the cake life

Cake News

2009-04-22T08:34:00.009-04:00

My first book, Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt, was published by Simon & Schuster on April 14th, 2009. Now that the book is baked, I don't maintain this blog; however, I'll post links to book-related events and articles here.

For more current essays and information, visit my blog. For photography and links to published works, please visit my website, lesliefmiller.com.

Here's my current calendar. Look for interviews to air on WYPR's "Maryland Morning," NPR's "A Chef's Table," and WICN's "Inquiry." Silver Chair Books and Eye on Books have also done podcasts. Look for more links soon!

Author is unabashedly smitten with cake" in the Deseret News

Cake on "Daybreak"

B More Sweet likes me!

Mark Scarbrough calls me "The Aquinas of Cake" at Real Food Has Curves

"Woman is consumed by a passion for cakes" in the Baltimore Sun

Shelf Awareness

Diana Page Jordon's review

Cake: 1,000,000; Pie, 10

2007-12-20T13:55:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'm exaggerating—a little. But there is no contest in the contest between cake and pie.

The other day, while I was doing some chores, a soap opera just happened to be on. In the scene from One Life to Live, a boy sat at the counter of a Paris, Texas, diner, preparing to judge a pie-making competition between the diner's owner and a waitress. She spoke in her southern drawl, claiming to be from Texarkana and having legitimate southern piemaking roots. And the diner owner, as they are wont to do, threatened to fire her. He told the boy to be completely honest.

At this point, I stopped folding laundry and looked up to see the face of this innocent kid, who said, and I think I have it exact, "I'm sorry. But I just don't like pie. I like cake."

I whooped and hollered. I yelled, "Atta boy!" I raised my fist to the sky.

Now if only I could count on soap opera children to read my book.

that time of year again

2007-12-02T16:48:00.000-05:00

See the Operation Fruitcake web site here.

(And don't ask me what I was doing at the Bill Me Later web site.)

Powder v. Soda

2007-11-19T15:47:00.001-05:00

I saw a Land o' Lakes baking magazine at Costco today, and I thought I'd pick it up to see if there were any useful recipes or tips. I found one about pie pans (use glass) and one about cookie sheets (use shiny).

But I also learned the difference between baking powder and baking soda. I knew the powder had other ingredients—cream of tartar and cornstarch—but I didn't know when a recipe would call for one over the other.

Use baking soda in anything with sour ingredients. So if the recipe calls for sour cream, vinegar, or buttermilk, use baking soda.

Good thing I'd chosen, by instinct only, to subtitle my book: "A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Vanilla, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt." Soda would not have worked.

Cake Love

2007-11-19T15:43:00.000-05:00

Here's an excerpt from Let Me Eat Cake. I added the last two paragraphs today after thinking about it in the woods with my daughter on our morning walk.

At the party that night, my fluffy white creation shares a table with the $85 Patisserie cake, a large, flat, beige display with fancy brown writing and a few large, elegant white chocolate flowers. Inside is a delicate and creamy cake that’s not overly flavorful, but it shows up the cake I bought from Charm City Cakes in October, in both flavor and price (mine was bland and $190). But long before the cakes are cut, almost all of the forty guests approach me to say they cannot wait to get a piece of the cake they’ve heard so much about. And when they finally do, I am a powerful cake goddess. Men kiss my hand. Women kneel at my feet. Some weep with delight; others sit alone, moaning with pleasure. (One woman later begs my sister to have me make the cake for her fortieth in a few weeks.) Moments later, the party winds down, as every party does once the cake is cut and eaten, and the sugar buzz has dipped to a sleepy hum. And we all depart, slowly, the memory of Martha Stewart’s coconut teatime cake, as recreated by Leslie, the newly crowned cake queen, forever etched on our tongues, a benchmark for all cakes, past, present, and future.

Is this how Martha Stewart feels? Or is she so used to her greatness that she accepts accolades as she breathes air—as something so second nature that she doesn’t think about it, yet, if it were gone, she would surely die?

I think instead that the cake queens among us—and the bakers and chefs, the painters, photographers, writers—make these things because it’s our way of both giving and receiving love. To stand by a cake table and hear people you know and don’t know saying “oh—my—god” after their first bite of your white chocolate caramel cheesecake with milk chocolate ganache and almonds is to be loved, albeit in a kinky, lusty way. To have your offerings on the Thanksgiving dessert table disappear first and quickly is to be embraced wholly, despite what you might have said to Aunt Betty at the last Thanksgiving. Artists—whether they practice in the studio or the kitchen—want to make this exchange: their poetry for your love, their painting for your love, their triple-layer coconut teatime cake for your love.

Here Come the Brides

2007-11-11T18:01:00.000-05:00

The best thing about selling a book about cake to Simon & Schuster (read the news here) is that it's like getting a license to investigate all the oddball cake toppers, like this one—really a wine bottle stopper—found in a shop in Rehoboth, Delaware, an Eastern Shore beach town known primarily for its Nic-o-bolis (a trademarked stromboli) and homosexuals (neither trademarked nor strombolis).

Even though it was $20, I couldn't resist the two brides. I think they look a little like me.

Omigod-ish

2007-11-06T10:15:00.001-05:00

I called this cake Decadent when I posted the recipe in October of 2005. So what must it be now? Oh-My-God-ish?

Once you have the basics of cheesecake—and those would be four bricks of cream cheese, five eggs, and about a cup of sugar—you can pretty much make what you like. Add some jarred butterscotch topping, chocolate chips, jimmies. It's not too expensive to experiment.

I've made coconut, eggnog (killer), pumpkin-chocolate swirl, fruit, chocolate-orange, and dark chocolate, and I've made many of them without sugar. They are the easiest to doctor for the diabetic. (To adapt the following recipe, omit the crust or make it entirely with almond meal instead of cookies. Replace the all the sugar with 1/2 granular Splenda, 1/2 xylitol, available at health food stores. Use sugar-free candy, which you can find online or in some grocery stores.)

