I’ve written elsewhere about my aversion to large fruit. But bigness in food isn’t always bad. The scale of food is an under–considered topic, except in discussions of portion size which somehow trend towards comparing cooked meat to a stack of playing cards. Certainly the heaping piles of largely processed calories served up at most restaurants is large-scale food gone wrong. But when my mother returned from a bus trip in Switzerland with two gifts for me, a cuckoo clock and a ½ kilo Swiss chocolate bar, I can tell you which one delighted my ten-year-old self.

Likewise, I was recently at the Hannaford while we were in Maine and found a bag of giant marshmallows, Campfire Giant Roasters to be specific. Certain confections are more fun when they’re big (though I might have to draw the line at a six-foot donut). I imagined a fist-sized marshmallow weighing down my s’mores stick, its size relative to me making me feel, however hokey it might be, like a kid again. But I didn’t buy them. We already had a bag of perfectly good standard-issue marshmallows at home. Adults have far too much impulse control.

But I did make this tower of a cake from Stonewall Kitchen. And it was so much better than I expected. Because the thing about out-sized sweets is that they often appeal more to the eyes than to the taste buds. Which is sometimes fine, like that flavorless but fantastical face-sized rainbow lollipop your parents got you just that once. The one you licked about a dozen times before leaving it blithely on the kitchen counter where it would later be pried off with a dirty dinner knife, leaving a sizable scar that remains to this day (sorry dad). Despite the fact that even a thin slice of this cake resembles a door wedge, it is delicious. It’s not overly sweet and the mortar holding this construction together, the creamy filling, is light and rich at the same time.

I followed the recipe exactly except for the bit about measuring out ¾ cups of the whipped cream. I just used all the cream I’d whipped and dolloped in a bit of sour cream for good measure. I also used store-brand jam, though Stonewall products are generally terrific. The cake looks best served immediately but it did taste great the next day, even after a five hour ride (on ice) to Boston. And it could easily be tweaked for our peach season here in the south by subbing in peach jam and peaches for the filling.

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