Usually I make a black cake or two toward the end of the year. Is black cake something that you now make yourself? My aunt and other people who knew my mother, who also made this cake, always said, “Oh, your mother’s is the best.” My mother also made wedding cakes: It’s that particular role of the black cake that is more prominent in the novel Black Cake it’s more associated with the idea of wedding pageantry. But black cake comes from the color obviously it’s very dark. My mother called it plum pudding, and depending upon where you live in the Caribbean, you might call it just Christmas cake. Without a doubt, I would not have imagined this story if I hadn’t been born to a woman who made a legendary black cake. She made it in a pudding form, meaning she steamed it and it was very moist. My mother, who was born and raised in Jamaica in the West Indies, always had a few cakes going for that period. Is this something you ate growing up, especially around this time of year?Ĭharmaine Wilkerson: I associate black cake with Christmas and my mother who’s no longer with us. With the fruits for her Christmas cakes having been soaked in rum all year - she showed me the jar over Zoom - Wilkerson sat down to talk about black cake, its role during the holidays, and how food gives insight into family history.Įater: I’d love to hear a little bit more about your history with black cake. “Even though this is a fictional story - not autobiographical, wildly inventive - the emotions and ideas of transferring culture and stories through food, that’s a real thing.” This is a novel, it’s multigenerational, and I can see a great deal of symbolism tied to this cake,” Wilkerson says. When black cake worked its way into one of these stories, it became clear that the dessert could weave together her different threads and characters. “You’ll know when.” From here, Charmaine Wilkerson’s continent- and generation-spanning story, the paperback edition of which hit shelves on November 29, unfolds as a family’s secrets finally come to light.Ī former journalist, Wilkerson’s debut novel came together as she scribbled short stories outside her nonfiction work. “I want you to sit down and share the cake together when the time is right,” Eleanor’s note reads. In the novel Black Cake, when Eleanor Bennett dies, her two adult children inherit a note, a USB drive holding an audio recording, and in the freezer, one of her classic black cakes - that rum-soaked Caribbean dessert that can take months to make and is often served at the holidays and other celebrations.
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