On Friday, Chaz announced—in capitals and on Facebook—that she wanted to BAKE A TINY CAKE. The ensuing discussion was neither deep nor particularly philosophical (read: silly in the extreme). It inspired in me, nonetheless, visions of miniature slices of a minute layer cake, delicate and perfect for my middle-aged bulk.
But by Saturday, plans had changed: the TINY CAKE had turned into a giant cake. It took all day Saturday to bake. The baker, while not designing a tutorial, borrowed the camera and documented the entire artistic journey. Then I took over, fascinated by the color. All shots were done under ambient light (without an adjustment, sadly, to the white point), and mine were not particularly good. But still—we couldn’t send everybody a piece, but we could tickle your eyes a bit:
Because there are supposed to be six layers to this cake, you have to make LOTS of batter.
Because we decided that each layer should be a different flavor, the baker purchased oranges, lemons, strawberries, blueberries and limes and spent hours zesting and milking the citrus and pulping the fruit.
Orange.
Buckets of flour and sugar, and floured cake pans. Oil in a cruet.
Little jars of fruit by-products. And a very messy kitchen. (It was messy before she started.)
Lots of big bowls full of color.
Two pans means only two layers baked at a time. Orange and lime.
More color. Isn’t this fun? We coulda finger-painted with the batter.
Blueberry batter. YAY!!
Lemon cake. One of my favorite things.
Blue and red.
Then she decapitated the layers and uncovered the color once again.
The layers, all ready. But the purple layer never made it—we ran out of batter.
Icing is a careful business.
‘Specially when you’re icing decapitated cake layers.
But she conquered the crumbs.
Five beautiful layers, ready to be plastered.
Still concentrating – which she kind of has to, as this cake went just a little bit Pisa on her.
Or Cat in the Hat.
Nah. This is ALL Pisa.
And now, the greatest baker challenge of all: cutting this thing.
Fun crumbs. Great things coming.
The piece, once cut, has to be lifted out of the cake.
Really, really carefully. Whoa- watch it. Watch—
it—
THERE! Glory on a plate!!
And look at the inside of this thing. Is this GREAT?
And each color a real, vibrant flavor? Yeah – pick up a fork. Eat. Eat. Keep eating. Why’re you slowing down? Umm. You look just a little green – and yellow and orange and blue –
This is what happens when you slice a little too thin.
Really, isn’t this beautiful? Didn’t I wish I could leave it open like this in the middle of table for a week—just to look at? But no – this cake moved a lot faster than that tower at Pisa ever did. And by the time we’d taken pieces to C and L (sorry Gin), and were packing the rest off to the Natives, the cake had become a little—er—slope-y. Almost flat, as a matter of fact. Flat and very wide. But the Natives didn’t mind, and the baker came home flushed with triumph.
Really, can you think of any better way to spend an entire Saturday? Or eat one?
One piece of this thing really pretty much put each one of us under the table. But I have to tell you, I was not unpleased to find, the next morning, that the the decapitated tops of the layers had survived, and were even wrapped up neatly on a plate. Lemon, strawberry, orange: mmmmmm, breakfast.
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