The Cake Paparazzi

“It’s not ‘take picture of cakes day’!!” 

(What?)

“I said, it’s not ‘take picture of cakes day’!!”

(It’s not?)

“No”

And that’s how my conversation began with one of our neighborhood kids, Jefferson.  He’s nine years old so he is wise and full of information, a great age to be if you ask me…just old enough to have a grasp on things in life, but not too old to be overwhelmed by more adult things. 

I don’t often take pastry pictures out in the front yard for fear of attracting attention.  It’s not that I don’t want people to see what I’ve been baking, but people do look at me a little strange when they see me taking pictures of cakes on the lawn.  The looks are inquisitive and never mean, mainly the “raised eyebrow” sort of wonderment, clearly perplexed why a man in his mid 30’s is crawling around in the grass on his hands and knees shooting tons of cake photos at various angles.  I guess I can’t blame them and if I weren’t who I am I might think it was weird too.

Rarely do I get engaged by anyone for more than a moment or two.  Once my neighbor caught me shooting a tart on a sunny afternoon remarking, “Wow, and I thought I liked desserts”, but that’s usually about the extent of it.  Normally I like to take photos in the backyard with the plants, away from the eyes of the public at large, but when it gets late in the day and the sun is going down I don’t get enough light out there.  If the clock rolls past 5:30pm, it’s time to head out front and face my fate.

This week my fate was Jefferson.  He really was a sweet kid and hung out with me the entire time I was taking photos.  In our brief time together I learned about his family from Guatemala, that he’s lived in a house down the street from ours his whole life and that he ate an amazing cross shaped cake at his grandmother’s birthday party. 

What I liked about him was his inquisitiveness.  He wanted to know about the cake, but also how much my camera cost, if I was a baker, what kinds of cakes did I make, did I sell the cakes, if I was married or single, if I had kids, if I had a dog, wondered if I couldn’t come teach baking at an after school program for kids???…And this was only the tip of the iceberg.  I thought kids weren’t supposed to talk to strangers, certainly not strangers with candy or cakes and clearly Jefferson was breaking all the rules.  His grandparents must not have instilled the fear of kidnapping in him the way mine did.  (Apparently, one should be particularly fearful in the restrooms of truck stops and campgrounds…reason, unknown.)

I haven’t been around a child that age in awhile and was surprised at how quickly he could fire off questions without taking a breath.  Jefferson had been out riding his bike when he saw me and pulled up with his informative commentary about “cake picture day”.  When I told him I take all these pictures and write for a blog he said if he had a blog it would be about his bicycle because that was his favorite thing.  Somehow that seems sensible to me.  Blogs should be about your favorite things. 

But my favorite comment he made by far was calling me a “cake paparazzi”.  I guess even at nine years old there is no way to escape the media and he knew all about celebrity stalkers and actors being chased around by people with cameras.   For years I’ve been trying to discern my purpose in life and all it took was the open minded nature of a nine year old to figure it out: a cake paparazzi, out and about, tracking down cakes and confections as they run from place to place hiding from my camera lense.  I didn’t realize how glamorous my hobby had become…at least in the eyes of the neighborhood kids. 

As far as the starlet in question goes, this week I wanted to try and modernize a recipe I found in The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book by Fannie Merritt Farmer.  This is the cookbook I’ve mentioned before that my cousin brought back from an excursion through his mother’s cupboard in Missouri.  It’s dated from 1895 and is in surprisingly good condition.  Aside from just having recipes, the book is really a master’s class in cooking from the time period.

Fanny ran a school for cooking, one of the more prominent I would venture, at the time.  The book is full of information on the science of “cookery” and the importance of how our body uses food.  She explains things in a very chemist’s sort of way, giving compound formulas for different main ingredients such as water and milk, sugar and eggs, etc… in a well-rounded attempt to seemingly introduce the scientific background and principles of cooking to the modern (1895) housewife.

What I enjoyed about the book was the thoroughness of topics covered.  There was never one recipe for something, but five or six versions of the thing.  I counted six different lemon cakes, aptly titled Lemon Cake I, Lemon Cake II, etc…and most of the cooking being done over fire or coals in a “cooking-stove”.  The whole idea of the electric range was working its way into being, but it was not the way people cooked back then.  The book even describes what a stove is: 

“A large iron box set on legs.  It has a fire-box in the front, the sides of which are lined with fire-proof material similar to that of which bricks are made.  The bottom is furnished with a movable iron grate.  Underneath the fire-box is a space, which extends from the grate to a pan for receiving ashes.  At the back of the fire-box is a compartment called the oven, accessible on each side of the stove by a door.  Between the oven and the top of the stove is a space for the circulation of air.  Stoves are connected with chimney-flues by means of a stovepipe, and have dampers to regulate the supply of air and heat, and as an outlet for smoke and gases.”  Sounds a little more involved than just pre-heating the oven now doesn’t it?

