June is always about strawberries and honeysuckle-scented breezes, about long children's giggles, garden tea parties and wrinkled folds of dresses. Pastels…lots of pastels and water lily wings crossing the azure sky.
This is how every summer begins, with my month. June always seemed to me a continuous celebration: it began playfully with the 1st, continued with the first warm and long evenings under the light of the moon and stars, with the arrival from Paris of my uncle loaded with miniature princesses and ballerinas (they were splendid -of all!), infinite francophone stories that I fell irreversibly in love with and much, much chocolate with Alpine flavors.
14 was circled with pink and hearts in my calendar, because it was Bunu's day, begged summer after summer to run the butterflies from the garden and give them to me, only for a minute later I would heroically release them back into the air, to his dismay. Next came the flower crowns and the long-awaited vacation, hugs long enough for a summer and then the final check of one's own wishlist . It was forever so long, bushy and scribbled, written and rewritten, carefully prioritized, so that on June 18 all the wishes of the year ahead would come true!
Everything that remained unwritten was blown into the air far away, among the clouds, along with the candles on the cake. Ahh, the cake! We have a lasting affair, him and I ... it's a vanilla wonder, always in perfectly syrupy layers, relentlessly squishing deliciously bright red strawberries, because mom works some kind of magic year after year. It's the cake that never ends, over which the whole family rushes, and from whose firmaments we learned that those with whom you share moments, stories, smiles, intersections and memories are important, regardless of time or space.
Magic can be created anywhere and has little to do with elixirs and predestined numbers, signs and spells. And sometimes it is so unexpected that you have to hold it tight and fill yourself with every hundredth of it!
Also in June I remember seeing the first shooting star... I was little and the smell of cyclamen peonies was around. I think the wish didn't catch the tail of the comet, because it didn't come true, but I proposed to relaunch it into the Universe on a coin thrown into the Trevi Fountain, on my first visit to Rome. It was summer and when I fell in love for the first time, or when I thought I would come up with a sweet soufflé recipe. Both rose too little, or I opened the oven door too quickly...
It is certain that in the meantime I grew up. But I'm still looking for stray rainbows in the corner of the sky, I'm still enjoying the first summer rain and I'm dusting my nose with peony pollen until I sneeze, I'm going barefoot on the already patched hammock and I'm stabbing myself in the fresh blades of grass. The strawberry cake is still the birthday tradition, prepared impeccably by my mother, but the vanilla cream comes out now too! And it includes everything from fragrant strawberries, to nights lost under the stars, among fragrant queens and noisy crickets, from fresh dew and the first butterflies in the stomach, to everything beautiful to feel and share.
For a bit of summer magic, voila la Cremè Chantilly : quickly prepared from ½ l of boiling milk and infused for a few minutes with a stick of vanilla; while in a bowl 4 egg yolks are combined foamy with 125 g of powdered sugar. The infused milk is then gradually poured over the sweetened egg yolks. The complete mixture is reheated over low heat, stirring frequently until the cream thickens. But it doesn't have to boil. After 10 minutes, the vanilla wonder is almost ready! You can put it in bowls, glasses, test it with your finger, taste it from the spatula or spread it between layers of fluffy top.
But sprinkle it with strawberries, lots of strawberries... because it's June!
About Simona: Artist by soul, drawer and writer by passion, says Simona about herself. He believes in that "serendipity" he talks about above, in stellar meetings between people, colors and words. Cook some macaroons and cannelés plucked from Paradise and e amoureuse de toutes choses belles et de la vie parisienne. It barely combines multiple languages in every conversation, but that was already obvious, right?