Aunt Erin's Painted Cake: the power and joy of embodying imagination
Or, learning how to leap into our own Mary-Poppins-chalk-drawings of belonging
Hello readers of The Joy Rise,
I couldn’t wait until next week’s monthly paid newsletter to share something readers have been asking me for since my second novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding was first published in 2022: the recipe for Aunt Erin’s Painted Cake. The number of people that have asked me for the recipe has become countless and leaves me awestruck for two main reasons.
One is how moving it is as an author to experience the longing that stories can cause in us when we want to inhabit stories that we love. When we yearn for the joy and wonder of having something tangible that we can touch, taste, smell, hear or see in our external world that otherwise exists in the inner world we’ve shared with a book we’ve adored.
The other reason is how humbling the gifts of perspective that readers give to writers are - I wasn’t in the slightest expecting Aunt Erin’s Painted Cake to be meaningful to readers. I was undone by the reminder of how connected the way I feel when I’m writing is with how readers feel when they read my books (this, of course, also applies to me as a reader of other people’s books).
More specifically, I’m talking about feeling awed that my compulsion to embody Esther Wilding’s world - her story, and the stories and quirks of the people in her life - later translated to readers. Who, through emails, messages, questions at events and in person at signing lines, have given me the gift of understanding that our yearning to immerse ourselves in stories and ideas that we love and the places they live in our imagination, is universal. Inside all of us is an eternal fascination and longing to experience firsthand what was captured in the iconic Mary Poppins chalk drawings scene. Do you remember it? From Julie Andrews’ Mary Poppins?
Chimney-sweep, Bert, is drawing chalk scenes of different landscapes and places on the footpath while he tells the kids, Jane and Michael Banks, about all of the impossibly magical adventures that Mary Poppins could take them on. Longing for adventures in the worlds Bert has described, Jane and Michael beg Bert to use magic and send them into the lands in his drawings. Bert tries, and, after a number of failed attempts, Mary Poppins enters with flair. Taking Michael's hand, she rhetorically asks Bert, “Why do you always complicate things that are really quite simple?" They line up, clasp each other’s hands, Mary counts them down, and they leap together right into one of Bert’s chalk drawings. In a puff of colourful chalk dust, Jane, Michael, Bert and Mary Poppins find themselves in the animated world of Bert’s chalk drawing, magically and vibrantly colourful, where animals talk and sing, and absolutely anything is possible.
As a kid, like so many others, I was besotted with this scene - it managed to articulate and blend the world of imagination with real life in a way that felt somehow familiar. As if Mary Poppins was saying directly to all of us, the world you imagine is as real as the world you’re walking through - all you have to do is find your way, quite simply, without complicating things, to travel between them. One of the reasons I have loved writing fiction more than anything else for most of my life is, I think, because writing imagined stories is a chalk drawing I can leap into. And leave. And return to.
This has maybe never been more apparent to me than when writing my first novel, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. I wrote the first draft in Manchester, England, half the world away from the Australian landscapes where the novel is set, places that raised and made me. As I wrote, I noticed how insatiable I became for the scent of eucalyptus leaves, and so, bought eucalyptus essential oil that I diffused throughout our house (at levels that may have reached an asphyxiation risk - I’m an all-in kind of gal). Writing about women working on a flower farm, my gardening obsession reached new intensity - our back deck became my plant nursery, and I moved my office to the kitchen table so I was near to the flowers as much as possible. Native Australian flower imagery and symbology began to bloom in my clothing, my jewellery, accessories, stationery, house furnishings, pots, crockery, and, later, through my first tattoo, on my skin (another post altogether).
As I was writing Alice Hart in 2016, my longing to embody my inner world in the outer world wasn’t fully conscious. I realise now that it was a kind of creativity nest-building. To protect and nurture my story. To give myself courage and nourishment to continue to grow my imagined world. And, maybe most of all, to declare to myself that, more than a waste of time or anything else self-doubt or inner criticism would have me believe, tending my imagination, ideas, and allowing myself to create because of the joy it brought me were powerful acts of belonging and transformation.
