![]() The brief for each cake (footy! outer space! race track!), or each paper or chapter (this journal! that book! this field! that theory!), is different, requiring planning and consideration at the outset about how to proceed in order to reach a particular end point. My reflections on my journey as a novice baker and decorator remind me of my arc as an academic writer. They were the ‘voice’ or the ‘me’ in the cake.Īnd so, from baking and decorating to writing … These imperfections were the marks of me as the maker, and I was ok with those idiosyncrasies. The cake was a bit lopsided, the icing a bit uneven, the drawn lines a bit skewwhiff. I also knew my materials better, what they could and couldn’t do. I had a familiar routine set out over a few days which made the process manageable. I knew to ice the cake while it was partly frozen to prevent crumbs in the icing, and to leave the extra decorations off until the icing was set so that the colours didn’t bleed. I knew to take the time to cover the whole inside of the pan with carefully-traced-and-cut-and-placed bake paper so that the cake would slide out easily, with a now-practiced flourish, onto a wire rack. I knew to alternate mixing in dry and wet ingredients. I knew to leave my ingredients out so that they were room temperature when I used them, preventing mixes from splitting. Much of this was due to the knowledge and skills I have gained over time, as well as processes I have developed for this task. This week there was none of the cake-anxiety drama. Baking and decorating were calm and enjoyable. I didn’t feel quite the Nigella-esque image of domestic goddessery when I couldn’t see through my tears and icing-splattered spectacles. Earlier this year, I got a knife caught in the beaters while making icing, which resulted in me icing myself and the whole kitchen, including the ceiling. Once, a heavy cake topper figurine sunk into the cake overnight. There have been times when I decorated cakes the day before serving and the colours from the candy bled into the icing. I have broken cakes trying to get them out of the pan. In the past my cake and icing mixes have split and curdled. Yet this week’s cake (pictured above), is the first cake that has felt stress-free to make, and first one for which I haven’t made big mistakes in the making. My boys are 4 and (just) 6, so on my one-cake-per-child’s-birthday / two-cakes-per-year average, I haven’t baked that many cakes. This year, baking his double-layer chocolate cake (decorated as an AFL football field) had me thinking: this cake making business is a lot like writing, particularly academic writing. ![]() One year ago, baking and decorating my eldest son’s cake prompted a blog post in which I compared making a novelty birthday cake to doing a PhD. ![]() I make about two cakes a year, one for each of my children’s birthdays. Why cake ? Because joy and deliciousness are nutrients in their own right. This week’s home-made Aussie Rules football cake ![]()
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