Art in All its Forms: Cake

I love ice cream.

Fudge Ripple. Coffee Fudge Chunk. Chocolate Chip. Praline's. Cookie and Cream. Cherry Almond Fudge.

Dreyers. Breyers. Ben and Jerry's. Haagen-Dazs. Carvel. Baskin Robbins.

But this post isn't about ice cream. At least that's not what it says in the title. So, let's venture back more than twenty years to Wallingford, CT where I spent my childhood. On a street that ended in a cul-du-sac, there sat a robin egg blue, two story house with a cherry tree in front (that I never chopped down). Towards the back of that house was situated a kitchen with some of the ugliest blue and yellow wallpaper I had ever seen, a holdover from the 70's, no doubt. And in that kitchen I learned to appreciate cake.

My mother, you see, bakes cakes. Round cakes. Square cakes. Tall cakes. Flat cakes. Carrot cakes. Chocolate cakes. Cakes with cream cheese filling. Or lemon, if you'd like. Though I've never had them, I'm certain she could pull off German chocolate or red velvet. And I happened to be one of two beneficiaries of the cakes. Well, if I'm honest, I didn't always have a chance to eat the cakes myself, but I always had the scraps with my mother's unique sweet - but not too sweet - frosting. With some ice cream on the side...

I was utterly concerned with how much of those 'scraps' with frosting I could stuff into my mouth. But I didn't really consider the art of cake decorating.

Sure, I was impressed when my mother made the pizza cake that looked a bit like:



But I had no qualms about cutting into it and scarfing it down.

How can I forget the ALF cake she made with a pan she specially bought?



And she didn't just make cakes for me. She made them for my brother, my grandparents, other family members, her friends. And she even began to bake for money. A fifty dollar cake here. A hundred dollar cake there. There was always cake around the house. Well, ice cream too.

Then, she got into more complicated cakes. Wedding cakes, for instance. And other multi-tiered cakes. Cake, cake, cake. Always cake. And always left overs. Enough to make my brother and me bounce around the house.

But still, I didn't really appreciate the beauty of the cakes, not to mention the efforts to which she went to make them.

And, in fact, I never really understood until I moved to Seattle. (A little late, I know.) Enter Joseph, stage left.

Joseph loves watching five types of shows as a general rule. Medical channel shows. Food channel shows. Reality shows. Cop shows. And Friends.

And so it happened one fine Sunday afternoon that Joseph decided to watch Food Network's Food Network Challenge. And on that day, I saw professional bakers bake unreal cakes. Sure, they used the same techniques that my mother did in baking the cake and creating the frosting. But they took it to another level that I had never imagined was possible.

On that and on subsequent shows, I saw cakes that looked like Hogwarts:



And cakes for a Dr. Seuss theme:



Even masterpieces like a Nintendo cake:



I can now say I appreciate the beauty of cake. Not to mention the taste. But I have only one question for my mother: why didn't you ever learn to make ice cream?