In mentioning the cooking appliances, this also brings up and helps to describe the way the recipes were written.  In general, but particularly in the baking section, the recipes called for baking in a “slow oven” or “moderate oven”, never giving the degrees we have become so accustom to plugging into our modern stoves.  One recipe called for baking a wedding cake in a low oven for 3 hours!!!  I can’t imagine how “low” that oven would have to be for the cake to retain some moisture, but Fannie did run a school, so maybe she did know best.

That being said, I had to guess how to bake this week’s recipe:  Golden Spice Cake with White Mountain Cream.  The recipe for the cake is as follows: 

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

Yolks 4 eggs

1/2 cup molasses

1/2 cup milk

2 1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon soda

1/2 teaspoon clove

1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg

Few grains cayenne

Few gratings lemon rind

Cream the butter, add sugar gradually, egg and yolks of eggs well beaten, molasses, milk, flour, mixed and sifted with spices, cayenne, and lemon rind.  Bake in a moderate oven one hour, and cover with White Mountain Cream.

That’s it; literally…the whole recipe is two sentences long.  Earlier in the book it gives an overview on different cooking techniques, baking butter cakes being one of them, but for someone such as myself who is so used to seeing every last step written out for me it was a bit of a shock.  And seriously, what the heck is a moderate oven?  Luckily, I’ve been around this rodeo a time or two and have a fair share of cake baking under my belt.  What I did was make the batter like I always do for cakes in general…combining dry ingredients in a bowl, combining wet ingredients in the mixer and bringing them together.  In my case, I replaced the lemon rind with two tablespoons of orange zest and also added 1/4 teaspoon of Chinese Five Spice for a little extra bite as well as a 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Based on the amount of batter I deduced 2 8-inch cake pans would work well for this and also decided a moderate oven was around 350 degrees…and you know what???  It worked!!!  I baked the cakes for 25-30 minutes and they came out “golden” and lovely.  The house was filled with the fragrance of harvest spices and I would ultimately recommend this cake as a component to your Thanksgiving spread.  Also, since I made two 8-inch cakes I thought a quick filling of orange marmalade (store bought, made with bitter orange rinds) would sandwich nicely in-between and glue them together.

The “frosting” if you can call it that…the White Mountain Cream is nothing more than 1-cup of sugar brought to boil with 1/3-cup of water in a sauce pan.  Once the sugar starts to get bubbly and caramelize around the edges you add it to a gently beaten egg white with of teaspoon of vanilla and whisk vigorously.  Caveat:  WORK QUICKLY WITH THIS SUBSTANCE!!!  It hardens fast into a sugary confection (it has a similar consistency to fudge), not like the frostings or glazes we are used to working with.  It tastes great but looks a little different too.  Jefferson asked me if I had put oatmeal on top of my cake…ah kids.

I also took a half cup of currants and a half cup of dried cherries, soaked them in a liquor of your choice (preferably a brandy or orange flavored liquor) for about an hour and a half.  Then I drained them and cooked them for a few minutes in a dry sauté pan over medium-high heat to burn off the excess liquor.  They make a pretty decoration to go on top of the “oatmeal” frosting.  And lastly I placed a little fleur de sel in the center to give an extra salty bite to combat all the sweet ingredients in the cake.

Shwooo!!!  I’m exhausted just thinking about it!  I have to say it was worth my time and effort, and it required me to use my brain a bit and do some of the recipe testing I occasionally mention that I ought to be doing.  I’m not sure that I really modernized it so much as just figured out how to make it, but the experience was fun.

The golden month of September is moving along and now I have a golden spice cake to go along with it.  I can add it to my list of the desserts I’ve captured on film and hopefully will sell the photos for big bucks in Star or In Touch (or Butt*r) magazine.  There’s clearly a market out there for cake stalkers of all kinds.  I like to think I’m taking tasteful photos as opposed to the naughty pin-up sort, but as we all know, sex and controversy sell.  I’m not desperate enough (yet) to head down that road, and let’s hope it stays that way.  It’s just who I am.