This cheesecake is the result of a dollar-store mistake—a bag of caramels bought to make candy apples the day before I decided to diet, which was the day before I decided I would make this cheesecake and couldn't be on a diet anyway. You follow, right? You're on a diet too. Tomorrow.

Here's what you'll need.

White Chocolate and Caramel Cream Cheese Pie (with Chocolate Ganache)

Crust

14 shortbread cookies OR chocolate wafers OR chocolate graham crackers
1/2 C almond meal or 1/4 C ground almonds
5 T melted butter
1 T sugar

Filling

4 bricks cream cheese (Philly ONLY, and I use 1/3 less fat; I'm delusional), at room temperature
5 eggs
3/4 C to 1 C sugar
1 T vanilla
small bag of caramels
1/2 bag white chocolate chips
2 T heavy whipping cream

Ganache

1/2 bag dark or milk chocolate chips
9 T heavy cream

Optional

sliced almonds
raspberry (or other) preserves
butterscotch
whatevah!

Equipment

10" springform pan
large pizza pan (for bain-marie)
heavy duty foil
double boilers

Instructions

1.) Preheat your oven to 350°. Spray the springform pan with PAM (c'mon, it's really the only non-stick cooking spray, isn't it?). Mix all the crust ingredients in a food processor, and press into the bottom of the pan, going up the sides ever so slightly just to cover that seam. Bake the crust for about ten minutes, then reduce your oven temperature to 325°.

2. Fill a pan larger than the springform about 2/3 with hot water, and place it in the oven. Wrap the springform pan in several layers of heavy-duty foil, making sure not to put a fold or a seam anywhere below the top rim of the pan; you don't want any water to seep between the foil and the pan, or it will destroy your dessert!

3. Beat the cream cheese until it's smooth.

4. Melt the caramels (after you unwrap each of the suckers, and after the hand cramps are manageable) with 2 T of whipping cream in a medium bowl in the microwave (follow instructions on the package).

5. Melt the white chocolate chips in a double boiler.

6. Add the eggs, one at a time, to the cream cheese, mixing until smooth.

7. Add the sugar, and mix thoroughly.

8. Add the vanilla.

9. Mix about half of the cream cheese in the double boiler with the melted chocolate, and mix well.

10. Pour the melted caramel in the other half of the cream cheese, and mix well.

11. Pour the white chocolate mixture over the crust, and then pour the caramel over the white chocolate mixture. Swirl it. (This involves putting in a knife or fork and swirling it around. It won't matter, though, because you're going to cover this baby with ganache. Still, the pretty swirl that comes out is like wearing lingerie. Sometimes only you have to know.)

12. Put the pan inside the pan of water in the oven, and bake for over an hour, maybe closer to two. Check it in forty minutes, then again in an hour, if the batter was still liquid.

13. When your cheesecake is finished, you will know; the edges will have rounded and pulled away, but the center will still wiggle a little. Don't cook it too long; you don't want it to be dry and crack.

14. When the cheesecake has cooled, run a knife inside the pan, and unhook it. You will need two plates to turn the cake over; one to turn it over so that you can lift off the bottom of the springform pan, and your serving plate, so you can flip it back.

15. Melt chocolate chips and cream in a heavy saucepan. Pour it over the cheesecake, and smooth with an offset spatula. Chill.

16. If you'd like, spread more of the chocolate—or use butterscotch or caramel or even preserves!—on the sides, and press sliced almonds all the way around.

This cheesecake, like all cheesecakes, tastes best after 24 hours. I don't know why.

And could we call this what it really is: cream cheese pie? It's a crust and a filling. It's not cake.

bain-marie

2007-11-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

Why is a bain-marie so important in cheesecake baking? Recipes without flour or corn starch (and, let's face it, you don't want to interrupt the cheese-y smoothness with powdery thickeners, though it might make the pie closer to cake) tend to crack, and it's easier to overcook a cheesecake (another cause of cracking) when you don't use a water bath.

Below are last week's white chocolate cheesecake and the other night's white chocolate caramel cheesecake. Guess which one took advantage of the bain-marie.

Bobblead!

2007-10-25T19:38:00.000-04:00

Today, DecoPac recalled 80,000 bobble head football cake decorations because of lead paint violations.

I know I often feel like a box of lead after I've eaten half a sheet cake at a child's birthday party. This explains why.

The press release says that only the figurines with the green bases have been affected by the recall. It's a good thing. I can't imagine pairing one of those gorgeous purple Baltimore Ravens uniform with a green base!

Maybe that look works for the Patriots.

Let Them Let Me Eat Cake!

2007-10-02T09:39:00.000-04:00

Baking a cake takes no time at all. And eating it—that's like inhaling. But writing about it sucks up the weeks and months, and next thing you know, it's more than a year since the cake blog has been given some sugar.

My sugar came yesterday in the form of an agent for my book, which I like to call Let Me Eat Cake: A Celebration of Flour, Sugar, Butter, Eggs, Baking Powder, and a Pinch of Salt (and some vanilla! how did I forget vanilla?).

Jumping up and down every few minutes takes a lot out of you, but I figure the more I jump, the more cake I get to eat. And there's a pan of Aunt Margaret's chocolate cake on the counter in the kitchen right now.

There will be cake in my future.

2006-08-16T19:41:00.000-04:00

Stay tuned, cake lovers. Much to come, including a brand new cake for my girlfriend's fortieth and a woman who wrote a play in which the lead converses with a gateau—a chocolate one.

Chez Schaefer?

