WARNING:

May contain traces of nuts, gluten, animal products and unsolicited oversharing. 

When I was 7, Dad made a volcano cake for my birthday. We celebrated the occasion at the pirate-themed putt-putt golf course in Warriewood. So the cake fit right in amongst the fantastical surrounds of wrecked ships, blue lagoons and caves strewn with faux-treasure. 

Back then, Dad used to make projects of all my birthday cakes. He’d already done a blue Power Ranger, pajamaed banana, tank engine and other impressive designs. The volcano cake, though, was his magnum opus, his swan song, if you will. He stopped making them after that one, which was when Mum and I moved from Hornsby to Scotland Island, meaning I changed schools and she relinquished her spot as chair of the Gordon East Public School P&C committee. 

In retrospect, perhaps both of these pastimes (Dad’s creative outlet of cake decorating and Mum’s active engagement in my schooling) were performed more for the sake of impressing the other parent than me. For they both abandoned these pursuits, abruptly, despite having devoted so much energy to them – as Mum and I moved on geographically, both my parents seemed to move on emotionally, into new relationships. There were no more cakes after that.

I don’t recount this narrative in wistful longing or resentment or with any woe-is-me sentiment intended. This recipe’s preamble is purely for the sake of context. To be honest, you might read the formula to follow as a deconstruction of the abandonment complex I carry with me to this day, years after Dad decorated his last cake; it certainly shouldn’t be taken as 100% accurate, reliant as we are on my admittedly fallible memory.  

I thought we could use this baking session to analyse some of that emotional baggage.

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It’s time to cast off our unresolved trauma, shooting it away like molten pumice rocks.

May this volcanic dessert serve as a fountain of catharsis and acceptance, our woes dissolving as though in hot magma.

Now, enough dilly-daddying, I mean, dallying. Let’s get going...

© 2023 Henry Chase Richards. Site by Mia Montesin