The sun is watery but strong, filtering down through the canopy of dogwoods that marks the boundary between their lawn and the neighbors’. She sets her laptop down carefully on the patio table. A bowl of sliced plums, ice cold and just on the firm side of ripe, sits next to a glass of fizzy salted lemonade. The lemonade is something she picked up in college: Her sophomore year roommate in college had been dating a chemical engineer named Atid who’d grown up in Thailand.
Atid used to come over and cook them snacks in their miniature dorm room kitchen (a double burner and half-refrigerator, which was usually stocked only with hummus, Fresca, the cottage cheese her roommate ate late at night while studying, and the occasional leftovers from dinners in town). Atid was extremely good-looking, and extremely nice: He treated her with a joking, brotherly attitude and sometimes when they’d brush arms while all piled on the couch watching Breaking Bad episodes, she’d feel an involuntary heat rise in her cheeks.
Atid told them stories about his mother: a gorgeous, dark-haired model who was rarely home except to drop kisses on his forehead before bed, always dressed in something sequined or flowing. His father ran a real estate conglomerate; she was his second wife, and she was relatively famous in the rarified, sparkling world of jet-setting fashionistas. He was raised by a nanny who was, by his account, a Michelin-worthy cook.
He’d spend hours sitting on a painted red stool in the kitchen watching her make spicy green papaya salad and mango sticky rice and curries laced with coconut milk and galangal. She taught him to chiffonade a pile of Thai basil leaves into tidy ribbons, to knead dough for sweet banana roti, and to use his small fingers to thread skewers through cubes of meat for chicken satay. What he loved best was her recipe for salted limeade — a drink popular in Thai street markets and cafes.
The first time he made it was on an extremely warm May afternoon. He brought out glasses to the grassy quad where they were all sprawled on towels, pretending to study but mostly gossiping and feeling generally hungover from the night before. “Salted lemonade,” he announced, handing around the glasses. “In Thailand they make it with limes but I like it better this way, ever since I discovered how good American lemonade is.”
She took a reluctant sip. It was like drinking the edge of salted margarita glass, but fizzier and as refreshing as Gatorade. It was both sweet and salty — if pressed, she wasn’t sure she could put her finger on which. It tasted like lemonade but sharper and somehow more wild (later he shows her how to make it and reveals that he adds crushed mint and a tiny bit of pepper).
She begs Atid to make the lemonade on hot days, and sometimes instead of cutting it with seltzer water, he throws everything in a blender until frothy and thick, like a slushy, then spikes it with vodka.
The relationship didn’t last beyond the following autumn. Atid broke up with her roommate in a manner gentler than she’d ever seen in a boy of that age: He had always seemed more mature and self-possessing than any of their peers. He went on to date, and then marry, a petite brunette from Tennessee, with a deep dimple in one cheek and a lilting Southern accent, in their graduating class who became one of the first female recipients of a MacArthur Genius Grant in the field of geophysics. She’d seen a photo of the two of them in the last issue of the college alumni magazine, smiling and holding the hands of two chubby toddlers.
Even though Atid figured very briefly in her life, she still makes the salted lemonade often. She likes to think of it as a small token of their time together: a calling card almost, an impression that she etches over again and again by making the drink, turning it into an indelible mark.
It’s the best thing to drink in warm weather. One of her co-workers argues against this, claiming that switchel is the most underrated and perfectly suited for hydration. He’s from New England (Waitsfield, Vermont to be precise), where the drink apparently originated. “What is it, exactly?” she asked when he first brandished a mason jar of the drink at her. “Well people call it haymaker’s punch, because I guess farmers would drink it in the summer. It’s kind of like a shrub but less acidic.” He divulged his uncle’s recipe, which includes apple cider vinegar, maple syrup, fresh ginger, lemon juice, and soda water. She made a face when she tried a sip. “It’s an acquired taste,” he laughs, and she can see how one could become a little addicted to the fizzy, tangy, sweet-but-not-sweet essence of it.
Now, she reaches again for the glass of lemonade on the table, holding it up to the light. The table is dusty with pollen. She runs a fingertip along the edge of her chair and comes up with a yellowish film; the hint of an itch is already starting at the corners of her eyes. She never had allergies until she moved to Boston. Cities, she thinks. Bah! Or it’s getting older, her body less elastic and resilient. Colds last longer, a hangover feels like a death sentence. She can’t eat a plate of heavily salted tonkatsu ramen and a handful of Oreos late at night after the bar and then wake up and take a 5 mile run, needing only an iced coffee and brisk shower to put her in a cheerful, snappy mood, the way she could in college.