When it came time to write my second novel from 2020-2022, through the pandemic, I had all the forces upon me again, magnified by what we were all living through: fear, self-doubt, anxiety, inner critic, procrastination, imposter syndrome, and more... But. I also had knowledge I didn’t have when I was writing Alice Hart: I’d written a novel. I didn’t feel like I knew how I wrote Alice. I just knew that I did. Mostly by following instinct. A huge part of which was nest-building. So I clung to these facts that my inner critic couldn’t dispute, and hung on to them, white-knuckled, as I went in to the process of writing Esther. As her world formed and grew in my inner world, I threw myself into embodying it in the outer world. Her Mary Poppins chalk drawings were scenes from Lutruwita/Tasmania, Copenhagen and the Faroe Islands, and they were full of folklore, stars, art, oceans, seals, swans, grief, joy, multiple banging playlists, 80s icons, kanalaritja (shell necklaces)… and… Aunt Erin’s Painted Cake. I let myself jump in to those chalk drawings both feet first.
Some context: Erin is Esther’s beloved aunt. Their first main scene together follows a couple of difficult days in their family when they share time and slices of Erin’s Painted Cake together.
After a year living away on the west coast, nothing about Erin’s weatherboard cottage overlooking the bay seemed different to Esther except that it had become home to more stories: books, artworks, cabinets of curiosities – bones, shells, dried kelp, raw gemstones. While Freya was revered as a trailblazing tattooist on the island, her sister, Erin, was an academic, specialising in women’s roles in myths, folklore and fairytales. She freelanced for the university in Nipaluna, Hobart, and was sought after for her lectures and workshops in women’s storytelling. She was the first person Aura had told about her intention to move to Denmark and study in Copenhagen. Esther settled herself at the kitchen counter. Erin picked a handful of mint leaves from the plant on her windowsill and boiled the kettle to make tea. The air was thick and smelled of honey, spices … and sex.
‘Are we’ – Esther looked around the tiny studio – ‘alone?’ Raised an eyebrow at her aunt.
Erin bit on her smile as she sliced two thick wedges of warm painted cake and slid them onto vintage saucers with scoops of honey ice cream. Pushed one saucer across the counter in Esther’s direction with a silver fork. Esther appraised the dessert with a low whistle of admiration. Thick icing oozed down the side of the golden cake, which was decorated with rose petals, crushed pistachio and pieces of candied ginger. As with most things in Erin’s life, her dabbling in baking revolved around old stories; she’d discovered painted cake after reading a seventeenth-century Italian fairytale about a lost bridegroom and the woman who conjured him back to her by baking a cake in his likeness. Since she was a teenager, Esther had known Erin to bake painted cake to conjure love.
‘So?’ Esther asked, grinning around her first mouthful. The flavours of cardamom, almond, rose and ginger melted on her tongue. She was lightheaded with relief to be away from her parents. From that threat-laden work phone call. The addition of the honey ice cream made her eyes roll back in her head in pleasure. ‘I’ll say it again.’ Esther sectioned another wedge of cake with her fork. ‘So?’
Erin chuckled, leaning against the counter, legs crossed neatly, eating her cake and ice cream. Her face remained deadpan as the bedroom door opened behind her. A familiar face emerged. Frankie, a local fisherman Esther doubted she’d ever heard say more than a handful of words at once, smiled sheepishly at her. Walked to Erin, kissed her cheek and whispered something in her ear.
Esther sat agape.
‘Your painted cake conjured Frankie?’ she screeched after he closed the front door behind him.
‘Don’t ever underestimate the shy ones.’ Erin sighed, blissful as she lifted her fork, laden with cake, to her lips. ‘Or the magic of an old fairytale recipe.’
Esther snorted. ‘I don’t mean to be a naysayer, but it might just be about more than your cake.’ She pointed her fork at her aunt: her mess of curls, beguiling tattoos that started at her fingertips and wound up her arms, silver jewellery and the bright sharpness of her pale eyes. ‘I can tell you right now, if I baked a cake from a fairytale recipe to conjure a lover, I’d get’ – Esther paused, her stomach tightened, thinking of her work mates in Calliope – ‘fish dregs.’
‘Ha,’ Erin retorted. ‘Many great stories begin with fish dregs.’ She licked her fork clean and put her empty saucer in the sink. ‘Besides, when did you forget, my eastern star, that the whole point is never the cake, it’s the power of the ritual.’
The framework of Erin’s character, her ways of being, and her specific ritual of baking painted cake to conjure love, all stemmed from a tiny paragraph I read during my research for Esther Wilding. An excerpt from Marina Warner’s power-packed little book, Once Upon A Time, A Short History of Fairy Tale. This is the paragraph in its entirety.
