In honour of its 5th year of existence, my church had a "hoe-down" tonight. A "hoe-down" is an American Southwest thing... typically it's a massive gathering of friends and family in an outdoor setting, complete with food (usually grilled items and chili, as well as pot-luck style items), games, dancing, and music. Like a barbecue or picnic. One of the events of this hoe-down was a pie and cake bake-off, essentially a pastry competition.

Last week I asked if there are any rules to the bake-off. The reply was that there are no rules. Bake to impress. Naturally, I was hesitant to enter, having a significant advantage over any competitor in the presentation judging. But eventually I got talked into it. I entered this:



The type of cake should be self-evident. And yes, that's a lady bug hanging out on the one stem.

It turned out I had a meeting to go to (mandatory for all coffee shop employees -- "Espresso 101"), so I didn't make it to the hoe-down till about halfway through. I had a friend be my proxy, and present the cake for judging on my behalf. By the time I was able to get there, the cake had been completely annihilated. All that was left was the cake board, some "soil" (pulverized "creme-filled chocolate sandwich cookies" -- I had a lot of fun pounding them with a solid maple rolling pin), and the pot itself.

I'd done this type of carrot cake presentation before, but not to this level of sophistication. I suppose this is now my signature "fancy-pants" carrot cake presentation. This iteration features a fondant covering for the "carrot" part, and flower paste for the stems and lady bug. Internal structural supports of 18-gauge floral wire allowed the stems to stand straight up. The cake is 99% edible, with the other 1% being the structural supports. In a way, this was a melding of engineering and culinary arts.



Oh yeah, I took 1st Place. The prize was a silicone spatula and an apron from William-Sonoma (both very nice items), though unfortunately I wasn't there to accept them. It was all a lot of fun. :-)


UPDATE: 29 Aug 2005, 10:47: Also, apparently there was some debate as to whether I should be allowed to enter. I bet I get banned as a competitor next year, and be relegated to judging. That's no fun. ;-)

¶ 9:37 PM 4 comments

I've been doing a lot of thinking over the last 4 weeks. It seems in the debate between myself and me, we have reached an impass.

On the one hand, engineering is a pretty posh setup. You go in, you sit at a desk, and you tickle little cleverly arranged pieces of plastic all day. And they pay you out the wazoo to do so. Sometimes you go from tickling the plastic pieces to massaging them, and sometimes you pound them through the desk. Usually it's calm, but never relaxing. Being what amounts to a grunt (because your project management is severly abusing your position as one of the most competent people on the team), you don't get a lot of exposure to customers, and not that I really want any exposure to customers because if I really told them what goes on in our labs, they wouldn't buy a cent's worth of our product. And all we ever seem to hear from our customers is, "Hey, this is broken!" and "We need it to do this, and we need it now!" I get enough of that from our QA people.

On the other hand, culinary arts provides more immediate job satisfaction (or even job satisfaction at all). You bake something, you put it out on display, and people come in and try your new recipe, and they rave about it while standing in line waiting for their coffee to come up. You see the regulars come in every morning, and a lot of them come in looking for something new, something different. "Here, try this new recipe." "MmmmmMMMMmmmm!" Or, "You make the carrot cake, right? That carrot cake is SOOOO good!" I smile and humbly say, "Thank you!" and the customer walks away with a cup of coffee and a smile on their face, and I saunter back to the kitchen thinking, "Yeah, baby! I made somebody happy! I made a difference in somebody's life!" The downside, unfortunately, is that it pays next to nothing. Oh, that it were a profitable scheme!

So in the end, would I sacrifice happiness for financial security? Or do I follow a dream and live in poverty? Woe is me!

I'm still a geek though. Once a geek, always a geek (or something like that).

¶ 10:14 AM 5 comments

I seem to have become somewhat of a celebrity... at least in the world of carrot cake connoisseurs. People are flocking to the coffee shop to get a slice of my carrot cake. Last Friday, I think it was, the "Scone Lady", who usually buys the blueberry scones, bought what was left of the carrot cake in the pastry case. Yesterday (Saturday), I made a fresh carrot cake in the morning, and by day's end there was but one slice left. When you calculate out the actual cost of the cake, it pays for itself after about 4 or 5 slices. At 8 slices per cake (which will become 10 or 12 slices per cake tomorrow -- the slices were too big), we're making a pretty good killing just on carrot cake.

My blueberry scones seem to be selling well too. Before I started making scones, we used to struggle to sell two a day. Now I make 8 every morning and they're pretty much sold out by the end of the day. Those probably pay for themselves after 4 or 5 scones.

And my chocolate chip cookies seem to be selling better than the ones we used to get, though they're not exactly flying off the display rack like the carrot cake or scones.

Those of you who have known me the longest, you get the distinction of being among the first to experience my now-famous carrot cake.

Funny story: I went to a boat party tonight with the coffee shop folks, at which I was being introduced to people as "the new chef at the coffee shop." This one woman, a little redhead with a happy little German accent, exclaims, "You're the chef!!" then proceeds to throw herself bodily on me and hug me as Germans do, I guess. Normally I'm OK with people hugging me. That's a pretty normal thing to do. Well, she didn't stop there. She then proceeds to jump into my lap, at which point my "face turned into a tomato," mostly from shock and surprise, and partly from embarrassment of suddenly being the center of attention and having this German woman sitting in my lap. Of course this was mere moments after I was relaying to a co-worker how I am an extreme introvert. Most people I've met just say, "Your carrot cake is amazing," or "I nearly cried when I tasted your carrot cake." No one had tried to sit in my lap, until tonight. I've even had women say to me that men who cook are very attractive, followed promptly by, "Are you single?" and usually accompanied by somewhat flirtatious eye contact.

I guess I'm going to have to get used to this....

¶ 11:23 PM 2 comments