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Before we do anything, here's the first lesson in dessert making: don't stint on any of the good stuff. Fill it up with butter, and cream, and sugar, and fruit. All the things we want loads of but really shouldn't have. It should feel decadent."
That's her grandfather talking, of course: "Pudding is an indulgence; it should feel like it," he used to say. She could recall one day, in the kitchen of their house in London, when she was maybe nine or ten, helping her mother frost a birthday cake for one of her sisters (Meg, surely; Julia had given up cake, by that point). Elliott sat on a stool at the kitchen island, watching them, guiding Susan's technique: "Take off just enough of the frosting to give a smooth appearance, but don't scrape it all off. The whole point of cake is the frosting, isn't it? You don't want a bare cake."
"Julia would," Susan commented with a wry smile.
"Julia doesn't appreciate things like this" was Elliott's response.
"Now, now," Susan's mother gently remonstrated with a warning look at her father-in-law.
"Well, I worry about Julia," he said. "If you can't indulge in a little cake now and again, what sort of joy do you have in your life? Can you indulge in anything? And yes, cake is an indulgence. You don't need it, but you want it. It should feel celebratory and just a little delightfully naughty when you have it. It's the same with any dessert.
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