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How to React When Your Artwork is Eaten

The incredibly short life of an edible creation

By BrettePublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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Five Hours. That’s the average time one of my finished masterpieces has to live before someone runs a keen knife through it. Cuts it to pieces. Jovial applause. And then a crowd will consume every bit, leaving no evidence of the crime behind.

People often ask me, “Doesn’t it bother you when they cut it up?”

It’s a seemingly odd question. Definitely not a typical question frequented to most artists. I dare say most artists live to see their finished works last longer than five hours. And even more rarely see it meet its death by knife. But like I said, that’s pretty standard for my creations. And the cutting question is as common to me as Saturday nights.

Saturdays are party days. Wedding days. Celebration Days. So naturally, Saturday tends to be the busiest day in the life of a cake artist.

On Saturday evenings I load up my trunk with the sugar-made physical incarnation of my own passion and creativity for delivery. The drive is accompanied by non-stop prayer, interrupted only by the most unholy shrieks of terror at every bump in the road until I reach the venue.

My three tiered creation gently slides into place on a gilded pedestal.

I’m not always there when it’s cut, but occasionally, as an actual invited guest of the party, I’m present to witness the disassembling.

Sometimes it’s an auntie. Sometimes granny. Sometimes a complete stranger. Somebody always seems to address me with that question “Does it bother you when they cut it up?”

And essentially that boils down to, “Was all that work worth it for this?”

All. That. Work.

A custom created cake may make it’s grand debut on a Saturday, but it’s not actually born on Saturday. In fact, the labor process begins several days prior, most likely early on Tuesday at 3:50 in the morning.

Stereotypical morning smells of coffee and toast are absent. The kitchen marinates instead in the hot aroma of toasting pecans bathed in sugar, liquid chocolate melting with cream. These are the scents with which I greet the day!

The sun rises along with the steaming layers of chocolate cake in the oven. Buttery golden rays pour through the cracks in my kitchen window to spill over the heaping dish pile in my sink. A signal that it’s definitely not quite so early in the morning as I had mentioned. But as a baker, I live in the time zone of Farenheit. It doesn’t quite matter where the sun is in the sky. Every hour is 350.

The kitchen is a dance floor while I bake, collecting various tools and ingredients. Chasse to the pantry. Arabesque to the top shelf for a mixing bowl. Don’t make the mistake of picturing that quite so gracefully. It’s sharp, trained, almost mechanical steps. I perform them with practiced precision, and breakfast on extra cake scraps while I work.

A few quick dumps of butter, sugar, vanilla and I’ve got a double batch of frosting whipping to the gentle engine hum of the stand mixer.

Flavor is the first variable in the equation for a truly remarkable cake. Never to be overlooked or compromised. My creative juices flow just as much into crafting the flavor as they do into the actual cake design. The artistry and skill to craft edible mediums with eloquence. This is my bread and buttercream!

While I’m busy on my feet in the kitchen my thoughts are busy too, mulling over my still forming plans for the cake design.

One of the thrills of designing a cake: I don’t always know exactly how I’m going to pull it off. I have a few fragments of ideas and inspiration: a rusty autumn color palette, an interesting drywall texture texture I saw at a neighbors house, an embroidered pattern from a bridal dress. They float as unconnected images in my head as I try to mentally fit and layer them together, but often the real design tends not to emerge until I’m actually creating it.

My cake designs frequently feature a painted floral style. I mix a scheme of colors and hues out of buttercream. I use palette knives to paint on the blank canvas of cake, just as a traditional oil painting artist would. Strokes of color, all so distinct, yet blending perfectly to create an image. A plain cake becomes a garden in my kitchen. There’s something about the process that’s incredibly satisfying.

When done right, cake is deeply personal. In case you’re wondering what “done wrong” is, think of the last-minute seven dollar mess of cardboard and fluff that you pick up from a shabby neighborhood grocer. Too many people tell me they don’t like cake, and no kidding! When all you’ve ever had is a grocery store cake, you’re not setting yourself up for very high expectations. But when it’s done right, it becomes something special.

