Angel Food Ice Cream Cake

Hana Park-Chen was born on Monday, January 15, 2024, at 3:47 AM at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle. 7 pounds, 4 ounces. 19 inches. Black hair. My eyes. James's chin. Ten fingers, ten toes, one very loud cry that filled the room and broke the world open and put it back together in a different shape — a better shape, a shape that has a daughter in it.

I am going to tell you everything because that is what I do, that is what this blog is, that is who I am — a woman who tells her story through food and love and the particular details that make a life real. So here are the details:

The labor started Sunday night at 11 PM. Contractions, irregular, building. James drove me to Swedish at 2 AM. He drove very carefully. He drove the way you drive when you are transporting a person who is transporting a person. I held the dashboard. I breathed. I did not scream. I wanted to scream. I breathed instead. The breathing was Dr. Yoon's fault — five years of therapy have made me a person who breathes instead of screams, and in this case, the breathing was useful.

At 3:17 AM, Dr. Hernandez said, "It's time to push." I pushed. James was beside me. He held my hand. He did not speak. He was the steadiest thing in the room. At 3:47 AM, Hana arrived. She was placed on my chest. She was warm and wet and screaming and alive and she looked at me — or she looked in my direction, because newborns can only see eight to twelve inches, as James would remind me later — and I thought: there you are. There you are, Hana. I have been waiting for you. All of us have been waiting for you.

James cut the cord. He cried. I cried. Hana cried. The three of us were in a hospital room at 4 AM, crying in three-part harmony, a family that had been two people an hour ago and was now three, and the math of it — the simple addition of one small person — had changed everything, permanently, irreversibly, forever.

I FaceTimed Jisoo from the hospital at 6 AM my time, 11 PM her time. She answered immediately. She had been awake, waiting. I held the phone so she could see Hana. Jisoo looked at her granddaughter for the first time. She put her hand over her mouth. She said nothing for a long time. Then she said, "She looks like you when you were born." I said, "You remember?" She said, "I remember everything. I held you for ten minutes. You had black hair. You had my eyes. You looked at me the way she is looking at you now." She said, "Hana. My Hana." She was crying. I was crying. Hana was sleeping. Three generations on a screen — a grandmother in Busan, a mother in Seattle, a baby who was one hour old and already connected to a woman eleven thousand miles away by blood and name and the thread that was cut thirty years ago and is now, with the birth of this child, rewoven.

David and Karen came to the hospital at 9 AM. Karen held Hana with both hands — shaking hands, as she had promised. She held the baby against her chest and said, "Hello, Hana. I'm your halmeoni Karen." She used the Korean word. She had learned the Korean word. She had practiced it. Karen Park, seventy years old, white woman from Bellevue, said "halmeoni" to her Korean-Taiwanese-American granddaughter, and the word was perfect in her mouth, and I knew that Karen had been practicing it for weeks, for months, maybe since the moment she learned there would be a baby, and the practice was love, and the love was a Korean word spoken by an American grandmother, and it was the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.

The recipe this week is nothing. There is no recipe this week. There is only Hana. There is only the smell of her head and the weight of her in my arms and the sound of her first cry and the look on James's face and the way the light came through the hospital window at dawn and everything was gold. Everything is gold. Everything will always be gold from this moment forward. Hana is here. She is here, and she is mine, and she is ours, and she is the recipe — the whole recipe — the recipe I have been cooking toward for eight years, the recipe that started in a Capitol Hill condo with scrambled eggs and loneliness and ends here, in a hospital room, with a baby and a family and a name chosen by a grandmother in Busan. Hana. One. The first. The only. Mine.

I said there was no recipe this week, and I meant it — Hana is the recipe, Hana is everything. But a few days later, home from the hospital, James sleeping in the recliner with her on his chest and the January light coming soft through the blinds, I found myself wanting something impossibly light, something that tasted like air and sweetness and the particular kind of joy that has no edges. Angel food ice cream cake felt right in a way I couldn’t explain and didn’t try to. It’s the cake you make when ordinary celebration isn’t enough, when the word “angel” is right there in the name and you have a reason, finally, to mean it.

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes (plus freezing) | Total Time: 4 hours 20 minutes | Servings: 12

Ingredients

1 store-bought or homemade angel food cake (about 10 inches)
1.5 quarts vanilla bean ice cream, slightly softened
1 cup heavy whipping cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup fresh strawberries, sliced
1/2 cup fresh blueberries
2 tablespoons seedless strawberry jam, warmed
Pinch of salt

Instructions

Prepare the cake. Using a long serrated knife, slice the angel food cake horizontally into three even layers. Set aside on a clean work surface.
Line the pan. Line a 10-inch tube pan or a 9-inch springform pan with plastic wrap, leaving several inches of overhang on all sides. This will help you lift the finished cake out cleanly.
Layer the ice cream. Place the bottom cake layer in the prepared pan. Spread half of the softened vanilla ice cream in an even layer over the cake. Place the middle cake layer on top and press gently. Spread the remaining ice cream over that layer. Top with the final cake layer, pressing lightly to adhere.
Freeze. Fold the plastic wrap over the top of the cake and freeze for at least 4 hours, or overnight, until completely firm.
Make the whipped cream. When ready to serve, combine the heavy whipping cream, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and pinch of salt in a chilled bowl. Beat with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium-high until stiff peaks form, about 3—4 minutes.
Unmold and frost. Remove the cake from the freezer and unwrap. Invert onto a serving plate and peel away the plastic wrap. Working quickly, spread or pipe the whipped cream over the top and sides of the cake.
Add the fruit. Toss the sliced strawberries and blueberries with the warmed jam until lightly glazed. Arrange the fruit over the top of the cake.
Serve immediately. Slice with a sharp knife dipped in warm water for clean cuts. Serve right away, or return to the freezer for up to 30 minutes before serving.

Nutrition (per serving)

Angel Food Ice Cream Cake — For the Day Everything Became Gold