2006-07-06T13:20:00.000-04:00

In yet another derogatory remark directed at professional women, Comptroller Willie Donny said that he wouldn't debate his opponent, Janet S. Owens, "on how to bake a chocolate cake."

It's a good thing, because he'd lose that one, too.

Schaefer's comment is not only an insult to Owens, a smart cookie, indeed, but it's a blow to cake bakers everywhere.

Step aside, old man. We're tired of your stale attitude, your bitter rhetoric, and your sour puss. Time for sweet things to take over the world.

(Truth is: I'd vote for the chocolate cake over either candidate, but that says more about me than it does about them.)

Just Wrong

2006-05-05T08:33:00.000-04:00

cakes

Witty Re-Torte

2006-04-11T19:32:00.000-04:00

This recipe was adapted from an old Martha Stewart Passover favorite. Several things were wrong with the original, including hazelnuts. (Blech!) The problem with MS recipes is that several steps are incorporated under the same numeral. For instance, the original recipe has about four steps, which misleads you into believing this is an easy recipe. It's not, but what is harder is sifting through the many varied tasks in each. My rewritten way is much easier.

You do not have to celebrate Passover to make this cake. It's perfect for people trying to cut back on flour and sugar, great for diabetics, and lovely for anyone. If you want to make it with the real processed sugar and flour, go right ahead.

Fudge Glaze
(Makes 1 3/4 cups)

1.5 C whole blanched almonds
1 C Splenda
1 C Xylitol (or E)
2/3 C cocoa powder
Seeds of 1 vanilla bean
1 stick butter
Pinch of salt

1.) Blend almonds and 1.5 C water till fine.
2.) Strain almond milk with fine sieve. Reserve the nut mixture.
3.) Whisk 1 C sweetener (1/2 of each) together with cocoa powder; set aside.
4.) Put 1 C almond milk in a saucepan with the vanilla seeds, the butter, the other C sweeteners, and the salt; bring to a full boil.
5.) Whisk in cocoa mixture, and return to full boil.
6.) Remove from heat, cool 30 minutes, store in airtight container, and refrigerate.

(That is the best fudge glaze you will ever make! Use it as frosting or filling for just about anything.)

Chocolate Torte

1.75 C almond meal
3/4 C butter
3/4 C cocoa powder, plus more for pan
1/3 cup matzo cake meal (or your substitute)
6 large eggs, separated
1/2 C Splenda/Xylitol
1 t molasses
pinch of salt
1 C nut puree (from Fudge Glaze)
1/2 C Splenda/Xylitol processed superfine

1.) Preheat oven to 350°.
2.) Grease a 9-inch round cake pan with butter; dust with cocoa powder.
3.) Whisk together cocoa powder, almond meal, and matzo cake meal; set aside.
4.) Beat yolks, 1/2 C sweetener, and molasses on medium-high speed until mixture holds a ribbonlike trail for 3 seconds when you raise the whisk.
5.) Transfer to a large bowl, and fold in 1 C nut puree from Fudge Glaze.
6.) Clean mixer and whisk.
7.) Beat egg whites and salt on medium-high until soft peaks form.
8.) Add superfine sweeteners, beating till stiff and glossy.
9.) Fold egg whites and cocoa/almond meal/cake meal into the large bowl with the yolk mixture.
10.) Stir in melted butter.
11.) Pour into prepared pan; smooth top with an offset spatula.
12.) Bake until a wooden skewer inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes; cool on wire rack.
13.) Invert pan, and remove cake; slice into two layers with serrated knife.
15.) Fill cake with half cup (or whatever!) fudge glaze.
16.) Cover top and sides with rest of glaze.
17.) Refrigerate 30 minutes.
18.) Cover sides with chopped almonds; decorate the top with chopped or whole almonds.
19.) Keep refrigerated till ready to serve.

To all the members of my tribe, I wish you the happiest of Passovers. And remember the true meaning of this, and every other holiday, They tried to kill us, we won, let's eat.

The Sounds of Cake

2006-04-08T07:25:00.000-04:00

If you have nothing to do on a rainy morning or lots of things to try and avoid doing on a rainy morning, do this. Why? I don't exactly know.

Thanks to astute reader David Beaudouin for turning me on to some real cake fun—and keeping me from things I ought to be doing.

Lost

2006-03-17T11:18:00.000-05:00

Oh, friends, you know me better. A daily visit to The People's Court and an occasional foray into American Idol (and secret untold, unwitnessed by most people, visits to soap operas) are my only glimpses of shlock TV.

I'm speaking of myself. I am lost.

Yesterday, my hard drive crashed, leaving me without manuscripts, without pictures, without anything, including the two e-mails from famous authors and nine pages of already-daunting craft paper about the writing of the cake manuscript.

I have nothing left except for a real daughter, a real husband, and two real dogs, none of whom will do anything I tell them, and a wheel of frozen cake.

Alas, I am still woe, as I have sworn off the eating of white stuff for the entire month of March and, perhaps, April.

All that I have to comfort me are the memories of last night's episode of Seinfeld, in which Elaine complained, loudly, at her co-workers' constant cakedness. She's so sick of it that she takes a sick day, but when she returns, she's greeted by a handful of coworkers with a get-well cake.

ELAINE: Stop it! That's not even a song! I mean, now we're celebrating a sick day?

MALE WORKER: I think it's nice.

ELAINE: What? What is nice? Trying to fill the void in your life with flour and sugar and egg and vanilla? I mean, we are all unhappy. Do we have to be fat, too? ...I don't want one more piece of cake in my office!

Of course, it's an absolute lie. No sooner do they leave than Elaine realizes she's jonesing for cake. She goes into Mr. Peterman's office where she has the stupidity (because who would do this in real life) to start eating a gorgeously frosted piece of (obviously) wedding cake. She then learns that Peterman procured this slice from some auction house, where he paid oodles for it. After all, it's "[a] slice of cake from the wedding of King Edward VIII to Wallis Simpson, circa 1937, price—$29,000."