[…] in Basile’s sparkling ‘Pinto Smalto’ (Painted Bread), Betta tells her father that if he is so keen she should marry, he must give her a fabulous corredo (trousseau) —jewels, gold, silks, etc. But she also stipulates flour, sugar, and rosewater. She then bakes a cake in the shape of a gorgeous young man, who comes to life. The story continues through various misadventures but ends gloriously.
From five lines of text, my fascination combusted. I knew enough about my physical response to reading this paragraph to know that the sparks going off in my mind and the butterflies in my stomach were worth paying attention to. A woman who makes her own desires for her life come to fruition fuelled the heart of Esther’s story. How a seventeenth century fairy tale had found me hundreds of years later and could have such an effect on me went straight into shaping Esther’s relationships with stories. And, what in the holy name of all things baked and delicious, I wondered, was in Betta’s Painted Bread?! Marina Warner had told me, flour, sugar and rosewater… and so to Google I went. I searched recipe after recipe until I found a recipe that looked… just right. Like a fairy tale in itself.
I knew Betta’s Painted Bread would become Erin’s Painted Cake and ritual for love, which, in the beginning, Esther rolls her eyes at. But later, on an island at the top of the world, when love and joy are within Esther’s reach, she finds herself hunting for rosewater and a cake tin…
To uphold my no spoilers policy, I’m just going to leave this here for anyone who’s read The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding and remembers the cake scene in chapter 37, which was one of my favourite chapters (things of all time?) to write.
It has been such a joy for the last two years to see readers doing their own Google searches and making their own version of Painted Cakes. My heart has exploded every single time anyone has baked and shared their creations online and tagged me in them. Like these:
I think my favourite email that we’ve received from a reader was from a Teacher/Librarian and Head of Curriculum Department at a Queensland State School. To protect her privacy, let’s call her Susan. Susan wrote:
I am a big fan of both of Holly’s books having just finished “The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding”. I am also a passionate cook and after much googling and frustration, I cannot find a recipe that matches the “painted cake” description. I would really love it if Holly would include it on her website or somewhere.
The thought of causing a Librarian ANY frustration could honestly keep me up at night. So, dearest Susan, this one’s especially for you.
BROMA BAKERY’s recipe that inspired Aunt Erin’s Painted Cake
Or, download a PDF recipe below:
Writing this post, I keep thinking about Mary Poppins and her rhetorical question to Bert after he failed to leap into his chalk drawings. Why do you always complicate things that are really quite simple? Immersing ourselves in our imaginations is quite simple, but, in my experience, so rarely does it feel that way as an adult. Countless things complicate it: fear, self-doubt, inner critic, procrastination, outer critics, creative block, imposter syndrome… to name a few.
In one of the last chapters in my most recent book, and first non-fiction, The House That Joy Built, I wrote about imposter syndrome and how, when I’m writing, my remedy to feeling like an imposter at my own desk, in my own imagination, is to remind myself that we all belong in the land of our creativity. We all belong in our own chalk drawings. Which Mary Poppins knew. One of the most effective ways that I’ve found to remind myself that I belong in and to my creativity is by giving myself permission to embody the inner world of my imagination. However feels right, however brings me the most joy. Whether it’s so many potted flowers that the deck creaks, or asphyxiation-risk levels of essential oils, or tattoos, or native flowers, or a cake recipe, or a playlist… making our inner worlds tangible in the outer world is how we can tell ourselves and our creativity, YOU BELONG HERE. Quite simply. Without complication. Which is how I hope you also feel in this Joy Rise community.
With a light left on,
PS Thanks so much for reading. This is a free post for all subscribers to read. My monthly paid newsletter is coming next week and is a special one. It includes my reunion with the Brontë sisters, walking the moors in their footsteps, and my response to a reader’s question about creativity vanishing from her that really hit home. If you’d like to become a paid subscriber, please click the subscription button below. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you so much. Whichever subscription you have, I’m really grateful for your support of my work.
Such an incredibly generous share about your process. I loved reading this so much and have taken notes Xx
And you have a She-Ra: Princess of Power journal tucked away in one of the pics. You just went up a notch. Next, you’ll tell me you also have a JEM & The Holograms one as well….