Big ideas about baking
This summer, a cupcake really got me thinking.
My college roommate Michele made a delicious batch of coconut cupcakes for our group of friends one weekend in July. We were all floored.
“Ooh!” I thought. “I have to make a cake in a couple of weeks. Maybe I should make these instead!” I was planning to make a birthday cake for my friend and coworker Julie once school started again, and I thought maybe I should try these.
Michele called making the coconut cupcakes “a production”—a bunch of steps, ingredients, and time—but said they were worth the effort. She was confident I was up to the task.
I wasn’t so sure.
Those who know me well might be surprised to hear that I was thinking of baking at all, given that historically, I’ve chosen to spend very little time in the kitchen, and also given that I’m far from Mother Theresa when it comes to doing things for others. But I’ve actually done a lot of boxed-mix baking over the last 15 years.
And last summer, I decided I wanted to try to up my game after tasting an incredible cake made from scratch for a friend’s 56th birthday party. I asked Susan, the baker and friend of the birthday girl, if she would teach me how to make it. She graciously offered to have me come over to her house for a tutorial.
The cake “we” made together when I went to her house was one of the best I’ve ever eaten, and I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon of baking with Susan.
Sadly, I never made that cake on my own. About three-quarters of the way through, I realized I should have been taking notes on the tips that weren’t in the written recipe, and I felt I had missed too many nuances to attempt it. Plus, it’s a big cake, and you don’t know if it’s good until you bring it somewhere and start serving it.
So, when it came time to bake for my friend Julie’s birthday a few weeks later, I retreated to my comfort zone (boxed cake mix and store-bought icing) and made the gem below.
The cake tasted good and perhaps could have come in second in a bake-off with 8-year-olds. I owe the presentation to a logistical error. On a long walk from my car to the school building, instead of carrying it horizontally in front of me, I held it at my side, like a book. When I removed the lid, I found half the icing was stuck to the top.
I was determined to do better when Julie’s birthday rolled around this year and thought Michele’s cupcakes might do the trick. I would just pay closer attention to details this time.
I decided to do a practice run first, and I’m glad I did. It was quite an eye-opener. For starters, Michele wasn’t wrong when she told me it would be labor-intensive. It took the better part of an afternoon to make a single batch of cupcakes, and I don’t think I’ve ever made a bigger mess in my kitchen.
Also, I learned that my measuring skills are atrocious. I won’t blame the Tarrytown Public Schools entirely, but I will say that the time we spent in elementary school in the 1970s preparing for America’s conversion to the metric system was not time well spent.
Siri helped fill in the gaps. I’m pretty sure she would have rolled her eyes at some of my questions if she had eyes. (“Siri, how many cups are in a pound and a half?”)
In the end, the cupcakes were good enough to serve, and I brought them to a friend’s house to share, but I decided to play it safe and make a modified version of them for school–boxed mix for the cupcakes, and the icing from the fancy recipe.
Baking for coworkers’ birthdays was something of a tradition at my last school. My friend and coworker’s wife was a fantastic baker and generously agreed to make a cake any time she was asked. People would hear there was a birthday in the English department and mysteriously show up for our lunch gatherings. Those were good days.
I’ve started to bake a little for coworker birthdays recently. The recipe for a cake I made for a friend at work in June came from my department chair in Massachusetts 25 years ago. When I was moving to Washington, D.C., in 2001, she made a cake for my going-away party. It was the first time I ever heard myself say, “I just must have this recipe!” She explained how to make it and which Bundt pan to get, and I’ve made it many times since then.
A bunch of years ago, I made that cake just before winter break and left it in the teachers’ room with an unsigned note that said “Happy Holidays!” Several coworkers asked who had made the cake, and when I told them I had, no one believed me.
In fairness, that was probably because I’ve been so vocal over the years about how I hate to cook and how my signature dish is pizza toast. But I’ve realized that baking is different. My sister, a talented cook who regularly puts together wonderful, elaborate meals, says she doesn’t love baking because it’s so calculated and usually doesn’t allow for creativity.
That’s exactly why I like it. A persnickety person like me loves a formula that has to be followed to a T. Cooking meals, even with a recipe, can yield unpredictable results and often feels like an exercise in frustration, but baking usually turns out well as long as I follow the directions.
Long before I was baking or enjoying cakes with coworkers, my mom was setting the stage. She always made sure everyone felt special on their birthday, including making their favorite meal and whatever dessert they requested.
When I started teaching at an alternative high school in 2009, where I had small classes and students with major challenges, I thought about how some of them might not have people at home making their birthday special, as my mom had done for us. I decided to bake for student birthdays.
I’m at a much bigger school these days, with many more students, so now I bake once a month to celebrate the birthdays from each class.
I mention this not to toot my own horn, but to say that I owe the idea to my mom. I started doing it a couple of years before she was diagnosed with dementia, and now that she’s gone, it feels like a way of honoring her memory. I think of her each time I bake for young people.
Truth be told, I’m generally not a people pleaser. Youngest children rarely are.
So I’ve been surprised at how much I’ve grown to enjoy doing something that makes other people happy. Maybe there is something to the studies that show that doing things for others also benefits the doer.
I also see that people often connect cakes and other baked goods with memories and traditions. My sister makes the same Bundt cake for nearly every family birthday because that’s what her people request. She offers every year to make something different, something more complex, and everyone always wants the same cake.
Likewise, a good friend of mine hosts a birthday dinner for me every year and always asks what I want. I ask for the same cake each time–the simple yellow cake with chocolate frosting that my mom used to make.
So although I’ve been making and eating homemade treats for years, it was only this summer, and the coconut cupcakes, that made me recognize that baked goods can connect us to memories of family, special occasions, and sometimes to cherished relationships with people who are no longer in our lives.
To others, this may not be “New News,” as the Kelce brothers would say, but to me it is. Whether it’s a boxed mix or made from scratch, baking for others is a simple way of putting good out into the world.
I Can See Kinda Clearly Now 