Pygmalion’s Cake Mountain
If you cannot tell already, Zomppa Patty is a true baker. She’s creative yet analytical; flexible and adaptive (helpful when certain flours aren’t rising properly or eggs are a bit larger than normal) yet precise and deliberate (I sometimes call it a wee bit anal retentive), dramatic (check out the colors) yet strangely patient when it comes to ensuring her cakes are beautiful to look at and scrumptious to eat.
These are just two of her gorgeous creations she made for her little ones’ birthdays. They just aren’t pretty, but are made with great thoughtfulness that they fit the personality of each child. In fact, some of her friends have been fortunate enough to have some of her special cakes named after them, all made with each individual in mind.
Now we have me. I am not patient nor do I really like measuring things. As a teenager, I loved baking from the Duncan Hines box mixes (who can mess up two eggs and 1/3 cup oil?), but I quickly realized as I got older: I am no baker. It requires virtues I lack. But I still pretend every now and then because I like eating and I like sweets and I love the idea of homemade cakes.
So my boyfriend’s birthday was this weekend and I decided to make him a cake…a rich butter cake with chocolate buttercream. Now I WAS following a recipe – said it was an EASY recipe – only the buttercream came out more like fondant. It was too hard to spread it out like they do on cake shows (or the way Patty always does), so I ended up molding them in my hands and sculpting my five-tiered, lopsided cake (I always had a fantasy to be an architect, knowing full well the concept would be fantastic but the building would collapse quickly because I don’t care for details like measuring).
It ended up being actually really fun. I was not quite the cake whiz that I see on Ace of Cakes or Cake Boss or Patty’s Kitchen, but I suppose it was my style of baking. Pygmalion would be proud. Or amused. It was like sculpting clay (which is one of many daydream jobs) and I realized why I like making cakes. It was like creating a piece of artwork, molding and sculpting the “buttercream” to how I wanted it and I was doing it because, as for many of us, we love making people happy through our food.
Patty thinks it looks like a giant hostess cake with marshmallows and raspberries. But boy was it delicious. The boyfriend seemed to like it and not mind that it looked like a child’s 3rd grade volcano project that she insisted on doing it herself.
He dubbed it Cake Mountain. Happy Birthday!
Category: Travel & Culture, US & Canada
