a kid i teach is in 3rd grade. he is no doubt an über-genius. last class of the year, he suddenly starts telling me at the sink what it feels like to be him in the world. he is acutely aware that his hands, body and brain don't work together; feels bad that his artwork is not what he envisions. this admission breaks my heart because it is so true. i say i understand. he sits down, paper-punches three shapes, tapes them to a paper and writes me a poem:
to show how you are a star in dark moments and sweet in others
inside of a card from a first grader. it has spent most of the year on my buffet. many mornings it allows me to go on with what i do best. such a simple image made with a dot and a line stirs the secrets of the cosmos within me.
the taste of this icing on the cake puts me in the Wayback machine, blastoff to 1993:
barren walls belie my room mock me from my empty womb children crawl then walk then fly smile as they leave forget goodbye revel in the stars the sun and moon for youth is swift and over soon
this might win the Schmaltziest Poem of the Year Prize but forgive me it is what's real to me every year when i cry alone in an empty room after they leave no matter the age young medium old and my friends call and say they just cried too but we don't speak of it other than to each other in shorthand especially when sometime in May till the end kids start asking you to adopt them.
this is what it is.
and you just want to scoop them up and carry them home but you don't
because your hands, body and brain just don't work together.
The Birth of the Lemon Lu to try to explain just how unusual my behavior had become, "Doctor Sara, the prednisone made me buy a giant crockpot and a 32 dollar bundt cake pan. I stayed up cooking and baking till all hours. " Clearly I was whack. On one such late night was born my version of Lemon Lulu Cake. I wanted to take a pic of the original fat little Lemon Lu when she popped out but I grabbed a fork instead. I made another Lemon Lu last week but the fork won out again. with apologies for the stock photo...
Lemon Lulu Cake (recipe found in newspaper)
-1 Duncan Hines lemon supreme cake mix plus oil and eggs for mixing -1 additional egg -3/4 cup additional oil -1 box instant lemon pudding -1 cup confectioner's sugar -3 Tbsp lemon juice optional: raspberry extract, raspberries or blackberries
>heat oven to 350 degrees. grease and flour bundt pan. >follow directions on cake mix box to prepare batter, and add additional egg, oil and pudding mix. >pour into prepared pan. >bake 55-60 minutes. allow cake to cool before removing from pan. >combine sugar and juice to make a glaze; also great with raspberry extract mixed in; drizzle over warm cake. >garnish with berries. serves 12. or 1.
cake meanderings....
the art of playing with your cake, taken to new levels....I Do, I Don't
This is an artist's book which unfolds to become a boardgame. It's created by artist Jen Thomas and available at her shop. Fabricated with handmade cotton/flax paper, screen- and letterpress-printed in a limited edition of 10, it is described as a game that "takes players on a romantic journey through a fairytale courtship..." in which you "wind your way through a few dates from hell before eventually finding Mr. Right and planning the 'perfect' wedding." Although out of my price range, this paper cake is a lulu of a gift for that special bride, especially one who has everything.
Speaking of cake art....
...the maestra to whom we all bow and say, "I AM NOT WORTHY" is Margaret Braun... "For Michelangelo it was marble, for Giacometti it was bronze. Margaret Braun is a Sugar Artist Extraordinaire" - Food & Wine. She has been called the Gianni Versace of baking, the Decorative Diva of high pastry art, the Picasso of cake decorating. In her work you see inspiration from fashion, architecture, '50's design, symbols and relics from the history of art.
The book Cakewalk is a lush painterly journey through her confections. I often fall asleep with it; if I'm going to have nightsweats, at least let me awaken in sugar-soaked deliria. The drawings and sketches throughout the book are treasures, leaving no doubt she was originally trained as a painter....and the book is a little more affordable than ordering the real thing. Her cakes are said to top out at $25,000.
her work is sick.
...and then there's Colette. my fave book out of several she has published is Colette's Birthday Cakes. check this out, another sick cake:
Who says a love affair can't last a lifetime. It all began with my father bringing home a white box tied with red and white-striped string, filled with fancy doughnuts from the Little Germ Diner. That was what he called it. The Little Germ was a legend in a gritty area of the city where he went to work. He would stop in early in the day to get the best selection. I would laugh every time he said Little Germ and he said it almost every day.
