Oma’s pie making skills are top notch. Never afraid of crust, she learned early in her marriage to throw flour, fat, and warm water into a bowl and voila! Out came pie dough. It rolled well, it held its shape when folded and tucked into a pie pan, it cooked through without the dreaded soggy bottom. Her family loved it. Her friends all asked for the recipe. It was perfect.
Oma’s cake skills, however, have been sub-par. She blamed this on a generation whose mindset rested in a can of peas, a tub of margarine, and a boxed cake from Betty Crocker. As a product of the 60’s, Oma had no clue– none whatsoever! — that cake could (or should) be anything more than a foundation for frosting. Which came from a can.
Thanks be to fresh broccoli, cheeses-other-than-American-cheddar, real butter, food bloggers and a pandemic, Oma has now chalked up yet another qua-routine skill. She can bake a cake. From scratch.
She can frost it, too, as of last weekend. She can write snippets of poetry on it with a Wilton #4 tip. Or, if snippets of poetry composed by a rapper with PG13 language skills hold scant appeal, she can quote her grandson. Who even knew poetry on cakes was a thing? Well, maybe the rest of those food blogger followers did, but not this grandma. Now she knows.
She knows, for instance, that one can learn important and useful skills from a baker in New Orleans while standing in one’s kitchen in the Northwest. How did this brilliant and useful new ability come to fruition? Oma will tell:
- Oma’s oldest daughter, Jessica, suggested the two of them take a @drakeoncake class together via @thebakehousenola.
- Oma said, woo hoo! Sounds like a blast. Let’s do it.
- After receiving the list of supplies from @thebakehousenola earlier in the week, Oma visited Amazon, whereupon she spent $75 on cake paraphernalia.
- She purchased a rotating cake stand for $29. (It’s beautiful and sturdy, and Oma wants to display it on her countertop, but alas, there is no room.)
- She purchased another cake stand completely by accident by neglecting to remove it from her cart before checking out. She sent that one back for a $16 refund, although the offset spatula that came with it would have been nifty.
- She bought a bag of “manvscake” fancy-schmanzy sprinkles which put grocery store sprinkles to shame. Those cost $15 for 12 oz.
7. Later that week, she dropped by Michael’s craft store in the Harbor to grab a round piece of waxed cardboard. They didn’t have the one she found on the app, so she bought plain ones for three times the price of the one she wanted. At least now she owns a dozen more. For future cakes. Like the ones needed for March birthdays. Okay, not “ones”, just one. Three birthdays = one cake. But, April! April has three birthdays, too.
8. What else? There was another thing…oh, yes. Gel food dye for frosting. Eight colors, $9.47. They’ll last forever.
9. So, for $75, not counting the $45 cost of the class because her sweet daughter gifted that to her, Oma baked and decorated one cake.
10. Friday evening, Oma located her 9-inch, round cake pans and set to work greasing and flouring them. She followed the straightforward directions for mixing and cooking an “everyday chocolate cake”. It smelled divine.
11. However, it refused to come out of the pan.
12. Recalling baking disasters on GBBO, Oma convinced herself that she could glue the broken bits together and Paul Hollywood would never notice. Then she went to bed.
13. At 5 a.m. Saturday morning, Oma baked another cake to replace the disaster.
14. This time, she generously greased the pans, lined each with a circle of parchment, and greased them again – generously.
15. Her cake layers slid from their pans like ice cubes from a hot tray. They were perfect.
16. Oma then fiendishly cleaned her kitchen. She even mopped the floor, which was ridiculous because not only was the class on Zoom, participants cameras and microphones were all turned off.
17. Class began at 9 a.m.
18. By 11:30 a.m., Oma had a beautifully unique, homemade chocolate cake with a full pound of buttercream frosting adorning its top and sides. She piped letters. She piped scallops. She piped pink blobby things. She sprinkled sprinkles with abandon.
19. This was not the end, however. Apparently, the “poetry-on-cake” thing includes staging and photographing one’s cake, posting it on Instagram, and tagging @thebakehousenola. Staging? Staging is a thing.
20. The thing about staging one’s cake is to gather “from around your house” bits of this and bits of that to properly illustrate the “theme of the cake”, e.g., its “message”.
21. Since Oma is an English teacher, the idea of theme is not new to her. The part about staging and photographing though – well. She did her best.
