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Life Lessons in Baking….Birthday Cake

December 8, 2008 at 6:23 am (food, food experience, foodie) (baking, baking lessons, birthday, birthday cake, cake, central california wines, cooking, dessert, Epicurious, family, food, foodie, Life)

It’s been nearly four months to the day that I told my mother I’d bake my grandmother’s 80^th birthday cake. The silence that greeted me on the other line was deafening and the pause in conversation so long in fact I’d thought I’d dropped the call. Finally my mother spoke in a tone that was both bemused and incredulous. “You don’t have to do that,” she said. “We’ll just get a cake from Smith’s Bakery.” “No,” I replied trying to sound as resolute as I could. As I hung-up the phone I realized two things 1) this was the only gift I could give my wealthy grandmother that she didn’t already have twelve of and 2) failure was not an option. If my gift was to turn into fiasco it would be written in the indelible ink of family legend and would be talked about for decades to come. That one moment of realization was enough to send most home cooks reeling. I was no different. This panic signaled the beginning of what I now affectionately remember as “the Bakersfield Baking Challenge.”

Anyone who has made a tiered-cake of any sort from scratch knows that it’s a both a time and labor-intensive process. Having made a this type of cake a whopping two times in my life, I understood that I was both in for one hellavuh baking ride and that I was a blithering baking novice. C’est la vie- what was done was done. For weeks I spent researching cakes: flavors, fillings, fat content, crumb texture. I baked cake after cake after cake, sampling different fillings and frostings with each. While I was drowning in cake batter, something began to nag at me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. I was in the midst of the stuff of dessert dreams, yet some snarky sense of dread chuckled lowly at each cake I pulled from the oven. What was that sense of dread you ask? Surely nothing could go wrong when you are creating a splendid vanilla cake with apricot filling covered in vanilla buttercream frosting three-tiered cake? To your questions I say– Yep, you are one-hundred and twenty percent right—except for one teeny thing I forgot to account for. I was baking in Bakersfield during the month of August, when temperatures are easily around 108 degrees Fahrenheit. But isn’t that why we have air conditioners and refrigerators you say? Yes, but there’s this annoying little rule and it was about to land on my cake. It’s called Murphy’s Law.

The fascinating thing about baking in a city where the outside temperature is 108 degrees is that if you happen to be in a house built circa 1970, keeping the house cool can be one hellavuh problem. This fact assailed me the moment I arrived at and entered my mother’s house. The air conditioner was running full blast and still the coolest she could get the inside of the house was 85 degrees. She looked at me as I came through the door, her eyes and mouth drawn tight with apprehension as I set down the bags of baking supplies. “We can still order a cake from Smith’s,” she nearly barked. Again I shook my head no. I was too far off the map now. Here there be monsters.

The next morning I found myself assembling the layers in the kitchen. I was making good time. Kitchen mess was at a minimum. Things were good! Still, I kept eyeing the buttercream ingredients warily. That nagging feeling of impending doom was getting thicker and I still couldn’t quite place its source. I’d just finished leveling the last tier when it dawned on me: my mother’s refrigerator wasn’t large enough to house the cake. I looked at my kin assembled in the den. Most of our tribe had traveled cross-country to make it to granny’s birthday party. There simply wasn’t any room for the cake as the refrigerator was overflowing with food to feed the horde. At that moment such creative expletives flew from my mouth that my mother chewed me out. I was midway through my stream of consciousness expletive rant when another realization slammed into my brain: that butter and Bakersfield heat do not mix, especially in an 85 degree house. My only option was a Crisco-based frosting.

I ransacked my mother’s pantry for her butter flavored Crisco while I silently begged the Kitchen Gods to let me find my only good Crisco frosting recipe. In my head I could hear future generations laughing- not to mention the herd assembled in the living room- at the Great Cake Disaster story! I dug through the recipe books I had brought to my mom’s on a whim and luckily found the grease and sugar stained recipe wedged in one. In mere minutes the frosting was made but the consistency was off. It was too warm. Into the refrigerator it went only to be too cold when I pulled it out. This happened over and over for 30 minutes. Just as I was starting to feel like Goldilocks the frosting turned just right. I had two hours left until I had to get dressed and in those two hours I needed to frost, decorate, and repair the cake as I was sure the frosting was going to slide off the cake. And slide off it did.

As I stood in the kitchen, whispering expletives as I frosted each layer white, my family gathered and watched me work. They were fascinated. When the heat in the room and the heat of my hands turned the pink frosting in my decorating bag to near liquid, my family said, “Don’t worry: It’s fine just plain white.” I laughed and stuck it in the freezer. “I can decorate it at the restaurant. Don’t let me forget that bag.” When the frosting slid off the cake, I’d hear my name, stop dressing, and fix the cake with chilled frosting. The frosting finally crusted as the Sister-Cat, Boyfriend, and I drove to the restaurant, AC on full blast with the cake perched precariously on my sister’s lap. Who would have guessed?

The cake became the stuff of family legend and not, I’m proud to say, because of my frosting woes. It’s now remembered as a true, handmade gift of love. In my book, that made all the craziness worth it. That said I’ll always double-check the refrigerator from now on.

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