The Odyssey (or, Three Cakes of Gigantic Proportions)

Making cake is difficult. It doesn't look difficult, and even when you break it down into it's component parts, it almost doesn't seem difficult. But trust me--it is. Then add to the already difficult state of difficultness the fact that you don't have a vehicle (other than your own legs) and you're working completely alone. The level of difficulty is suddenly compounded by a factor of seven.

I always thought cake was easy. I figured that was why so many people went into the cake business instead of, say, French or Viennese pastry, which is notorious for being finicky and temperamental. Cake itself is simple: butter, flour, eggs, sugar, and flavour. Mix it together, stick it in the oven, and it's done. Swiss Meringue Buttercream, fairly strait forward: egg whites, sugar, heat and beat then add butter--it takes some practice and maybe somebody walks in and things you're actually a sailor with Tourette's, but once you get the hang of it, it's a walk in the park. You could even say that after finding your groove with sugar paste flowers and decoration that too becomes something you could do in your sleep.

However, what you don't take into account is the timing, organization and planning that is critical to making cake without feeling the need too cry in a corner and pull out your own hair. This I learned the hard way.

It seemed innocent enough: Lemon Cake for 70 people. No rolled fondant coating. No fancy pipe work. No tiers. Simply, three Lemon Cakes iced with Lemon-Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream, each decorated with a spray of pink sugar paste roses and rose buds. Simplicity was the key.

Except for it wasn't. Without a vehicle, daily trips to the grocery store and back hauling my own weight in butter, sugar and eggs became a grueling task that I quickly grew to hate. Once home, I'd unload the bags from my aching arms, change into my purple short shorts, prepare my mise en place and get to work. Turns out that to make two 4 layer cakes that are eight inches in diameter and one 4 layer cake that's 14 inches in diameter takes two days, five pounds of butter 2 pounds of sugar and 4 dozen eggs. And those are just the easy numbers! Blood, sweat and tears baby. Because in the middle of the summer, baking cakes without air conditoning can be very hot. Sweaty. Kinda gross.

It's hard to plan for excessive heat, just like it's hard to plan for a burnt cake. You've got to work with what you've got and if you can't do that then... well then you've got to make another trip to that god awful grocery store. On foot.

And a word to the wise, don't think you're doing yourself a favor by buying that extra pound of butter at the Seven-11 around the corner instead of walking to the 12 blocks to Safeway. Seven-11 unsalted butter is $8.46/lb. Couple pounds of that and your net profit is definitely screwed.

In the end I can complain about all the little things that went wrong with these cakes. The buttercream that I had to triple; the cakeboards that I lost; the finger that I ripped open; and even the two pounds of desperate Seven-11 unsalted butter that cost me $16.92 (plus tax!); the fact that I made enough cake to feed about 200 people and still have some left over. But in the end, I'm so proud of how these cakes turned out--exactly the way I wanted them.

I think they tasted pretty good too.

Under the Sea Carrot Cake

When I was little my favorite movie beyond any doubt was The Little Mermaid. The only Disney Princess with red hair who spent most of her time swimming and dreaming. Even now, if I stumble upon The Little Mermaid on TV it's very likely that I will sit and watch it to the end no matter which part I came in at.

That all being said, Ariel was not my inspiration behind this cake. It was a bouquet of flowers with some fuzzy sea-foam green fronds that I tried to mold out of gumpaste that ended up looking nothing like fronds and everything like wavy coral. That combined with daisies that looked like lotus flowers and these bizarre "fantasy flowers" that look like they belong on Finding Nemo made me change the whole direction of this cake from "bright and elegant" to "under the sea flowery-coral-reef-thing". I think it works for me though.


Interesting fact about the marbled blue fondant: I MADE IT FROM SCRATCH!

I think that fondant is one of those things where you go into it a naive little girl and come out a man. Or maybe not a man... just less of a naive little girl. After an hour strait of kneading and twisting and manipulating that impossibly solid dough, my arms were screaming for mercy and I had beads of sweat rolling down my back (gross, I know, but you asked!), BUT the fondant was delicious. There was no trace of that weird chemical taste that lurks around store bought fondant, just a (very) sweet vanilla with a hint of almond.

Underneath the gumpaste flowers and fronds/coral, the fondant coating, the pink ribbon (that, I will admit, needs a bit of work), and the sparkling shimmer dust that I sprinkled liberally over the whole cake because what’s a cake without sparkles, was the best carrot cake I have ever had layered with the strangest whipped buttercream I have ever made. The cake came from a new book all about organic baking, and while not all the ingredients I used were organic, I will say that this cake exceeded all expectations and made me want to try more organic ingredients in the future. But I think that in itself will be a post for the future. In the meantime I will leave you with this: Making fondant is labour intensive, but definitely worth it; everything in life comes right back to Disney (or at least that’s what I tell myself); and organic carrot cake is seriously ballin’.