On one particular street stands two 'lody and ciasta' shops side-by-side. Ciasta, as I understand is a generic word for sweet pastries and cakes. So far I have tried a meringue about the size of your palm, split horizontally in two pieces smeared with lightly whipped chocolate mousse, a rolled up biscuit pastry similar to but not the same as cannelloni filled with a sweet blueberry cream cheese and something like a vanilla custard slice however with a lighter, airy cheesecake filling.
Those who know me well understand my weakness for sweet food. I can never, ever understand why someone could say 'oh I forget to eat' or can leave chocolate in the fridge for weeks, months or even hours. In my house, chocolate doesn't keep long enough to make it to the fridge. That's why I had to give it up several months ago, such was my addiction. Throughout the years I have always made room for dessert and I have always finished it. That is, until I met nail polish cake.
Nail polish cake was sitting in the display cabinet at one of my two favourite lody and ciasta shops. I was innocently walking past on the way to catch the bus home. I had successfully ignored the first shop and made it half-way past the second when curiosity got the better of me. I looked in the window not once but twice, doing a double take. "Ooooh, maybe I'll just take a peek inside" I reasoned with myself. It's the old "oh go on just have one" Tim Tam trick. One what? One packet?
I entered the little shop and the bell above the door jingled as I greeted the shopkeeper with a cheery 'dzien dobry' and deposited my dripping umbrella in the umbrella stand. Lined up in the display cabinet were all the usual suspects. Caramel mud cake, strawberry cheesecake, chocolate croissants. Then my eyes rested on karpatka, a pastry full of sweet vanilla cream. Cue "You're the one that I want" by John Travolta and our Olivia on high rotation in my head. Just as quickly though was the voice of reason that convinced me perhaps it was too large to be eating late in the afternoon potentially spoiling any appetite for dinner, so I re-considered my decision, resting my eyes on a ball of chocolate cake dusted with shredded coconut. It seemed substantial enough to satisfy the sweet craving but not so large to put me off dinner.
Exchanging coins and polite smiles I made my way with my new purchase to one of only three tables in the little cafe secretly quite pleased with myself and the sweet goodness I was about to indulge in. Setting my bags down and getting comfortable in my seat, I picked up the fork and broke off a piece of the cake ball. It reminded me of something I used to purchase every weekend at the local bakery owned by a friendly Vietnamese family back home in Corinda, which I used to call "cake on a stick'. Officially cake on a stick didn't have a name. It just sat in the glass cabinet with a $1.50 price tag, but it was a mud cake mixture shaped into a ball a little bit bigger than a golf ball, baked and then sat upside down with a stick jutting out of it. The idea was that you eat the cake similar to how you eat an ice cream, by holding the stick and taking bites.
My first mouthful of Polish cake-on-a-stick-without-the-stick was an overwhelming sense that someone had gone a wee bit overboard with the rum essence. Woah mama. I persisted through a 2nd and third mouthful thinking perhaps I would acquire a taste and come to appreciate cake on a stick mach II. Fourth mouthful and I am trying to distinguish what that taste is. It's not good. It's beyond being rum essence trigger-happy. It tastes like the smell of nail polish and the fifth mouthful confirms it. Nail polish cake. I can't go on with nail polish cake but the shopkeeper is standing behind the counter and she would surely notice if I upped and left half of it behind. I feel that would be insulting, rude even so I stumble through another morsel. A customer enters the shop and then another and I toy with the idea of running. This is my chance to break free. While shopkeeper is distracted with the two newcomers I hurriedly but quietly gather my belongings, picking up my umbrella from the umbrella creche and dash out the door, leaving nail polish cake behind. I don't give it a second glance through the window as I pass by. I just put my head down and make my way to the bus.
In a first world problem kind of way, there is nothing worse than looking forward to a meal only to be left feeling dissatisfied, post consumption. What a disappointment nail polish cake turned out to be. What would its distant cousin, cake on a stick in Corinda think?
Avoiding your first choice because you don't want to spoil your appetite later is sending a message to the universe saying "I don't want to have this good thing right now because later on I might want something else so I'm going to have this ordinary, this not-exactly-what-I-want thing, this second choice, even though the best thing is on offer." If there is no 'later' then nail polish cake is your last meal. Do you want to die knowing that you passed up perfectly good and delicious karpatka for nail polish cake? Foodies everywhere are shaking their heads.
In spite of the negative experience, nail polish cake lived briefly to serve its purpose and to teach a lesson. The lesson is that if you take second choice chances are, you will be disappointed and for that I am glad I crossed paths with this particular patisserie, and, nail polish cake.
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