Princess Cake for Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE Magazine (2026)
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
After a week of hosting and another of travel, the ladies and I head to the supermarket to fill the fridge.
These days, grocery shopping makes me feel scummy. Avocados are $4 each and the $8 strawberries spoil within days, but I can buy both if I want to. Having enough—and the guilt of knowing I have enough, spills over into the aisle and joins F where she dances with the vegetation and sprints toward $6 yogurt pouches. I want to yell yes so she delights and no so she understands her own luck, her own privilege—and I want to yell both at the same time—but instead, I walk over to the tomatoes.
It’s only June, but the tomatoes already resemble candy, like giant caramel apples waiting for us to bob up and down and when I raise one to my nose, it reeks of summer. I put several in the shopping cart and move onto the arugula, and afterwards, when I’m already in the cheese aisle, I turn around and go back for more.
We finish our shopping and the ladies help me check out. N scans a peach and I think of the children; she scans a bunch of bananas and I think of the guns; she scans the tomatoes and I think of the scorching heat; she scans an entire chocolate cake and I think of who gets away with what, and why.
When we get home, both ladies help carry the groceries inside though each child could easily fold and fit inside the brown paper bags themselves. I unpack the items; I put them away. Later, when the house is finally quiet, I slice a shockingly red tomato and sprinkle it with salt. I count the forgotten seeds and with each bite, I see how it is sweet and bruised on the inside, too.
TUESDAY
Earlier this year, I worked on an assignment for Kitchen Table, and I’m so excited to finally be able to share it!
The printed illustration in Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE (2026)
I was immediately excited when Editor-in-Chief Brett Warnock reached out to me to illustrate Princess Cake: A Fairytale, written by Carla Crujido, about the origins of the Swedish princess cake (originally known as grön tårta or green cake, and later renamed prinsesstårta, or princess cake).
I had a few ideas for how to illustrate this story, which follows a princess on her journey to discover the origins of princess cake and learn more about the trio of princesses for whom it was originally created.
The one I liked most (Idea C) was inspired by a very old Ovaltine or Bournvita label I’d seen when I was a child. In it, a gorilla holds a Bournvita bottle boasting a label of a gorilla holding a Bournvita bottle, and the pattern continues until the bottle and label and gorilla all become so tiny you can’t see them any longer. I liked the endless loop, the idea of generational continuity—how something that is beloved during its time will, eventually, be loved once again.
I handed in 3 concepts:
Concept sketches for Princess Cake / Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE (2026)
Both Brett and AD Katrina were supportive of Idea C, but worried the details would become too minute at our half-page scale. After trying to sketch it out more clearly, I realized they were right. They leaned instead towards Idea A, where a layered princess cake features each of the original princesses engaged in their craft at their Husmodersskola, or Housewives’ School, where the cake was born.
With Katrina’s encouragement, my illustration evolved into a contemporary retelling of the original princess story, where global women are shown excelling at their chosen crafts (literature, archery, and the culinary arts) despite the expectations, constraints, and boundaries of their societies.
The printed illustration in Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE (2026)
My final illustration for Princess Cake: A Fairy Tale for Issue 08 of KITCHEN TABLE (2026)
Issue 08: The Baked Issue of KITCHEN TABLE
You can read all about the original princess cake—and see my take on it in print— in the latest issue of KITCHEN TABLE magazine. Many thanks to editor Brett Warnock for the assignment, and AD Katrina Clasen for her patience and gentle direction.
WEDNESDAY
I’m listening to A Wonder is What It is, Nick Offerman’s audio series dedicated to poet Wendell Berry, in conjunction with NPR host Alison Stewart.
I’m also listening to Us Against You, book #2 in the Beartown series by Fredrik Bachman, and so far, I love it even more than the first.
THURSDAY
“…That which is muscular does not mean that it is always strong. It means it has strength, but it doesn’t mean that it is always strong, right? And there will be moments where I will have to take a beat, and I’m going to be sad, and I’m going to feel hopeless, and I deserve the opportunity to feel that, knowing that there are people around me, strategically put there, people who love me, who will carry me on until I can catch my breath and continue on with a hopeful life, right?
That feels more human to me than the idea that I’m supposed to just be a beacon of hope all the time. I don’t have it in me. I’d like to believe I do, but I’m a person and life is hard; beyond politics, life is hard, right? And I think that’s where I am, and I deserve that amount of grace, the grace I give these kids as they learn to live as … as they learn to be human, as they learn to be whole, as they grow into adults, as they learn, as they activate their egos, as they learn humility, all the things that we need them to be in order for us to continue on with the world in which we live in a better version of it. I also deserve the same amount of grace. I deserve to give myself the same amount of grace in the moments in which I need it.”
—from Jason Reynolds’ conversation with Krista Tippett on hopelessness, the virtue of stamina, and showing grace to ourselves
FRIDAY
Two snails were going to the funeral of a dead leaf.
Their shells were shrouded in black,
and they had wrapped crepe around their horns.
They set out in the evening,
one glorious autumn evening.
Alas, when they arrived
it was already spring.
The leaves who once were dead
had all sprung to life again.
The two snails were very disappointed.
But then the sun, the sun said to them,
“Take the time to sit awhile.
Take a glass of beer
if your heart tells you to.
Take, if you like, the bus to Paris.
It leaves this evening.
You’ll see the sights.
But don’t use up your time with mourning.
I tell you, it darkens the white of your eye
and makes you ugly.
Stories of coffins aren’t very pretty.
Take back your colours,
the colours of life.”
Then all the animals,
the trees and the plants
began to sing at the tops of their lungs.
It was the true and living song,
the song of summer.
And they all began to drink
and to clink their glasses.
It was a glorious evening,
a glorious summer evening,
and the two snails went back home.
They were moved,
and very happy.
They had had a lot to drink
and they staggered a little bit,
but the moon in the sky watched over them.
—Song of the Snails on Their Way to a Funeral by Jacques Prévert
(thank you to Wendi for sending this poem to me!)
Of all the things you can put in front of your eyes, I’m grateful that my little letter is one of them.
If you’d like to support me, please buy my books. My art prints and line of greeting cards make excellent gifts for yourself or a friend. You can also hire me for your next project—I’d love to work together.
xx,
M
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