air, the language of birds.