But even that is little comfort right now. Cake: It can't restore your hard drive.

Wheel of Cake

2006-03-04T19:44:00.000-05:00

Spin the wheel. Take a bite. Spin the wheel. Take a bite.

The cake wheel was given to me by the lovely and talented Jamie Williams of SugarBakers. "It's what I give my brides," she said to me, as if I should expect no less, even though I'm there to do what's already been done to death, her Today show story. She was not, as some would believe, a loser of the "Hometown Wedding" cake competition. She wasn't selected by America, perhaps, but the couple liked her cake the best. They said so on national television.

About the cake wheel: I don't know what's what just yet, but I'm guessing I have some Amaretto Raspberry cake, some Red Velvet Fudge cake, some carrot, some lemon. Who cares? It's all going to taste like sweet heaven in my mouth (and hell on my hips).

If you're following my diet travails (more agony and torment, less effort) this week, you'll know that I am "off cake." Hell, I'm off sugar, bread, potatoes—anything white except cauliflower and paper. I'm trying to look good in last year's bathing suit (made by Omar the Tentmaker, as my sister always says) because I'm too broke for a new one. So this lovely cake wheel is cooling its heels in the freezer.

Here's the last paragraph of my interview. You will know now the true extent of my love.

I thank the folks at SugarBakers for their hospitality, and leave with my front-seat passenger, the hulking catering tray. I wonder whether I have the fortitude to lock it in the freezer the moment I get home. There's a quiet humming. I turn off the radio and listen. For twenty slow, rainy miles, the cake slices serenade me with Bach's "Ode to Joy," each inch square by four layer piece imitating a different instrument. I remember my own wedding on a beautiful sunny day, a day with all my friends, really good beer, and lots of cake. I miss two exits.

The Return of Cake Jones

2006-02-09T08:28:00.000-05:00

I admit that I lost my desire—not for cake but for writing about cake. My first semester at school didn't meet my expectations for a combination of reasons in and out of my control. But that is a waterbath under the cheesecake, so to speak.

I have just returned from Asheville, North Carollina (see the pictures) with a renewed sense of purpose, place, and thing. I am [noun]; hear me [verb].

Joe Mackall, my mentor this semester, has suggested that I write 300 words in the next four months. This is four pages a day, by my calculations. And with all the other things I need to do (and wish to do), it's undoable. But I'll have to work on my ability to churn out the words willy nilly, without regard for structure and order. I'll have to channel some of Ann Lamott's courage to "write a shitty first draft," one that no one's going to read.

And so I've begun to put my interview notes into prose.

Meanwhile, I have several things warming in the oven. First, comedian Jim Gaffigan (gaffe again?) has a standup routine based on cake, something my husband saw on Comedy Central while I was in Asheville. I'm trying to secure an interview with him, either by phone or e-mail or in person when he hits DC in April.

Second, I'm hoping to interview a man who gives all the town's bakers their start, a man even my first interviewee could say nothing nasty about (a feat, let me tell you).

Third, I'm looking forward to the Joy of cake when my friend, Brownie, comes for a visit and we have crabcakes at Kocos and real cakes at my sister's 40th birthday.

Lots of events on the horizon. I hope you'll stay tuned. Oh, and for a tidbit too big to leave on the cake blog alone, check out A Doggy's Life.

Editor's Note

2005-12-05T12:11:00.000-05:00

A few short hours after the previous post, the author lost all willpower. When faced with a choice between bad cake with pretty white frosting and no cake at all, she found she will still choose cake. Leslie will be saying 10 Hail Atkinses and doing penance with flax meal and salad.

Sculpting Medium?

2005-12-04T17:10:00.000-05:00

I arrived early to my last cake class in order to have a heart to heart with the instructor. "I know this is supposed to be stress-free and fun. It's cake decorating, after all. But I suck!" I told her. A pathetic but exasperated sigh followed my admission.

Carole's look was earnest. "Now, are you speaking like a beginner? Or are you comparing yourself to me?" she asked.

I looked around the room for Jessica, the girl whose cake was two layers of perfection, crumb coated and iced smooth, an elegant, flat, perfect blank canvas. I pointed: "Her."

Jessica had worked in a bakery a few years ago, so, though she's enrolled in a beginner's class, she's, technically, a pro.

"See?" my cake teacher asks. She's not quite sure what's wrong with the way I frosted my cake. It's clear I don't have icing towels, but it's a fine start. But she does locate a problem: my cake plate. "This is flexible," she says. It will make my icing crack.

Once again, having the right equipment is essential. So I turned around and marched into the Cake Cottage with my credit card, where I racked up a tidy sum on a Wilton cake holder. I didn't spend the dollars on a lazy Susan; however, I found some nifty cookie cutters and a gigantic offset spatula. (I'm dying to try those cookies on the cover of Family Circle!)

And the evening didn't turn out too bad. I don't, as I had originally thought, suck. I do lack patience, but some of the patterns (I have wanted to call them "moves" or "stitches" since this whole thing began) are easy. I practiced my sweet pea about forty times before commiting it to caketop, and I didn't do such a bad job. The rosettes are nearly perfect. The rosebuds are fine. My hyacinths are pretty nice. My leaves are inconsistent, some looking like natural beauties, others resembling penises. They will come. (The leaves, I mean.) I'm still not comfy with borders, but my garland around the side of the cake was pretty nice.

I feel much better about my skills now that I've seen some improvement.

And I've also learned an important lesson. I'm not too fond of the recent batch of frosting, and the Betty Crocker cake mix I used (some Moist Deluxe white thing) is absolutely VILE. It's been sitting on the countertop for nearly a week, and I've had exactly a bite.

