Eighth Day Cake

“And on the Seventh Day God ended His Work which He had Made; and He Rested on the Seventh Day from all His Work which He had Made.”

And on the eighth day, jackalopes will tell you, He Ate Cake.

Which brings us to the honored-but-not-too-revered Jackalopian tradition of eighth day cake. Or Eighth Day Cake, but the only time you need to remember the capitalizations is when you are referring to the celebration of Eighth Day, which is not by accident the eighth day in the Procession of Entropy, which began on October 15. Which is why today I am posting two portrait masks of a tea cake demalion named Oskar. Yost created these images for “The Tale of the Twenty Minute Dare”, a story that was not published in 1992 during the first run of Geranium Lake Properties, but was printed in one of the special supplements following Yost’s disappearance near Auckland, New Zealand, in 1999 .

Oskar is one of the Nahtummivylad (singular is Nahtummon), a type of demalion commonly known as a cake eater or torte eater, which is also what jackalopes call a self-indulgent person who aspires to lead a life of idleness and comfort. A life of idleness and comfort is a Jackalopian ideal, one of the strategies in the uttama mahdollinen ishbokarl*, a somewhat informal collection of different ways a person might live a good life. If a jackalope calls you a Nahtummon, you should believe that they do so with admiration and affection. It is a heartfelt compliment, although slightly impolite if it comes from a stranger.

If you do not have cake available this October 22nd (I am aware that this post is a short notice) please do not fret, any eighth day can be used for a cake eating celebration: the eighth day of Lent, the eighth of June, the twenty-fourth of March, the day after seven days of sticking to your diet, all these are good days for treating yourself to a slice, or several slices, of cake. My occasional tradition for an eighth day is to embark on a journey to the bakery section of my local supermarket. There I might forage through the offerings on the day-old, half-priced rack, hoping to find a suitable cake or cake-like dessert. I feel that cheap and lazy is the way to do it on an eighth day. However, there is nothing in the eighth day tradition that requires you to do as I do. You might feel that it is sufficiently self-indulgent to make your own cake, and in the spirit of enthusiastically endorsing the creation of more cake in this world, I have some suggestions.

Max Miller is the creator and host of the YouTube channel Tasting History, and during years of watching the show, I have noticed that he is a person who enjoys eating his cake. I have been following him since the early days of the pandemic, and it has been a real pleasure to watch him grow and succeed with his passion for history, food and historical food. Here is a link to a recent episode about Vienna’s iconic chocolate cake, the sachertorte:

My absolutely favorite cocoa (a fairly recent favorite, my previous absolutely favorite cocoa was Cacao Barry’s Extra Brute) is deZaan’s Crimson Red. I use it to make my once-a-day mocha coffee, a not-so-much-coffee as it is a very-much-mocha. Or should that be a muy-mucho-mocha? I think this red pumpkin cake with black frosting is just what we need for Halloween.

deZaan Crimson Red Cake with Carbon Black Frosting

*the best possible possibilities

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