Dedicated to Helene
Gabriel Jeroschewitz, April 17th, 2026, from his new cookbook, Cooking at the Rue Morgue Edgar Allan Poe
The Edgar Allan Poe Show, number two, episode three, Lick the bowl, and we’ll see.
The first thing I heard when I opened the church basement door was, “Nobody panic, the frosting can smell fear.”
That was enough for me to know I was in the right place.
It was a Thursday evening in late November, one of those dark-at-five kind of nights, and I was carrying two bags of powdered sugar into the church basement because somehow, at sixty-three years old, I had become part of the women who made the funeral cakes.
Not officially. Not on paper. Just by living long enough in one congregation to get folded into the practical mercy work.
Also, because we had recently acquired Edgar Allan Poe.
I set down the sugar on the folding table and surveyed the scene.
The basement was warm and bright and full of women, yes, but at the center stood a man in a black silk cravat and a puffy-sleeved linen shirt, wearing an apron that read “Quoth the Raven: Lick the Bowl.” He was holding a whisk like a dagger and staring into a bowl of buttercream with the intensity of a man who had just spotted the ghost of his beloved, long since dead, standing behind the coffee urn. “Edgar,” said Miss Janice, adjusting her Christmas apron over her sensible cardigan. “Stop glaring at the butter. It’s not going to materialize into your tragic lost Lenore.”
“The frosting knows, Janice,” Edgar intoned, his voice dropping to a subterranean register that seemed to make the fluorescent lights flicker. “It senses the abyss. It tastes of mortality. It requires three drops of vanilla extract and a prayer to the void.”
I had been warned, of course. When Janice called me three months ago and said, “We need another steady hand and someone who can open the vanilla without starting a family argument,” she had neglected to mention that the vanilla was guarded by a nineteenth-century gothic poet who believed that “the emulsification of eggs represents the binding of the soul to the flesh.”
“We’re making the Yum Yum,” Ruth announced, looking up from a tray of cooling sheet cakes. Ruth was seventy, loved her grandchildren, and had developed a tolerance for Poe that bordered on the saintly. “Margaret, you’re just in time. Edgar’s been waiting to demonstrate the piping technique.”
“The Yum Yum,” I repeated carefully.
Edgar whirled on me, his eyes gleaming with a manic, whimsical light. “Ah! The neophyte! The virgin to the vault of culinary terror! Gather close, and I shall reveal the confection that has haunted my dreams since 1849.”
He strode—not walked, strode—to the far table, where something sat under a glass bell jar like a Victorian curio. He lifted the dome with a flourish that nearly clipped Ruth in the ear.
There, on a pedestal of obsidian-colored fondant, sat the Yum Yum.
It was… a lot.
Imagine, if you will, a trifle dish shaped like a miniature glass coffin. Inside, layers of what appeared to be dark chocolate soil alternated with a crimson coulis that glistened like arterial spray. Upon the top, marzipan ravens perched atop a meringue bone structure that spelled out, in cursive sugar, the words REQUIEM FOR A CRUMB. Most arresting was the centrepiece: a cake pop sculpted into the likeness of a human heart, impaled by a tiny fondant pendulum that actually swung, powered by a discreet clockwork mechanism that made a soft thunk-thunk-thunk against the sponge.
“It breathes,” Edgar whispered. “It breathes, and it waits.”
“It’s gluten-free,” Janice added, stirring her coffee. “We used almond flour. Edgar’s sensitive to wheat. Says it reminds him of the dust of the grave.”
I stared at the Yum Yum. “Is it… for the Henderson funeral?”
“It is,” Janice said. “Mrs. Henderson called specifically. Said her husband loved Edgar’s stories, and could we possibly make something ‘on theme.’”
“I suggested a simple sheet cake with yellow roses,” Ruth said, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “But Edgar insisted that Mr. Henderson would appreciate the ‘aesthetic of encroaching doom.’”
“And,” Edgar added, producing a piping bag filled with icing so black it seemed to absorb light, “the Yum Yum is not merely a dessert. It is a meditation—a sweet, delicious memento mori. When the widow cuts the heart, the pendulum ceases. The raven shall ne’ermore peck at the meringue ulna.”
