APPLE CAKE

Surrendering to pleasure became humanity’s eternal sentence on earth.
At the centre of history’s longest case, between an exuberant, feline Eve and a subdued Adam, still recovering from the removal of a rib, lies the humble apple.
It was accused of complicity in the worst wrongdoing of any age since humans first left their footprints on earth.

Yet this emblem of temptation, a culprit with the most innocent appearance, remains a powerful attraction for men and women. Both know that this fruit leads inexorably to the pleasure of sin.
In 1999, the film American Pie was a great success with young audiences. I believe it featured the most talked-about apple pie in cinema history. I was a teenager then, and people discussed that pie for a long time.

The mischievous pie became synonymous with female genitalia, compared chiefly for its texture. Yet I believe the association has much deeper layers, beyond the unconscious of those who created the film series. Warm and inviting, like a young woman opening herself to physical love, apple pie offers, through the simplicity of its ingredients, a satisfaction seeking elements of motherhood, perhaps in an incestuous bond with those who gave us life and nourishment.

Butter carries the scent of mother’s milk, tasted through a sweet apple still supple despite being cooked, recalling our first experience of feeding, suckling at a soft membrane.

I would call this cake both reconciling and comforting: it reconciles us with earlier stages of our lives and comforts us by returning us to our origins.