the cakes they are a-changin’.

i was studying the jewelcase at zumbo when counterboy said, casually, “all the cakes are going.” i guess i’d known this for a couple of weeks, having heard it from the pastryman himself one afternoon — that he’d been working on the new spring menu — but being suddenly confronted with the news that i would not see these familiar cakes again before the week was through, it was a little too much to bear.

my immediate thoughts were, “i shall finally have to try the wheelie good” and “i shall finally have to try the houdini”. but this is the quandary i face every time i go in anyway; it’s just, now there was a deadline. “take the wheelie good,” counterboy said helpfully, “houdini will still be here on the weekend.”

the first question that you might ask yourself is, how does this cake stand up by itself? followed by, how do i eat this? and i can tell you that the entire white-chocolate-coated affair is held securely in place, on its little golden platform, with a dollop of said chocolate. i sliced through its middle — a belt of roughly chopped pistachios and macadamias — and ate it one half at a time.

when i first arrived in australia, in the very late 80s, my favourite after-school, petrol station-snacks were polly waffles and wagon wheels. it was the marshmallow that done it; marshmallows don’t do so well in the moist tropics, and this glut of biscuit-coated marshmallow was all a bit wonderful and new for a marshmallow-deprived immigrant.

but the wheelie good surpasses all fond memories of chocolate-covered jam-marshmallow-biscuit sandwich. sure, the engineering is the same, but the wagon wheel biscuits were never as crisp on the outside, chewy and light in the middle as this pistachio dacquoise. i may never again eat a marshmallow-and-jam confection, but i would not say no to more of this lemon-infused mascarpone creme, with its hidden chunks of stewed apples and apricots.

it looks like a hamster wheel, does it not, this cake?

here’s another story: remember back in february, when i returned from a trip to singapore with a pair of running shoes and an ipod shuffle? the shuffle held one song for months — “take on me” — and then some podcasts, and then i added “punk farm” for the kid… and the shoes were still pristine in their box, until last friday.

yes, i, who do not run, often not even for buses, ran. because, alas, the cake-eating business is a flabby old business. i ran for ten minutes, on a treadmill, and it was awful. and then four days later, i ran again. the second time, i’d finally put together a playlist on my ipod, called, “run run run”. it consists solely of up-tempo you am i and ratcat tunes, and it made a galaxy of difference. pounding along to “flagfall $1.80“, i didn’t even feel the pain so bad.

if you want to see the winter cakes at zumbo, you might have to run too.