He began to pipe borders around the sheet cakes, humming The Tell-Tale Heart to himself in 4/4 time.
The thing about being sixty-three is that you stop questioning certain anomalies. If the church basement contained a time-displaced American literary figure with a flair for patisserie, well, the coffee was strong, the company was good, and nobody had to make small talk about politics because we were all too busy ensuring Edgar didn’t try to brûlée his own finger as an “offering to the flame lords.”
“Alright,” Janice said, consulting her clipboard. “The Hendersons are expecting us at noon tomorrow. Margaret, you’re on flower duty. Ruth, you’re guarding the coffee from Edgar—he keeps trying to add Amontillado sherry to it for ‘atmosphere.’ And Edgar, darling, please stop trying to make the frosting weep. It’s unsettling the Methodist Women’s Circle.”
Edgar paused, his spatula dripping with crimson ganache. “But Madame Janice, the tears of buttercream are the only honest tears in this vale of sorrow.”
“Use the royal icing,” Janice said firmly. “The stable one. No weeping.”
We worked in companionable chaos. I piped pale pink roses while Edgar constructed a garnish of spun sugar that he called “The Web of Despair,” though it looked to me like a particularly aggressive cotton candy. Ruth and Janice talked about whose grandbaby was walking and which grocery store had eggs on sale, occasionally pausing to redirect Edgar when he began to monologue about the “hideous heart” of the double boiler.
At one point, Edgar approached my station with a small plate. “You,” he said, “have the hands of a woman who has known loss.”
“I—thank you?”
“Try this,” he commanded.
It was a miniature version of the Yum Yum, bite-sized. The heart was a cherry. The coffin was a chocolate cupcake. The raven was a sprinkle.
I ate it.
Reader, it was transcendental. It was like biting into a cloud that had gone to a very elegant war. The dark chocolate was so rich it tasted like midnight, the cherry center was bright and tart, and there was something—perhaps the almond extract, perhaps actual magic—that made me want to weep and laugh simultaneously.
“Good?” Edgar asked, his eyes suddenly vulnerable behind the drama.
“It tastes like… the softness,” I said, borrowing Janice’s phrase from my orientation week. “But with more ravens.”
Edgar nodded solemnly. “The softness, yes. Even in the tomb, there must be cake. Otherwise, why do we mourn at all, if not to eventually require dessert?”
The next day, we delivered the funeral cakes. There was the standard vanilla sheet cake for the children (decorated by Ruth, lovely, no trauma). There were the lemon bars (Janice’s specialty, sunshine in square form). And there, under a reverent cloth, rode the Yum Yum.
Mrs. Henderson lifted the cloth. She looked at the coffin dish. She looked at the swinging pendulum. She looked at Edgar, who was standing by the punch bowl, wearing a black armband and a look of profound sympathy.
Then she laughed.
It started as a giggle, then became a belly laugh, then became the cathartic, gasping joy that lives on the other side of grief. “He would have hated this!” she cried, delighted. “He would have absolutely loved hating this! Oh, the ridiculous, gloomy thing! Thank you. Thank you for not making me eat another ambiguous Jell-O salad.”
Edgar bowed, his dark hair flopping over his forehead. “Madam, I exist but to serve the terrible beauty of existence.”
Driving home, Janice turned to me in the passenger seat of her Buick. “You did well today, Margaret. You didn’t even flinch when he brought out the marzipan gravestones.”
“The Yum Yum was good,” I admitted.
“The Yum Yum is always good,” she said. “That’s the secret. It looks like your worst nightmare, but it tastes like your best dream. That’s what we do here. We make a softer landing. Sometimes with buttercream, sometimes with ravens.”
Back in the basement the following Thursday, I stood with my offset spatula, watching Edgar try to convince Ruth that the oven timer ticking was actually “the beating of the hideous timer, tell-tale and terrible.”
I smiled and opened a new bag of powdered sugar.
“Alright,” I said to the room. “Let’s make it nice.”
And somewhere, in the space between the vanilla and the void, the frosting settled, calm and unafraid
