Grand Pistachio Easter Cake
This recipe makes a grand and wild Easter Dessert. The cake is pretty. Bright green, thanks to the pistachio pudding and food coloring, piled high with layers of green-tinted whipping cream, with sprinkles of green-tinted coconut to form nests for jellybeans to be grouped around the platter of the cake. The cake is baked in an angel food cake pan, split into three layers to stand tall, and then put together again with green tinted whip cream as the glue. This recipe was given to my Mom in the 70s, when it was oh, so fashionable, to insert instant pudding into the boxed cake mixes to make cakes extra moist. And moist, and yummy, this cake is.
Except, I’m not making this cake; and I will probably never make this cake again. That is, unless, I find a way to undo its curse.
Superstitions are oh so silly, so unnecessary and slightly unpopular. But given that the circumstances arising from this cake began during my tender teen years, when the world was seen as black and white, and every event could be linked to a cause, it’s not difficult to understand how this cake earned its reputation. This cake’s tragedies cannot be forgotten. Thankfully, pistachios and jellybeans, whether eaten separately or together, do not seem to have the same effect as the cake. We can eat those with abandon.
The recipe came into my Mom’s hands with great fanfare, and I went searching for the recipe in her handwriting, and found it slipped into her recipe card tin, in no particular order. The first night she made it, she had already been to the store on the way home and walked into the kitchen with brown paper grocery bags filled with the instant pudding, cake mix and Cool Whip ready to go. The green food coloring bottle already stood in our kitchen cupboard, so she didn’t buy that. The recipe came from a “girl” at work, and my Mom had tucked into her purse so she could read the ingredients while she was in the store. Rarely did I help my Mom in the kitchen. She preferred to work alone. While she worked on the masterpiece, I watched TV, oblivious to what went into making this confectionery. Soon after the cake made its way out of the oven, and onto the cake platter, I opened the newspaper to see my boyfriend’s picture in the newspaper. The picture was his prom picture. His escort was a girl I had never met — a girl from another school. I had no date to the prom.
The cake’s tragedies were primarily linked to matters of the heart. Boys. Each cake knocked the boys down like dominoes. Could my parents divorce somehow have been linked to this cake? Soon, even my rational-minded Mom couldn’t deny the cake’s power over my life. So, she tucked the recipe away, and we had Easter dinners without the cake. The cake beckoned, calling us every Easter to think back to its green nests, its delicate flavor, and its celebratory display. Come Easter, this cake haunts your mind, urging you to pull the recipe out again. With great restraint, we kept the recipe tucked away for years.
In college, all this superstitious, wishy-washy thinking of my youth was swept under the rug to make way for sophisticated, rational thought. At Easter, without giving a second thought to my silly tragic interpretations of my unfortunate romances and the cake, I asked my Mom to make the cake again. The cake’s offenses, if they ever existed, were excused and forgiven. I wanted to taste the cake and enjoy the fanfare of spring this cake represented. My boyfriend, and now my current husband, would be coming home too.
My Mother’s face turned green at the prospect of making the cake again, and she couldn’t imagine what kind of havoc the cake may wreck on my current life. She liked my boyfriend, and hoped we would marry; she refused to make the cake. I persisted, and we had the cake. To her great relief, my boyfriend did not break up with me; we didn’t even have a fight. Except for the tree in my Mom’s yard that died, a tree she planted to commemorate her wedding anniversary, the cake had no impact on our lives.
Because this Easter meal did not result in any marked failure of my current romance, the cake continued to make spotty appearances in our Easters over the years. Who can say how many tragedies befell us because of the cake? Tragedies we were too busy, and too smart, to link with the cake. One year, my brother’s wife left him. This was in the spring, after we had eaten the cake together at Easter. Only because we were heartbroken for my brother, not because we feared the cake, we pushed the cake recipe aside again; and left it in the cupboard. We didn’t feel like celebrating.
The last time she made the cake, my Mom had resisted again. “Are you sure?” she said. “Yes. Everything is fine.” I encouraged her to make it. “For the sake of my kids,” I said. They deserve to see the green Easter cake, in all its glory, dotted with jellybeans.” The plan was to have dinner at our house, and she would bake the cake and bring it over. Easter came, but my Mom did not. She sent the cake and the scalloped potatoes over with my brother. She was too sick to come. We ate the cake without her. This was the first of many holiday dinners I now share as the only female present. I called to say Happy Easter, and tell her how pretty the cake was, but she didn’t answer the phone. The white Corelle Ware casserole dish she used for the scalloped potatoes now sits in my cupboard. I never did get around to returning her dish.
A few months later, she died. That cake was the last meal she made for me.
I’m sorry I missed Easter dinner with her that year. I’m sorry my kids did not get to see her that year and take an Easter Basket from her; and I’m sorry we didn’t get to laugh about that silly cake, and say something about how the cake seemed to have some magic spell over our lives. I’m sorry I asked her to make the cake.
Her death was so sudden and so unexpected that I have a difficult time, because of its reputation, of ruling the cake out. To be honest, I think I’m actually afraid of this cake; it’s a wild card, and I just never know what kind of outcome it will deliver. So, for the safety and security and well being of my family, I’m giving up this cake. I suppose, I do this with the same reverence reserved for those who give something up for Lent.
I feel a bit irresponsible to pass this recipe on to you. Still you can probably look at the picture and decipher the recipe if you so desired. But I caution you; make this cake at your own peril.
Someday, I will ceremoniously know how to make this cake again. There will be revealed just the right tweaking of ingredients to transform this cake into a cake of joy, instead of a cake of sorrow. Or, maybe not.
[...] When it comes to baking the Easter Ham, this recipe, with its pineapples, Ginger Ale and Maraschino cherries, makes my kids eager to help make the ham. This translates into a meal where I rarely have to nag them about eating — as the ingredients for this ham are more like the makings of an ice cream sundae, rather than the main course Ham for Easter for dinner. Here’s the recipe and method. Every year, I can’t wait to make this recipe. But, I will not, this year, be making that cake. [...]