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Most of the time, when you find advice on cutting a layer cake horizontally to increase the number of layers, you’ll be told that you need a long serrated knife. And, it is always good to have one around. However, I’ve found that it is really hard to get a nice even slice through the cake that way.

Maybe its because I use too many strokes with the knife. The Food Network says that the fewer strokes you use, the smoother your layers will be. And suggests using toothpicks to help guide your cutting.

However, I found a bit of advice that has worked like a charm and doesn’t require an elaborate set up of toothpicks. All you do is get some dental floss — yep, I said dental floss — and use it to slice through the cake.

Usually, I’ll create a guideline with a knife, maybe even start the cutting a bit in a few places. Then I’ll cut off a piece of dental floss that is long enough to wrap around the edge of the cake layer and a bit more to hold on to. I wrap the floss around the cake, making sure it fits nicely into the guide grooves I created, cross the ends and slowly pull it through. It’s kind of like you’re tying a knot and pulling it tight. This pulls the dental floss through the cake, cutting it into two layers.

Then all you have to do is separate the layers so you can add the filling. But that’s another post.

Abuela was the consummate cook, the perfect grandmother from a Norman Rockwell painting. My early holiday memories are filled with the smells and tastes that came from her kitchen. Pumpkin pies, homemade pizza, enchiladas and a score of Christmas cookies. I especially remember the delicate, flaky donut-shaped roscos — cookies made chiefly from three ingredients: white wine, melted butter and flour. A teaspoon of anise seeds cooked in the melting butter and then discarded, as well as a final dusting of cinnamon sugar after the cookies baked, were the only other flavorings.

One year, I ate so many, sneaking out of my bed at night to grab just a few more, that I earned the nickname “bottomless stomach.” I remember countless nights sitting at her kitchen table sharing holiday thoughts, a cup of tea with sugar and real cream and a couple of roscos before bed. Each flaky morsel, dunked into the tea and quickly removed, melted in my mouth like snowflakes in a California valley.

Today, whenever I take out the cookie sheets or baking pans and create my own warm smells of home, I can’t help but feel like I’m channeling Abuela’s spirit.

NOTE: This short essay was first published in the October 2004 edition of The Nature of Writing News, an online newsletter.

Movies and food: a topic I think everyone can expound on. For some, a movie just isn’t a movie without the popcorn. For others, it’s a box of Goobers and a large Coke. For me, it’s going to the ice cream parlor after the show.

For some reason I’ve always associated ice cream with the movies. After exiting a movie theater, I feel compelled to migrate to the nearest ice cream shop to indulge in a two-scoop sundae. Maybe it’s because there was an ice cream shop near every movie theater in my hometown.

I remember, every time my parents took my sister and me to the movies, we would go for ice cream afterwards. I was partial to Jamocha Almond Fudge and Chocolate ice cream, slavered in hot fudge and adorned with whipped cream, chopped almonds and a maraschino cherry. And, if we were lucky, a tasty, flaky cookie would jut out of the side of the whipped cream dollop on top, hinting at the cone we were missing out on.

When I was growing up, the after-movie jaunt to the ice cream parlor was as much a part of the movie-going experience as the family-sized bucket of hot buttered popcorn. It was such an unconscious, intertwined part of the whole affair that when I went to the movies for the first time with someone outside of my family, I was shocked to discover that other people did not feel the same way!

However, the lure of discussing the intricacies of film over a tall glass of ice cream made many a convert to my family’s tradition.

Nowadays I don’t go to the theater — I wait for movies to come out on DVD and watch them on my surround sound system. This way I don’t have to deal with gum at the bottom of my shoes, people discussing the movie while it’s playing or the rising costs of movie tickets.

But the tradition lives on. When my husband and I sit down to a movie, we pop a bag of popcorn in the microwave. And, after the movie is complete, we go to the freezer, take out a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s and dish about the intricacies of the film at our dining table.

For some reason, food pops up in a lot of my fiction

• I wrote this one for a CoffeeBeanShop.com competition on “Love and Coffee”:

  “Aroma of Coffee“