Ode to McCain’s Deep ’n Delicious Vanilla Cake
by Melanie Power
At 26 ingredients, it’s engineered as intricately
as a vehicle, with twice the alchemic intrigue.
From the ashes of yer youth, it rises up
plastic-domed, perfectly preserved, on sale
2 for 1. In saccharine worship, your mouth
still waters, that synthetic vanilla potent,
the way imitation of a thing in nature inevitably
becomes overdone, but the garnish—delicate
chocolate tendrils—epitomizes refinery. A marvel
of 20th century technology, the frozen cake defies
time. Stretching the life of foods like the Sorcerer’s Stone
for wizards would, freezers first entered Calvert kitchens
in 1950- something. If we began then to live less in
the moment, at least fewer of my cousins went to bed
hungry. The O’Tooles on The Point bought one of the earliest
fridges off analog Kijiji—just Steve Maddox, driving up
the shore, reselling goods from Fort Pepperrell out the back
of his trunk. Anyone who claims Canadian cuisine is non-existent
hasn’t heard of McCain, born & raised in New Brunswick, the world’s
largest retailer of frozen potatoes. Spuds for the Powers are like
a good Burgundy for the French: no meal was complete without
them, and dessert was best served from the freezer. On birthdays,
a Deep ’n Delicious was discharged from frigid storage, and leftover
candles shoved into it. You watched as yer childhood receded
like a coastline as the candles annually gave off more heat. We shifted
our faith in the 90’s to scientists from bakers, because we loved
the uniformity of stiff, factory-piped icing, because his mother’s
been gone so long my Dad almost forgets how her homemade bread
smeared with fresh cream & molasses tasted. Wouldn’t Mary-Essie
have loved something ready-made, something she could buy
to trade for time? Unlike fallible French pastry, which ages every
sixty seconds and by day two isn’t fit to bite into, one of these
bad boys maintains its integrity into infinity (or, for around six
months, which is as much of the future as is safe to bet on.)
Visit your local grocery store! This frozen cake, at its rim,
waits under fluorescents for you to carry it home. Do not
heat or bake. Just thaw, cut and serve. Nothing gold can
stay? Robert Frost never tried a Deep ’n Delicious cake.