Carole says a time will come when I will see buttercream as nothing more than a sculpting medium. I'm afraid that if the time ever does come, my passion for cake will have drawn to a close. So, while I vow to make blech-tasting cakes and frostings for practice, the cakes I make for celebration will themselves be worth celebrating.

A Real Turkey

2005-11-22T19:26:00.000-05:00

If I had a day job, don't worry: I wouldn't quit it for cake decorating.

Tomorrow night, our class will be frosting a cake, transferring a pattern, and filling it in. Since I will be out of town, and since my Thanksgiving hosts have requested a carrot cake, I thought I'd give this project a try.

Before I started, I was missing a few things. First, I didn't have enough uncolored icing, so I decided to make a cream cheese version. The consistency was a disaster, so I fell back on last week's batch of practice frosting. I did the crumb coat, and then I piled it on thick, as I'd learned in class. But I didn't have enough to cover some of the thinner areas; some brown shows through.

I found a piece of leaf clip art and outlined it on waxed paper with some black gel. I turned the pattern over on top and pressed the black into the cake. It worked perfectly—and it was just about the only thing that did.

In haste, I turned yellow into orange with some red food coloring, then mixed a bunch of colors together for an icky brown. And then I began to draw. I don't have a lazy Susan, which made for a lot of starting and stopping. And I had a cheesecake baking, a mosaic in the workshop to finish grouting, and dinner to cook.

It didn't look so bad until I tried to write in green frosting. I'd made a mistake, and it stained the cake. I tried to recover it with whatever was left in a pastry bag, but it only made a bigger mess. I wound up inventing a few new patterns (accidentally, of course).

All I can say is that I'm grateful it's the Silver Palate carrot cake under all that nastiness; at the very least, it will taste terrific.

I guess the high point in all this—aside from the fact that I could, actually, fill the leaves pretty well (if rushed)—is that my daughter thinks it's really cool.

Bad Clown Cupcakes

2005-11-17T09:59:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I was a bit smug when I began cake decorating classes. I'm no stranger, after all, to world of art making. I can wield a mighty glass cutter and know my way around a power tool.

But that doesn't mean I can squeeze a pastry bag.

Last night, our instructor, Carole, demonstrated several piping designs, including rosettes, rosettes with stars, roses, leaves, stems, sepals, and the shell border. I got the hang of a couple of these, but none of them were close to good looking. My leaves were far too realistic than the perfectly shaped hearts of the instructor. And I could not make a shell, no matter how many I tried. But It wasn't until we got to the sweet pea that I felt a total failure.

I blame it on the bag. Last night, out of laziness (and because people really do this), I subbed plastic, disposable pastry bags for my tough, washable ones. (Have you ever washed a pastry bag? Ick!) I had spots full of trapped air all night and could not escape the bag farts. I would draw a stem, and in the middle, a burst of air would explode on my practice board.

Maybe it's not all the pastry bag. I can be a little impatient.

When we moved on to the more free-form clown cupcakes, I thought I'd ace icing these. Instead, my clowns are sad, scary proof that I stink as a cake decorator.

And thank goodness! How fat would I be if I were doing this for a living?

It's a Cake Life

2005-11-17T09:42:00.000-05:00

Finding a new hobby or interest gives people lots of good ideas for gift giving. It's fortunate that I chose to write about cake rather than, say, defecation (Everybody Poops) or colon polyps.

This year, my birthday netted lots of cake-themed cards and a few gifts for the struggling cake writer, like my new Olympus DS-330, a digital recorder that is Mac compatible, so I can download all my cake interviews and save them on the computer, rather than have to transcribe them right away and erase the file.

I also got a couple of groovy cake-themed goodies: a Hurry Up The Cakes hoodie from Engrish.com, which gets a lot of comments from strangers who don't understand why I'd want the cakes to hurry up; Demeter angel food-scented cologne from Anthropologie, which smells a lot like cotton candy; and buttercream-scented body cream, a thick, rich cream from Jaqua Beauty that smells so authentic that someone like me would be tempted to eat it (or me when I wear it). Last year, my love for cake firmly established, I got a cake-scented candle, which I burn regularly in the kitchen, even though I swear it makes my blood sugar rise and my heart race.

Cake-themed gifts: they're a good thing.

Decadent

2005-10-09T08:57:00.000-04:00

cheesecake

Could this cake be made even more decadent? How about substituting dark chocolate for the white?

Well, that's an experiment for another lifetime, another budget.

You will need a 10" springform pan. Spray the bottom with non-stick cooking spray. (I use a non-stick pan but still spray, and it removes easily.)

Grind about 12+ shortbread cookies (you want a cup and a half) and an ounce of almonds. Add a T of sugar, mix with a t of almond extract, and stir in 3 T melted butter. It should be nice and moist.

Press the mix in the bottom of your springform pan, and bake at 350 for ten minutes. Lower your oven temp to 325.

In a double boiler, melt 6 oz. white baking chocolate, chopped fine. Let cool.

Beat the 4 packages 2/3 Philly cream cheese until they are creamy and smooth. Add 5 eggs, one at a time. Add 1 t vanilla, and 1/4 t almond extract. Beat in 3/4 cup sugar.

Add about a cup of the well-mixed filling to the melted chocolate, and stir. Add the chocolate mix to the filling, and stir to incorporate. Pour the filling over the crust and bake for about 40 minutes. The edges should be slightly browned and pulled away, but the center should shake slightly.

Cool. Cover tightly, and refrigerate overnight. (I only refrigerated for a few hours.)

The cheesecake will crack like mad unless you use a water bath. I didn't want the trouble. I left the cheesecake in the oven to cool, with the door ajar, and when I came home from my meeting, the cake had cracked and sunk in the center, too. Oh, well. Anything can be fixed!

