Instructions
I still remember the first time I saw a dinosaur.
He was blue, bright blue, and had a distinctively long neck. I seem to remember he had purple eyes, but I can’t be sure.
I first spied him on top of the fridge, way out of reach. How a dinosaur could climb so high was beyond my reasoning, but I hoped he’d hop down soon so we could get better acquainted. I was four, and he was my birthday cake.
Cake is the symbol of celebration, it has been for millennia. In bygone times cake was a moment of real indulgence – prized ingredients like sugar, eggs and butter were combined in honour of a special someone. While the cost of food has fallen relative to earnings, birthday cakes still hold their status as a luxury good. These days, however, the value often comes in the decorating, not the baking.
Oh the cakes I’ve seen (and made). Top hats, handbags, lemons and trains. Cars, rainbows, bridges and hot air balloons. Flowerpots complete with edible sunflowers, a cow jumping over the moon, the Eiffel Tower and even entwined sumo wrestlers. Cake and icing are simply edible construction materials that, in the hands of a patisserie artist, can become anything.
But at its heart a cake is still just that, a cake. And as such, it is meant to be eaten. That is its whole reason for being. An uneaten cake is merely an incomplete artwork. Alone, unappreciated and ashamed.
While the jacket it wears may come in myriad shape and colours, a cake’s beauty must be more than skin deep. True beauty should go all the way down into its deliciously decadent core. So, start with a perfect cake, then work your way out.
To make a perfect cake, give up your expectation of a lean approach. Great cakes will always be richer in the butter and sugar stakes than our weight-watching consciences would prefer, but that’s the whole point. Indulgence. A cake is our chance to chance our arm in the face of better judgement.
So, risk it all on a perfect slice. Diet be damned and throw yourself upon the pyre of a burning passion. Because, just like a hot summer’s romance, passion should leave bite marks.
Simple birthday cake