When I bake, I get in the zone, and anything that presents an obstacle is removed without ceremony or politeness. Why had I agreed to do this cake? Why here? Why this oven? And with the electricity, so went the oven. The electricity in the gas range had died. My sister called the host who was now running errands. Panicked, I realized the temperature was falling rapidly. I lowered the temperature and put on the convection. And started measuring out the next set of ingredients. I whipped up more banana bread and some cheesecake to make a filling for the chocolate cake. I lost half of it to an unwanted cake dome (middle rise 2x-3x higher than rest of cake).
The heat in the oven was too intense, the pan too thin and it rose inconsistently.
The chocolate cake was a semi-disaster, too. When I was checking one of my banana breads, it too slipped from my grip and landed upside-down on the oven door. I whipped out two cakes in rapid succession: Grandma's Chocolate and my 'famous' Banana Bread (I'll add here that none of my output was gluten-free or dairy-free). My sister kindly cleaned it up for me while I got the rest of my cakes organized. For some reason, as I tried to move the buttermilk from the store room to the house, it slipped from my grip and fell to the floor, making a sickening thud and spilling its contents. In Germany, some buttermilk is package like yogurt, with a simple foil lid over a paper cup. The first sign of things to come was The Dropping Of The Buttermilk. But I had my oven gauge that would help me ensure the oven would stay at the correct temperature for baking my cakes.
This one takes 45 seconds to catch and hold" "It is illegal in Germany for a stove to just automatically light when you turn the knob. "We had to get it retrofitted in Holland. Pointing to it, he says, "This oven is a piece of crap." And then he showed us the Viking Range, which proudly anchored the kitchen. When we arrived our host was just returning home after dropping his kids off at school. Though she had a lot to do to get ready for her wedding, now only 3 days away, she helped me with some of my mise-en-place. The next morning my sister escorted me on the S-Bahn (the subway) to the 'burbs.
#Master cupcake baker and succession plan full
The host showed us where to store the things - a basement pantry full of specialty baking items and an outdoor storage room with its own refrigerator. The kitchen was huge, with an American-style refrigerator, a two-compartment restaurant style sink, and the feature of the room, a retrofitted American Viking stove with four burners and a center grill. My sister and her fiance met me at the airport and drove me first to the grocery store to buy ingredients ("Germany's Supermarket of the Year, 2007) to the home where I would be baking and assembling the cakes, a gorgeous modern home in a comfortable suburb about 1 hour by subway from my sister's place. The bag weighed 48.5 lbs at the Delta ticket counter. I collected chocolate, knives, equipment, bottles of vanilla, cheap bags of confectioners sugar, baking pans, gum paste, dowels, an oven thermometer in Fahrenheit, vanilla beans, more chocolate, cardboard cake boxes, cardboard cake circles, a variety of piping bags and tips - anything to make shopping a less prominent feature of my work. A blessing, I thought.įor days leading up to my departure from the US, I collected things I thought would be helpful in making the cake in Germany and would save money on ingredients, priced in the unfavorable Euro. Because it was to be a smaller wedding - I would need to bake for no more than 60 people - I would not be baking a mile-high cake with more internal complexity than a car engine. She knew better than to request red velvet (I have made it three times in my life, under duress each time, for people affiliated with Coca-Cola) or a combination of chocolate and raspberry, regardless of how well it is liked by "everyone". After wrangling over the cake and the cake flavors, we finally arrived at a combination that both the bride and the baker did not find objectionable. Its been one of those days when neither us wants to take credit for suggesting that I make the wedding cake.Įverything was promising enough at the outset, at least superficially. During stress, we each blame the other for suggesting that I make the cake. During good times, we each claim the idea as our own. My sister is getting married and I promised to make the wedding cake. I have come to Berlin for a single reason. I'm in Berlin, Germany, in a chic apartment in Mitte in the former East Berlin, and everyone else is asleep.Īnd then I remember yesterday: the cake day to end all cake days. The sleeping pill I've taken has only worked for half its promised life and I'm awake and ready to start my day. I begin writing this post suffering from jet-lag four hours into my slumber, I wake up suddenly, not sure where I am or what time it is.
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