Real Moms Bake Their Own: Lessons from the Front Lines of Cake-Making

 

 

I make my own cakes first of all because I like to know exactly what my kids are eating. Apart from the additives that come in store-bought mixes and mass-manufactured cakes, I’m always reading about food scandals here – so I prefer to make my own. The other reason is out of guilt: Where I come from, we have a tradition of making our own cakes, and I was feeling bad that I hadn’t done that for my own children here in Beijing.

 

 

My first cake was a Barbie cake. The thrill in my daughter’s eyes when she saw it was indescribable … and it was even better when she showed it to her friends. She was so proud of the cake and so proud to tell her friends that her mother made it by hand.

 

 

Not exactly. A did a few trial runs, and looking back on it, it looked so easy … but there was a lot of screaming and swearing and ordering people to get out of the kitchen during the process. However, once it was there, even though it wasn’t perfect, I was very proud because people actually recognized what I made.

 

 

Actually, including the trial runs, it took an aggregate time of about 48 hours to complete it. Nowadays I’ve improved my track record considerably – from top to bottom I can make a cake almost in any form you can imagine in a bit less than eight hours. The cakes are no longer just cakes for me: they’re more like art. Luckily for me, people like to eat my art.

 

 

I’ve made the Death Star, a Teddy Bear, a shark, Spongebob … I look for a new challenge each time. To date the biggest challenge was a four-tiered castle. My older child is totally into the movie “Brave” and she wanted a castle like the one in the film – and by then my seven-year-old was pretty jaded over the ‘mom makes the homemade birthday cake’ bit, so she wanted to be a part of making it as well. That adds a new level of complexity to working in the kitchen. She ended up doing an awesome job and we had so much fun together.

 

 

 

I made a shark cake on request for my daughter Asta's third birthday. I thought in order for it to be authentic, the inside should be red, but when the kids cut into it at the party, they started screaming “the shark is bleeding! The shark is bleeding!” It took a while for me to get them to realize it was make believe, but eventually they got over it and enjoyed the cake.

 

 

Then there was the first time I tried to make a castle for my daughter: I used a mold, but I couldn’t get the cake out of the mold and it broke in several places in the process of taking it out. I managed to salvage it by covering it up with some grass and flowers made out of frosting, so in the end it was still a hit with the kids.

 

 

Not really. I bought a good rolling pin and a knife, and I already had a decent baking pan, but that’s basically all I started with. I have an old, crappy oven that was installed probably 20 years ago in my flat. My most loved piece of equipment is my KitchenAid – which does all the mixing for me. It’s not a “must-have,’ but it makes life easier. You don’t really need anything but a knife, a rolling pin and a pan to get started.

 

 

It’s really just a basic intro to give people a taste of what it’s like to make your own cake, and give people the satisfaction of bringing home something they’ve made by hand. Unfortunately we won’t have the full eight hours it would take to make everything right then and there from scratch, but everyone’s going to walk away with basic framework for making any of these cakes at home, as well as developing some passion for the art of cake-making. Participants will also get to do the part that people really see – the exterior decorations.