As I bustle through the baking process and plan the design, I have someone very specific in mind- their story, their personality, their tastes (literally). How many times in your life do you get to commission an art piece specifically crafted to you?

It’s a challenging affair, melding the expectations of a client with my personal artistic style. Knowing when to hold back on my own vision, or when to trust my gut and professional experience and push the design a little further than I was instructed.

Stimulating and stressful all at once!

Tuesday through Thursday this is the beginning and the routine. Baking layers, preparing fillings, and readying all the design and decor elements. But it will all go to waste without consideration of one key component:

Structure.

This is where right brain must cede for a moment to left brain. Before one painted stroke of the palette knife can grace the cake, it has to be built, and built right. The precise architecture of a tiered cake is key to its survival during the always dreaded delivery.

On Friday morning, I do a roll call of my cake building tools:

A level. Essential to avoid an accidental Pisarian tower architecture. Check!

Dowels. The sturdy wooden bearers of the cake’s weight. Check!

Cardboard Rounds. The hidden bed of each individual tier. Check!

Scissors….Blast it! Where are they?

A small glance around the kitchen and I spy them teetering on the edge of the sink. Traces of lettuce and other grubby unknowns smudge the surface of the blades.

I sigh.

It’s a quick remedy- a run of steaming water and a hard scrub with soap to remove the muck- but why doesn’t anyone else in the house seem to get it? That my tools need to be just that: my tools.

Especially something as crucial as scissors. They weave their way all over the cake creation process and touch nearly everything that goes into the cake. I make precise sharp cuts in the dowels to size them for insertion into the cake. I trim down the thick cardboard rounds just right so they’ll hide neatly underneath the cake layers. I slice open fresh bags and boxes of ingredients, cut parchment, snip through hefty flower stems, and trim decor. The scissors have to be good ones.

And for heaven sakes they have to be clean!

With that, I begin to build an edible tower upon a rotating metal plate. Cake layer, a spread of buttercream, cake layer, more buttercream. There’s no such thing as perfection in cake. But it’s always where I set my aims. Getting lazy is compromising. One crumbly edge too far to the right and it throws the whole structural integrity.

Each tier is assembled separately and then stacked with held breath. Only once the cracks between tiers are sealed and the dowels twisted in place can I exhale again.

Hallelujah! She stands!

The true indulgence of the whole process follows the stacking procedure. I live for the delightful hours that I get to spend dressing a cake, decorating it to perfection. I often forget to eat during this part of the process. I feast instead on the sweet gratification of the creative process. My feet ache, my eyes droop a little, but I am in my happy space.

By the end of it all, these are the totals:

Three hours baking.

One hour prepping tools and supplies.

Two hours assembling.

Three more for decorating.

Not to mention all the time shopping for ingredients and communicating logistics. The careful thought, the intensive planning, the cups of mental creativity I poured into this project. The crazy consuming stress of delivery.

All of that work, and then comes the knife.

The cake is cut. Slices are served. Passed around.

And inevitably someone finds their way over to plant themselves by my side and deliver the question: “Doesn’t it bother you?”

All of that work. But in that moment, not one hour of the past week’s cake creation montage comes into my mind. Instead, in that blink of thought between question and response my ears catch the drifting exclamations all around me as first bites are taken.

“I had no idea cake could be this good!”

“I can’t believe this tastes even better than it looks.”

“I’ve never even liked cake until now.”

Sweet music. After all, what good is cake if nobody eats it?

My smile and response are both genuine and authentic.

“Not at all!” I say. “I’d be bothered if they didn’t cut it. This is the whole point!”

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About the Creator

Brette

7am - Baking cake layers

8am - Dishes

9am- Making breakfast for three

2pm - Back porch with a notebook, a pen, & a drink

6pm- Cake delivery

9pm- Bedtime

2am- Too many thoughts, notebook out again!

*Shower once a week if time & energy allow

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