British people have lots of wild traditions.
One of those traditions is to preserve slices of cakes that were served at royal weddings. Not as in, "Let's wrap this up to take home and enjoy tomorrow." More like, "Let's put this in a sealed container so that someday far into the future, people not even born yet will be able to look upon this cake and consider the wonders of our empire."
The article in this link takes a deep dive into the tradition of preserving royal wedding cakes, a tradition that goes back to 1840. People with gentle constitutions may find some of the cake images upsetting.
Pivot to 2013, the year I launched this website. It was originally built around the 1983 Chicago White Sox cookbook, and I set out to make every recipe and post the results here.
"La Russa Gastronomique" was the perfect mashup name for this blog, and the perfect recipe to start off with was the one from Tony La Russa.
The recipe that he submitted for the cookbook was for Tropical Delight Cake, a fruitcake with a decadent cream frosting. Here's the photo of the finished cake in 2013.
After posting the write-up and photo, I remembered British tradition and on a whim, stowed a slice of this cake in the freezer. That was in April, 2013. I never imagined that eight years later, La Russa would return to manage the White Sox once again. I also never imagined that after eight years, the cake would still be sitting in my freezer, but it was.
To mark the stunning return of this blog's namesake, what more appropriate time to thaw that slice and see what eight years in a cryochamber had done to it.
Would it have held up in stasis? Would it immediately break down and liquefy like Poe's Valdemar? Would I dare put some eight-year-old cake in my mouth? The photographic recap follows.
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