To make the glaze to pour over the top, simmer 7 T heavy cream in a small, heavy saucepan ,then add 8 oz. finely chopped chocolate, and stir well.

cheesecake closeup

I fill my cheesecake cracks with this slowly when it's a little cool, then set it in the fridge awhile. Then I take it out and pour all the glass on top. If your cheesecake's flat, like it's supposed to be, some of the glaze will drip down the sides. That's a good thing.

Melt a small jar of raspberry jam (don't waste money on the expensive stuff; buy all-fruit, as the others are twice as much and full of high-fructose corn syrup and junk) in a small pot, then strain it into a bowl.

Toast some sliced almonds in a pan on the stove. Spread the jam around the edge of the cheesecake, and press in the almonds.

You can drizzle some jam on the top, too, and sprinkle with almonds. The actual recipe calls for this to be served with raspberry puree made from fresh or frozen raspberries, and you can throw some pretty fresh berries in the center.

You can't miss with the greatest cheesecake that ever lived.

Still, I wonder what a dark chocolate version would taste like. Don't you?

Cake: A Bad Idea

2005-09-28T09:45:00.000-04:00

Second Place

Writing about cake would be a good idea for just about anyone. It's not, however, for a low-carber.

Yes, I'm a low-carb eater. This means I don't eat bread or pasta; I eschew flour and sugar; I shun starches and sweets. I'm supposed to, anyway. It's for my health.

A few years ago, I was trying to lose a few pounds. I'd suffered from insomnia since the birth of my daughter, and I had carpal tunnel and a host of aches. I went on Atkins, and I suddenly began to sleep without aids and found I no longer needed anti-inflammatory drugs, either. I no longer needed to wear wrist guards—hulking hand contraptions—to bed. In three weeks, I was near goal weight; in a few months, I was off my antidepressants and sleeping pills.

Enter the Cake Thesis.

Perhaps my decision to explore the moist white underbelly of the cake world was a bit misguided (read: stupid). It wouldn't be so bad if I had stopped at cake. But once that oven door opened, the hot dog roll began to go down with the hot dog, the hamburger bun starting going down with the hamburger. Instead of delicious sauteed zucchini going down with the spaghetti sauce, pasta goes down.

Consequently, pain goes up.

I have been back on track for three days now, and I am slowly recovering. Cake for work (and birthday—I mean, c'mon) will be my only high-carb allowance.

On a forum, women friends recently discussed why we do this to ourselves, knowing it causes a world of problems. How can we see something that causes bloating and confusion and insomnia and swelling and inflammation and pain as a reward?

A frank and thorough writer cannot simply explore the light side; cake has a dark side, too (a gooey, rich, chocolate side, perhaps, but it's dark).

In a few weeks, I will be talking to some mental and physical health experts at Hopkins about the sweet tooth and the nature of food addiction. Perhaps I will learn to develop a more professional relationship with my subject

Because when it comes to sweets—especially cake—I have an inability to think beyond the moment to its consequences. It's all about instant gratification and momentary pleasure. There's rarely a hint of critical thought when I am faced with cake. Cake. Hmmm. Here you are. I will eat you.

The only things that run through my mind have to do with strategy. I am a cake soldier on the front lines competing with other cake soldiers. In seconds, I must figure out how to get the corner piece, how to eat it without looking like a crazy homeless person, how to get a second hunk, how to get that blop of frosting—that one, over there, yes, yes, yes.

Cake is God

2005-09-25T08:46:00.000-04:00

cake bounce

Cake is everywhere.

It arrived at my daughter's morning soccer match, when a woman announced she had to leave early to bake a boiled milk cake. You're writing a book on cake, and you've never heard of a boiled milk cake? her eyes seemed to say. "What about a 1-2-3-4 cake?" She was testing me. This is obviously a pound cake, named for butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. The milk never counts, even though that's what makes it so moist.

Cake was at the Baltimore Book Fair in the guise of a moon bounce. The candles wiggle a bit when the kids are hopping inside, working off that white sugar buzz from all that fried dough their moms used to bribe them to just shut up during the poetry readings that were for their own good.

The cake contest I entered last week was for a birthday cake in honor of the Fair's 100th birthday. (Had I known, I'd have made my entry more festive.) The judging is today at 4:00, and it's hosted by Duff Goldman, the subject of my desires.

Cake happened while I slept last night, too. At midnight, Theater Project hosted one of the High Zero (an experimental music) festival events: Amplified Cake. Actually, it's called Cake Mix, and it features, "[a]n amplified cake [getting] slowly eaten while [the room plays] Baltimore club beats from within. Get yer freak on for sweets."

Forget the illogical syllogism. Cake really is everywhere, and it really is God.

Magic

2005-09-22T14:24:00.000-04:00

I described to my good friend, Paul, my idea for a cake story, a chapter in my book in which I visit various "cake factories," from the upscale, extravagant cake production companies like Charm City Cakes, all the way down to the little snack cake plants.

I explained that I wanted to go behind the scenes of the cake-making process without actually demystifying it.

Paul, a genius in many ways, understood perfectly. He called me the Penn and Teller of cake.

cake fantasy

2005-09-20T14:23:00.000-04:00

fantasy

No. The fantasy is not, trust me, enriched, bleached wheat flour and hydrogenated oils. It is not emulsifiers and leaveners, preservatives and colors and flavors.

The fantasy is not that you can smear it on the bodies of the ones you love and remove it with your tongue.

The fantasy, my friends, is being able to eat the 3 layer fantasy fudge cake and look good naked.

3 Layer Fantasy Fudge Cake

2005-09-20T14:09:00.000-04:00

fudge

Last night, as an apology for the registrar having overloading my honors writing class, the coordinator of the honors program dropped off a 3 Layer Fantasy Fudge Cake, a silver cake server, some foam plates, and a stack of elegant napkins. Most of the class sat there, meekly, refusing to admit they wanted to devour the cake at that moment, naked and in private.