She runs a hand over the smooth skin where her shorts end, the muscles firm and taut. Her face is lightly tanned and freckled from a few weeks of lunch breaks in the spring sunshine; her hair beginning to take on streaks of blond, no grays having begun to appear. Most of her friends have started to find silvery strands here and there, the first visible sign of rounding the corner into their thirties and beyond. Her friend Andie started going gray at 25 and now sports a chic tousled gray bob — with her soft rounded cheeks and sparkly eyes, she looks like a less edgy Kelly Osbourne, if Kelly Osbourne dressed only in crisp Ralph Lauren and Tory Burch.
“You’re not aging,” her cousin Nell had scoffed the other weekend over brunch. Nell was 39 and beginning to panic about her upcoming birthday. Her husband was planning a weekend trip to Napa for 14 of their closest friends complete with custom hoodies, a Dionysian itinerary as wine-soaked as a plate of coq au vin, and a hot air balloon ride to dinner at The French Laundry. “He’s more excited about it than his own birthday,” she confided. “This sounds awful but I’m dreading it, and I want nothing more than to curl up with a Sally Field movie marathon and pretend the entire day isn’t happening.”
Nell was always complaining about getting older, pointing out her crow’s feet and what she swore was crepey skin on her upper arms. She wasn’t, of course: Nell could easily pass for 30.
“I mean, technically I am aging. We are all,” she said matter-of-factly, spearing a piece of asparagus on her fork and popping it into her mouth.
Nell rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. That’s nothing. You haven’t actually started to notice anything that a little recreational Botox can’t fix.”
“Recreational Botox? Versus the very essential, mandatory kind?”
Nell laughed, not kindly, into her mimosa. “Whatever. Call me when you stop being able to read the credits on your TV from a distance.”
The lemonade. The cold plums. The silky spring air, the sunshine as fine as bone china. She closes her eyes for a minute, ignoring the ding of her work email. One of her clients has a deadline in three days, and she should spend the afternoon finishing up a piece of a proposal for them to approve, but her mind is on the weekend.
She’ll drive back to Boston tomorrow. Hadley’s birthday is on Saturday and she’s making the cake: a two-tiered French toast-inspired cake topped with sparklers. They’re having fancy grilled cheeses and dirty martinis, per Hadley’s request. They casually invited 20 or 30 friends, but knowing Hadley, the apartment will swell with people and by midnight, it will be packed with bodies and music and someone will be trying to smoke a cigarette on the fire escape.
When she told him about the party, they were sharing a BLT on his couch. She had just taken a bite, dropping a piece of the crispy bacon onto the plate. He reached over to pick it up, and ate it, then asked about the cake. “Why French toast? And what is a French toast cake? Like a stack of slices of French toast with a candle?”
As she started to answer, he circled her wrist with his thumb and forefinger, a form of handholding that made her have trouble concentrating, the intimacy delicate and almost unnerving.
“It’s because it’s one of her favorite foods, hands down.”
When Hadley was growing up, her dad would take her for weekend breakfasts at a little diner in town which served it up on plates big enough to qualify as platters. The toast, as she described it, was as thick as an encyclopedia and fried a deep amber color, then fully dredged in cinnamon sugar. The edges were chewy and caramelized, the inside soft and yielding. (The diner, in fact, used day-old brioche and dipped each slice into a cinnamon-scented brown butter custard before frying and sugaring each piece.)
The cake will be made from a brown butter batter with a hint of cinnamon. The layers will sandwich a thick burnt sugar filling: as gooey and sweet as dulce de leche, but fudgy and almost chewy, like praline without the nuts. She’s covering the outside with swirls of a toasted bread buttercream (this she invented by soaking toasted bread in sweetened condensed milk to infuse it, then straining the milk and beating it with butter until airy and smooth).
It’s worth going through the trouble of dreaming up the cake and making it, even though it’ll take several days, because Hadley is the sort of person who appreciates attention to the detail of celebration: She’s the kind of friend who likes ritual and tradition. When they first moved in together, she decided every Tuesday night would be a red wine and boxed macaroni and cheese night, a habit they uphold still unless there is an absolute emergency, like someone paging her to the hospital, in which case she’d lightly say, “Life or death! Literally! Save me wine!” and rush out the door.
Hadley likes handwritten postcards and still keeps a faded red bandana from her summer camp color wars in her closet and insists on decorating the apartment for Christmas down to the candles in the window and the homemade gingerbread house on the foyer table.
Just as she’s mentally calculating how far in advance she can prep the filling and frost the cake, her phone vibrates next to the lemonade. She picks it up. One message from Hadley, which just says “t-minus 3 days!” followed by a series of party emojis: the present, the confetti, a dancing lady, glasses of Champagne. She loves how unabashedly Hadley embraces celebrating her own birthday.
The second message is from him. It says, “Looking forward to the delicious cake (baker)” and she grins. Reaching to respond, she realizes that something lately has shifted: She’s never not thinking of him, somehow. He’s become like background music. Thinking of him is as involuntary as taking a breath or blinking. When she was ten and he was twelve, her brother Whit was in a deeply competitive phase, challenging her to anything he could win: arm wrestling, handstand games, staring contests (his ego was already in need of regular stroking at a disturbingly early age—her parents being overly attentive to what they called Whit’s “moods” which has served him poorly through early adulthood).
