Pumpkin Sweets

By Allion Elizabeth

Ingredients for Pumpkin Cake

• Flour

Flour with an “our” and not “ower.” During the fall all of the gardens begin to lose their “ower.” And your once comforting place to visit becomes a graveyard—even after Halloween. The “ower” will come again. Just not now. No matter how much you want them to be here now. But they will come again. I promise.

• Baking Powder

Baking powder is made of chemicals. Not the bad ones. Nothing bioengineered as far as I can Google. Sometimes chemicals are good. Those are the ones they tell you about. Like acidic salt and bicarbonate base. Sometimes there are bad chemicals. When you call to find out what they are, they will tell you the chemicals are present, but can’t say anything further. As far as you and I know, all ingredients in this cake are able to be named. Unless you took liberties in the recipe and added nerds candy. Then there’s no telling what’s in here. 

• Baking Soda

All of the sunburns from the summer by now have faded. If you are lucky. The sleeves on your shirts are long, and your skirts touch the ground. Your socks go up to the knees, and your hats are used for warmth instead of protection from the sun. The baking soda baths are over now. You can finally use that bathbomb you forgot about. You can relax. 

• Salt 

There were so many Halloween parties I wanted to go to. So many thanks I forgot to send. I truly wanted to go to all of them. Genuinely. I love people. Each calendar notification of a party in my absence was more salt in the wound of my inability to be everywhere. It is nice, however, to know that when someone could be anywhere, but can’t be everywhere, she chooses to be with you.

• Ground Cinnamon

There’s a line in NCT Dream’s Smoothie that I grapple with daily. “Strawberry, Sweet Cinnamon.” I just don’t understand it. First of all, cinnamon is not sweet. Notoriously, people combine cinnamon with SUGAR to get the sweet flavor. ‘Sweet’ is not a logical adjective to put in front of ‘cinnamon’. Second, are people really putting cinnamon in their smoothies? Is that good? I don’t have any frozen fruit so I can’t make it and try it myself, but also, at a smoothie shop, you are not going to be able to request cinnamon as an ingredient. At least to my knowledge. And if you could, I think that it would either 1. Be a pretty hidden flavor or 2. Be so potent it makes the smoothie taste bad. Like you would have to add a lot of cinnamon to be able to taste it, would you not? If I were writing the song I would change the word ‘cinnamon’ to ‘banana.’ Because that makes sense. A strawberry banana smoothie is something you could get in the store or make at home. Now that’s something the audience can relate to. SM, hire me!

• Pumpkin Pie Spice

This ingredient makes me sort of mad. Because this is cheating. There are so many spices that make up ‘pumpkin pie spice’. I’d like it if all of them were acknowledged. The allspice, the ginger, the nutmeg, the cloves. Ground cinnamon is in it too. I don’t know why it gets its own listing in the ingredients. Is it cuter than the others? Is it because of the cinnamon challenge? Because I did that challenge, and it was not fun. It made my nose burn, and my taste buds shrink. Is Big Cinnamon trying to push an agenda? It already has such a pronounced flavor, why does it need to be by itself while a much better flavor, ginger, has to be lumped in with absolutely everything else. It’s a farce! Pumpkin Pie Spice is made up by someone who didn’t want to run the full length of the turkey trot and cuts through the middle of the course to get the medal and donut first. Hey buddy! That donut is going to taste like LIES! You did not go over the hills. You did not run with one shoe lace untied to make sure you beat your PR. You did not even see the people dressed up like turkeys at mile 2.3. YOU are a COWARD who wants to wear a MEDAL to show off to the Starbucks barista who ALSO is AMAZED that the store is OPEN TODAY! She wants to be at HOME with her FAMILY eating PUMPKIN CAKE with ALL of the spices individually measured and mixed because her grandmother made it with LOVE. Something that your medal of lies can never accomplish.

• Vegetable oil

I wonder if you could get a nice tan from covering yourself in vegetable oil and sitting in the sun. Too bad it’s fall. And too bad that idea is stupid.

• Eggs

Yunjin from Le Sserafim got backlash for reading Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami while getting her hair done. People hate pretty women reading stories about mothers and daughters and adoption. Not me. I love it. It’s what I want the whole world to be like. If you haven’t read it yet, take this as your sign to. Help me build the change I want to see in the world. 

• Dark Brown Sugar

Is potatoes and molasses really something people eat? Or did they make it up for that song? I would eat sugar and molasses as long as it was combined with flour and baking powder and baking soda and vegetable oil and eggs and pumpkin spice mix and cinnamon and white sugar and pumpkin puree and vanilla extract. Not sure about potatoes, though.

• White Sugar

Roses are red. Violets are blue. I wish I could write you a love song, but the strings hurt my finger and they never sound in tune. I am trying to fix this. One day I’ll be able to serenade the sweet sweet sugar that is you.

• Pumpkin Puree

I didn’t get to carve pumpkins this year. I pretended to in a play that I was in. If that counts. I don’t think it does. I believe that is called acting.

• Vanilla Extract

One time I was making chocolate chip cookies with my sister and she told me the vanilla extract would taste as sweet as it smelled and poured some in a glass for me to have. She was lying. 

Assembly 

You should mix all of these together. Let your heart tell you how much of each and for how long. At some point you’ll want to put it in the oven. If you breathe deeply enough you should be able to figure it out. Maybe journal about how you want it to be. Then the answer will come. Or so I’ve heard.