Even when I discovered and announced that it tasted like crushed Hostess Ho-Hos or Ring Dings, the cream replaced with wet, delicious fudge, most of them just sat there. One had the effrontery to proclaim that "it was too early for cake." Too early? For cake? The perfect breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, dessert, or midnight snack? That cake?

A few of the less inhibited (read true) rose without delay. I recognized a kindred in one of them, Auriane, whose eyes glazed over with a rapture much like my own, if twenty years younger.

When I lectured, cake crumbs flew willy nilly from my lips. I kept looking down at it until one student suggested I replace its plastic lid. I told my class that I just wanted to roll in it.

Perhaps I reveal too much of myself.

Despite its dark deliciousity, despite its fudgy freshness, it is not, thankfully, white sheet cake. With white, buttercream frosting. I brought the remainder—about eight or ten three-high slices, covered in thick shavings of chocolate—home for my husband and daughter. The cake did not call me, wake me in the middle of the night, begging for my lips. I slept soundly and sent the cake off to my husband's office this morning, just in case it decided to speak this evening.

Pounds Cake

2005-09-18T10:23:00.000-04:00

pounds

At five o’clock, I have no idea what I am making for dinner, but I am about to put a pound cake in the oven. I’m a sloppy baker. I can break eggs with one hand (a skill that not only looks impressive but is useful, as my other hand is often busy cleaning up the things I’ve knocked over with the egg hand), but I always wind up with batter on my shoes. Today, I’m wearing a pair of black, toeless slides, and the drop lands between my first and big toes.

The recipe on the bottle of flavoring calls for shortening and margarine; I’ve already altered it by using all butter. (“It’ll be richer,” Susan Staehling told me earlier, her tone almost a warning.) Everything else—the six eggs, the three cups each of flour and sugar, and the cup of sweet milk—is by the book. (Sweet milk is whole milk. Susan once called the Superior company to check, and they told her the recipe was from a time when “women milked their own cows.”) The flavoring is added last, to the milk. It smells like an alcoholic version of candy corn—delicious. I am starting to regret my decision to make this cake. Maybe it won’t be as resistible as I expect.

The last thing I do is soak one of those Magi-Cake strips and pin it to the tube pan. (I probably shouldn’t reveal that I looked up pictures of tube pans on the Internet to make sure I was using the correct thing. I had always called them Bundt pans, not realizing Bundt is a brand.)

My daughter comes in from tree climbing and wants to know if it’s pound cake she smells in the oven. She spies the mixer attachment on a plate, and goes directly there to eat whatever batter is left. She assumes it is for her and doesn’t ask if she can eat it, though it is near dinner time. Her eyes roll back in her head, our household code for yummy.

Superior

And when it’s out of the oven, I can’t resist peeling off a piece where the cake has split, despite the Magi-Cake strip, though it is mighty flat. I am too impatient for a complete cool down and turn the cake over onto the lid of a plastic storage container. It’s far too pretty for plastic. I fish out my glass cake plate with the sterling silver base and reposition the fluted pound cake atop it, and then I take its portrait: my first cake as a—a cake book writer. My first pound cake. I pose it with a slice removed. I shoot the slice on a plate.

My neighbor, Ann, the cake decorator, is first on the tryout list. She looks at me, wide-eyed. “It’s so moist!” She says she’s tried dozens of recipes for pound cake and always comes out with cakes that are dry on the inside and crusty on the outside. I tell her about the butter-vanilla-nut extract from Cake Cottage, and she reaches behind some things to find her own bottle; she doesn’t remember seeing a cake recipe on it. I complain that the cake tastes a little artificial. Is it because I know the extract is imitation? Would real walnut and pure vanilla have made a difference? “Tastes good to me,” says Ann’s husband, Jim, in typical husband fashion.

Back at home, my own spouse declares the cake as moist and delicious as any other. But my daughter thinks it’s more desert than dessert and begs for ice cream. I want to tell her that she’s right, that cake without frosting might as well be bread. But I am too busy chewing a piece, nodding, my heart starting to beat just a little faster.

* * * *

According to the authorities on the subject—Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of The Cake Bible, and Bruce Healy, co-author of The Art of the Cake—I have made my pound cake all wrong. I said I had made this cake “by the book” with the exception of my use of butter, but I failed to mention that I softened it in the microwave. Berenbaum may not have a problem with that; her pound cakes, dubbed “perfect,” call for softened butter. But her recipes call for flour first, and she uses baking powder and far less milk. Healy would find neither recipe very French. His traditional quatres-quarts (named four-fourths because the original recipe called for equal parts flour, butter, sugar, and eggs), calls for everything at a specific temperature; the eggs, for instance, are at room temperature, while the butter is sliced and then creamed while still cold (unless your kitchen is cool), the superfine sugar chilled in the fridge. These two don’t even agree on what to use as a cake tester: Berenbaum suggests a wooden toothpick; Healy opts for a knife—a toothpick or cake tester is under-endowed with sufficient surface area to which wet batter can cling.

If nothing else, I am a person who can follow directions, so I use this skill to sponsor my own Pound Cake Bake Off, much to the delight of family and my many neighbors, all of whom seem to exhibit oodles more self-control than I.

The pound cake has been around since at least the 1700s. In 1796, Amelia Simmons (whose by-line includes “an American Orphan”) published this country’s first cookbook, entitled, American Cookery, or The Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables and The Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards and Preserves, and All Kinds of Cakes, from Imperial Plumb to Plain Cake, Adapted to This Country and All Grades of Life. In an edition published by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1965, some of the original grammar is cleaned up a bit, though the author of the Foreword assures readers, “Enough errors remain to leave the proper flavor of the original. (Also note that the printer’s long f symbol of the time was used where we now use the curved s.) Her recipe for Pound Cake calls for:

One pound sugar, one pound butter, one pound cake flour, one pound or ten eggs, rofe-water one gill, spices to your tafte; watch it well, it will bake in a slow oven in 15 minutes.

