FIFTY
ENRICO FERRARA
The idea sounded great in theory.
Clara wanted a lemon cake.
Valentina had gone out and hadn’t come back yet.
The chef was off for the day.
And I thought to myself,How hard can it be to mix a few ingredients and put them in the oven?
The answer, I learned in less than twenty minutes, was simple:
All of it.
“Tio Enrico, the flour flew again!” Clara announced, laughing uncontrollably, her cheeks completely dusted white, like a tiny soldier in a culinary battlefield.
“It wasn’t just the flour,” I muttered, laughing too as I tried—futilely—to clean the sink, the counter, the floor… failing miserably at every attempt. “The whole bag went airborne.”
The batter was far too sticky, definitely because of the excessive lemon zest Clara had insisted on adding. And maybe—just maybe—because I had set the oven to the wrong temperature.
But… Clara was laughing.
Really laughing.
And I couldn’t stop laughing with her.
The kitchen had turned into the perfect disaster movie set: bowls and spoons scattered across the floor, flour coating absolutely everything—including my hair—and smoke.
A lot of smoke.
The oven hissed like it was protesting. The timer beeped relentlessly. The batter overflowed from the pan, dripping slowly, as if it were alive.
“Do you think we can eat that?” Clara asked, pointing cautiously at the thing growing inside the oven.
I took a quick look and made a face.
“Definitely not. But if anyone asks, we lie.”
She burst into laughter, the sound echoing through the wrecked kitchen like the best kind of music.
In that moment—amid the smell of burnt lemon and crystallized sugar spread across the floor—I finally understood whatmaking memoriesreally meant.
And maybe—just maybe—I was getting something right for the first time.
That was exactly when we heard the front door open.
Seconds stretched endlessly until Valentina appeared at the kitchen doorway, as if she had been struck by a scene too absurd to immediately comprehend.
She froze.
Her eyes swept slowly across the kitchen, as though she were witnessing a culinary crime scene.
“My God,” she said, more stunned than angry.
Clara, of course, found that even funnier.