During staring contests, her eyes would burn and she’d cave, squeezing them shut until neon stars flashed before her in the darkness. For a few minutes afterwards, she would be oddly aware of the sensation of blinking her eyes: Did she have to tell her body to do it on purpose? Why didn’t she ever notice the action? And then she’d forget and go about her life and blink unconsciously.
Thinking of him is just like that: reflexive yet essential.
Note: This cake is…not simple. It’s not difficult to execute, but it does require a lot of steps! You can do them in any order, but I like to make the cake layers and let them cool while I do the filling and frosting. While the oven is preheating for the cake, it’s a good time to toast the bread that you’ll use later for the frosting.
For the filling, you need to make a burnt sugar syrup first, so I recommend reading through the entire recipe to understand all the steps, then deciding which order to go through them.
Both the filling and frosting can be made ahead, just give them a good beating in the stand mixer to get them fluffy again (bring them to room temperature first).
**If you want even more of a breakfast vibe, add 1 tablespoon of maple syrup to the frosting at the very end.
French Toast Layer Cake
Makes one 9” double layer cake
For the cake layers
169g (3/4 cup) unsalted butter
360g (3 cups) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
297g (1 1/2 cups) granulated sugar
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
227g (1 cup) milk
For the filling
3 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup boiling water + more as needed
56g (1/4 cup) unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk
For the frosting
1 cup roughly torn cubes of bread, prepped in the italicized step below
396g (one 14-ounce can) sweetened condensed milk
282g (1 1/4 cup) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon salt
To make the cake: First, brown the butter by placing the butter into a heavy skillet set over medium heat. Cook, swirling the pan occasionally, until the butter melts then begins to foam. Continue cooking: The foam will subside and the butter will begin to change color. It will start to smell nutty and fragrant and small bits of browned milk solids will appear at the bottom of the pan. Once it starts to change to a deep golden brown, remove it from the heat and carefully pour it into a bowl, setting it aside to cool slightly, then place it in the refrigerator for at least an hour, or until firm.
While the butter chills, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
While the oven preheats, place the torn cubes of bread on a baking sheet. Drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle generously with flaky salt. Toast in the oven until a dark golden brown — watch carefully as it will burn easily! Remove from the oven and set aside to cool for the frosting later.
Line two 9” cake pans with parchment paper and grease the parchment and sides of the pan well.
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Set aside.
In a stand mixer, beat together the chilled brown butter and sugar until pale and creamy.
Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each.
Add the vanilla and half of the milk, then half of the flour mixture, and mix until combine. Add the remaining milk and remaining flour mixture, and mix just until smooth.
Divide the batter evenly between the cake pans and bake for 28 to 35 minutes, starting to check at 28 minutes. The cake is ready when a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.
Remove from the oven and let cool in the pan for about 10 minutes, then flip the cakes out onto a wire rack to finish cooling.
While the cakes cool, make the filling: Place 1 cup of sugar into a heavy-bottomed saucepan set over medium heat. Stir constantly until the sugar start to melt and turn a deep golden color. Turn the heat down to low and slowly pour the boiling water, starting with 1/2 cup.
Cook, stirring occasionally, until the the sugar is completely dissolved and the syrup starts to thicken. Remove from the heat.
Measure out 1/3 cup of the syrup (reserving the rest for something fun like a cocktail) and add it to a large heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add the remaining 2 1/2 cups sugar, butter, baking soda, and salt. Cook until the liquid reaches the soft ball stage (measuring 235 degrees F on a candy thermometer).
Remove from the heat, transfer to a bowl, and let cool fully: I like to speed this up by popping it in the refrigerator for a bit. It should be slightly cooler than room temperature.
Once cool, add the mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer and beat until it starts to lighten a bit in color and look slightly creamy. Set aside.
To make the frosting: Add your toasted cubed bread from above to a medium saucepan and add the sweetened condensed milk. Bring to a simmer, then turn off the heat and let the milk cool to room temperature. Once cool, strain out the bread.
Place the room temperature butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat for at least 5 minutes until fluffy-looking. Slowly stream in the bread-infused condensed milk, beating until the mixture is light and creamy. Beat in the salt. If the frosting looks slightly too loose, add some confectioners’ sugar, a tablespoon at a time, until you reach a properly spreadable consistency.
To assemble the cake: Place one layer of cake on a cake stand or plate or decorating turntable. Pipe a ring of frosting around the edge of the cake, then place about 1/2 cup of the filling in the center and spread it evenly until it reaches the ring of frosting. Add enough filling to make a thick layer (the amount is up to you, I like a lot of filling!), then top with the second layer. Frost the cake with the remaining frosting—it helps to chill the cake in between steps if you find the frosting or filling seem a bit too soft to work with.