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Text version of the episode:
Episode 16 Five Flavored Cake
I still remember the first time I ever had Five Flavored Cake. My family decided to take a road trip from California all the way to Kentucky, where my mom was born and then to Ohio, to see my Aunt. We must have driven for what seemed like a month! We did the grand canyon (it's just a big ass canyon) and we saw the arch in St. Louis, and somewhere in Texas maybe, we saw a giant 19 story cross with some statues of Jesus around it.
Eventually we got to Kentucky, and then to Ohio where my Aunt, who I am named after and share a birthday with, lives. She lived alone, in a really nice neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio. I remember when we stayed with her we watched GoodTimes and The Golden Girls on her TV and I think I slept on a cot in one room at night. One of the days we were there my Dad and my Aunt went to the store and when they came home they had bought some steaks to barbeque that had been marked for sale accidentally. They paid like six dollars for six steaks – I don't remember if they were good or not, but I remember how excited everyone was at the unexpected bargain. Honestly, I’m still like that today – I love buying things on sale, even sometimes when they’re things I don't really need.
We helped my Aunt clean out her pantry one day we were there – she was from a generation of people that saved everything they could, in case times got hard. She had a can of peaches in the pantry that had been there since before I was born! When my Dad picked up the can, he shook it, and it was empty like the peaches inside had rotted away and turned to dust. We laughed so much about that, and we still do. We went fishing with my Aunt at a city pond – my Dad is obsessed with fishing and it has always been his favorite hobby. I don't think we caught anything there though, we didn’t have the right bait.
Another day, my Aunt made us all her five flavored cake. I could smell it baking in the oven for hours before we ate dinner and all I wanted to do was bury my face in the cake, I'd never heard of a cake with FIVE flavors before. It was almond, lemon, vanilla, rum and coconut all packed into a moist point cake in the shape of a bundt, which sort of looks like an upside down seashell. My Aunt frosted her five-flavor cake with this really thin white frosting that hardened after pouring and created like the perfect glaze. This cake, and a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, is one hundred percent the best dessert I have ever had in my life.
Sometimes my Mom would remake that cake over the years, or I’d ask for one for my birthday. She got the recipe from my Aunt and every time she made it, the whole house would warm up with that same smell of cake baking. The cake pan always had the leftover crispy bits of cake in the bottom and around the edges and we’d eat the little pieces together before dinner or singing happy birthday – it was heavenly cake. But, my Mom could never get the glaze to set the same way my Aunt had.