When we moved to our neighborhood a few years ago, one of the first local businesses I walked into was a cake decorating store. “Wow,” I remember saying out loud, “So interesting that you have an entire store about cake decorating!” They pressed me to buy some of their products (like sprinkles, Valentine’s Day heart molds, piping, and so on), and I politely replied that I wasn’t very good at decorating cakes. “You can take classes!” they said, and they handed me a flyer for classes that they offered in installments of six weeks or so. Not classes on baking a cake. Cake decorating classes. I really should have said yes.
There is so much to learn about baking cakes. They are in and of themselves a cuisine. I baked a white “party cake” for our second snow day, using a recipe from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. For the frosting, you’re supposed to create a smooth and delicate mixture of butter and cream. Then you bake a four-layer cake by incorporating lemon juice and lemon extract with sugar, egg whites, buttermilk, cake flour, and butter; and on the bottom three layers you spread the frosting over strawberry jam. In the picture, it looks like a candy cane. While I was disappointed in how the frosting turned out (certainly a technical slipup on my part), the cake was something I’ll make again. It’s quite fluffy and good for birthdays.
(Photo: French language edition of Hello, Cupcake! by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson.)
365 Days of Food 