Another recipe, which she calls, “Another called Pound Cake,” says:

Work three quarters of a pound butter, one pound of good sugar, till very white, whip ten whites to a foam, add the yolks and beat together, add one spoon rofe-water, 2 of brandy, and put the whole to one and a quarter of a pound flour, if yet too soft add flour and bake slowly.

In more than two hundred years, the recipe has not changed much. Though we don’t measure in gills (about five ounces) or use rose water or, alas, brandy, a pound cake is a pound cake.

*****

Bruce Healy’s Quatre Quarts is in the oven. Despite my determination, my cautious preparedness, I am still a slob. The countertop has a light dusting of flour, egg drops have dried there, too, and everything near the stove is covered with a greasy film from a morning spent attempting to clarify my own butter. Both The Cake Bible and The Art of the Cake recommend clarified butter for the greasing of the cake pan; otherwise, the cake is likely to stick to the milk solids in regular butter. In economic terms, this means turning two sticks into one. I boiled the butter, skimmed the foam from the top, and strained the solids. Several times. Eventually, I wound up with a delightfully clear butter with which to coat the loaf pan (to keep the cake from sticking). I never got to use it. My loaf pans have a non-stick surface too slick to hold melted butter; it runs down the sides and pools on the bottom. I put the clarified butter in the fridge and rubbed a cold stick on the pan, which I then floured.

Healy’s instructions are easy, and the book is written in a way that made me feel he was standing over my shoulder, guiding me. “Faster! Keep beating,” I imagined him saying as I gingerly upped the speed of my mixer to halfway between the six and the seven. “Medium-high,” I heard him tell me, and I settled the lever on the seven. The butter and sugar mix was nearly white after five minutes of creaming. When I finished adding all the ingredients, I realized something was missing—missing from the butter, too. Salt. A sweet recipe that doesn’t call for salt is a terrible mistake, I thought.
And then I licked the whisk.

Five angels.

Oh, the last cake had a sweet batter, but the taste was artificial. This one tasted like the liquid version of my beloved white sheet cake.

Light and perfect, the batter went gently into the pan, and I smoothed it and resmoothed it, eating whatever extras were captured in the process, and the loaf went into the oven. Within ten minutes, the aroma filled the dining room, calling me.

Now, twenty minutes before the cake is to be checked (after about an hour and fifteen to twenty minutes), I decide to get started on The Cake Bible version. Rose Levy Beranbaum is a woman’s baker. Throw the wet ingredients together, throw the dry ingredients together, toss the in-between ingredients in, add some of the wet, add some more of the wet, add the rest. Voila! I don’t have to count mixing minutes or worry about temperatures (except for the eggs, which she likes at room temperature). And while I work, I hear the voice of my Jewish grandmother guiding me, only she isn’t saying, “Beat it faster.” She says to me, “Oy, you’re such a mess. This is how you live? Did you wear those shorts out?” She says, “You’re only going to have a taste of these cakes, right? You really don’t need it.” This is baking and guilt. This is home.

When the batter is ready, the angels gather round. Four of them sing. The fifth mouths the words. This isn’t quite as silky as the French version, but it is close, as is the color. I want to say that the flavor is nearly as outstanding. (Do I detect the most subtle hint of baking powder?)

It’s ten minutes early, but I open the oven door to put in the second cake and check on the first. It’s ruined. The top has browned. The sides have blackened. I turn it over on a plate, and a brick plunks out. (The angels walk out of the room, their arms folded across their chests.) If this were a State Fair, I would be out of the competition instantly, though the judges would still taste the cake. I have to know what might have been, too, so I slice an overbaked heel from the right end, put a less crusty portion in my mouth, then toss the rest in the sink. Despite the burn, it tastes like a sugar cookie. The interior of the cake is tender and finely crumbed but not moist. The flavor is light and fresh but not nearly sweet enough after all.

I watch Beranbaum’s cake like a hawk. Her instructions call for covering it with buttered foil after thirty minutes, which I do. Then, every five, I check it to see whether it’s done. My Jewish grandmother (whose name was also Ruth) tells me to keep checking it; she doesn’t trust my oven, either.

When it’s done, I compare the two cakes to each other and to what’s left of the first tube cake. I don’t want to feel as though the Healy cake has been given short shrift by the nasty brown crusts, but the French version does not compare. It shouldn’t, after all, get a thick, hard crust around it, should it? The first cake had no hint of a crust, just a golden color. The Beranbaum version, slightly crusty, tastes like a sugar cookie, too. It is fresh tasting, dense, and lightly sweet, though I still find it lacking in moisture.

Sliced. Delicious.

Of the three, the first—with the recipe from the bottle of imitation extract—made the best-looking, moistest cake. I take some of today’s experiment to Ann and her husband. They are happy to oblige me but are not impressed with the results. Both liked the first cake best. My husband, Marty, thinks the flavors of the two loaf cakes are nearly identical; my daughter says they taste like pancakes without the syrup. Both agree that they aren’t sweet enough to remain frosting-less.

When next I make a pound cake—despite my extra pounds, it is soon—I alter the first recipe by amounts, include superfine sugar, exclude that icky-tasting extract. The result is what neighbor Val (a fine baker and cook herself) and friend Kim swear to be the best pound cake ever. I enter it in the Baltimore Book Fair's "Food For Thought" contest and think about what my life has become: cake and art.

The winner gets $250. That will just about pay for my cake party in October.