Keeglees, headlights, tailights and half moons perfectly piped with icing were my version of a power breakfast. At age four, my usual morning routine was two cups of coffee, light and sweet with pastries. After the Little Germ's gems were all gone for the week, my custom was to eat half a loaf of toasted Wonder bread dripping with butter before getting on the bus to kindergarten. Once I was so hungry, I ate the whole loaf, dunking the toast into my coffee so the butter swirled on top. Little wonder this kindergartener was rarin' to go. Nutrition, smishin.
Eternally enamored of the curve of frosting spread just so, I later enrolled in a 10-week adult ed class to get a taste of what life could be as a cake decorating diva. The class was small; just a few suburban upper-middle class shop-a-lot-mom-types and a couple alternative, earthier women. Easy breezy, piece of cake. The instructor was a real gal named Ronnie. She showed us her gorgeous cake portfolio, made in the past because her carpal tunnel from squeezing all those icing bags had caught up with her. She was in semi-cake retirement, flew airplanes instead.
Being a former Bisquick queen, I felt professional and happy as a clam as I assembled a collection of those cute little cake tips, kind of like rookie artists talking about brush size as if talent lie in the tool. Standing in the Wilton aisle for hours, debating the prudence of purchasing the whole shebang-in-a-plastic-tote-with-a-clear-lid for a mere $50, I could picture how cool I would look strolling around town with my cake tip tote in hand. Ready for a showdown with any quick-draw frosting slinger that crossed my path, I would stake my claim as mainstream domestic goddess after all.
Cake class quickly morphed into baking bootcamp that would harden the Pillsbury Doughboy. Homework alone surpassed a year's worth of post-grad credit. If you skipped it, you had nothing to do when you were in class. Hours were spent doctoring mixes, diapering pans, baking layers, tinting frosting to just the right assigned shades and storing and transporting it all while keeping it level, always a challenge to me, to class where the actual assemblage took place.
Each week we gathered around a work table in a high school home ec room. Two of the women were already friends who had signed up together, that girl custom. Giggling and fawning over each other's weekly reports about not getting their husbands to do anything, kids' soccer games and parties, things began to deteriorate as daggers were drawn over who made the most perfect cake. Competitive urges surged, a primal kneejerk when women are asked to step up to the proverbial plate or pan. The friends weren't so chatty anymore. They began keeping detailed photo albums, documenting every phase of homework completed at the kitchen table the past week: tight shots of spatulas, up-close and personal frosting-filled tupperwares; no angle or edge to be forgotten in the Duncan Heinz hall of fame.
Other women soon followed suit. It was enough to make me cry. Mercifully, it was they who started sobbing first.
Seems they perceived their cakes as failures when they didn't measure up in exact syncopation to the instructor's iced styrofoam example. The crying happened for more than one class, serving to solidify my baking friendship with the earthy girl next to me. Of like persuasion, we laughed at our painfully obvious lack of cake correctness and refusal to keep albums to prove we really had tried. We traded stories about desperate measures we were forced to take just to get a couple layers unsinged and whole to class. Often we showed up with layers in pieces, plastered together badly with frosting glue. And forget about crumb coats; my efforts to keep the bad boys at bay resulted in the grittiest frosting you have ever seen, like it had been rolled in chocolate sprinkles by a second grader. Or dropped in dirt.
In my hands the most classic of cakes looked zany, unkempt, a reject. Angles skewed and layers listed so far off, as to endanger the existence of creation entirely. You dared not breathe. If you held your head sideways, it was all good. Symmetry gave way to Sodom or was that Satan.... living hand-held mixer hell. When pale lavender icing was assigned, my bowl throbbed with pimp purple. Betty Crocker meets Goth Girl in a back alley and Betty gets the crap beat out of her.
Thankfully, I didn't own a digital camera back then; they weren't invented. A few fuzzy polaroids of my dog licking the plate is all that remains of my cakes and there is a blessing in that. I'm more of a bundt cake and cupcake gal, anyway.
The final night of class, realizing I had not attained the grail, I shook Ronnie's hand, thanked her for her expertise and patience, and vowed to continue my quest.....armed with paint instead of sugar in tubes, my destiny made clear as a pastry case.
From the collection of Angela Keslar, designer of delectable wearable confections and Project Runway star.
From the collection of Robert Whiteman, actor, director, educator and arts advocate extraordinaire.
