Cake anyone?

Cake.  Cake is one of these items that has slowly crept into and secretly held fast  in the annals of human development; popping up now and then as a reminder of its importance and place in history.  Cake – and I mean “good cake” is not just a thing or an item that there to be overlooked , but instead serves as a culinary symbol or representation of something bigger that demands itself to be present at all of the most important events of life.  It has secured its place in the common vernacular and mindset.  We’ve all heard “Let them eat cake!” “Have your cake and eat it too” and “Cake or Death?” and now there are television programs like “Cake Boss” dedicated not only to the cakes, but to those who toil tediously day after day planning and baking the perfect cake for just the right occasion.  It Italy and in the United States, a wedding cake costs hundreds to thousands of dollars just to get the perfect cake for the occasion.  And what about birthday parties!  What is a birthday without a birthday cake? It is just a day.  A day with gifts, mind you, but just a day all the same.  Think about it, the cake is really the star of and celebration.  It’s never just put on the table before people come as a display; sandwiched between the deviled eggs and Swedish meatballs.  It is brought out and presented with prodigious pageantry at the pinnacle moment.  When the cake enters the room, the lights are dimmed and we all go “ahhh….ooohh...” Followed by comments on the frosting – too much, too little, too sweet, too many sprinkles, etc. Hours of sharing and comparison. In fact, I can remember my 3^rd birthday party cake – a Mickey Mouse ice cream cake from Carvel’s – and will go as far as to say that if Vice President Nixon had given a Carvel to Khrushchev in 1959 during his US visit – the Cuban missile crisis would have never happened.  Cake has that power.

Of course, the type of cake that I have briefly described above is a typical “European” cake.  A cake style brought from the Old World to the New World.  So imagine how surprised I was t find Western style bakeries in Seoul, South Korea in 1995.  I would walk by these bakeries and in the windows was amazed and bedazzled by the most ornate, beautifully decorated masterpieces I had ever seen.  White – WHITE – frosting like new fallen snow, ornately decorated with a fruit selection of kiwi, mandarin wedges, and enormous sized cherries.  Absolutely gorgeous and not terribly expensive.

One day a local colleague was having birthday party and there – on the center table - was one of these beautiful cakes.  So as I walk into the main office where everyone is and people start telling me to grab a plate and some chopsticks and have a slice of cake.  “Chopsticks?” I thought “rather odd way of eating cake – mean with all that frosting on it, but well, hey! When in Rome…”  So I take a plate and chopsticks and whoever was having the birthday that day, cut into the cake to give me a slice.  And what a slice it was!  At first I was embarrassed to have such a big slice, I mean, it wasn’t my birthday (in fact, I had no idea of whose birthday it was) and being one of the new guys there….well, it was an honor that they would serve me such a slice.   A large slice with extra frosting and fruit on it! I began to salivate.

“Wow! Angel food cake!” I thought “I haven’t had that in years!  I love a good angel food cake and this one looks perfect.”  The inside was two layers of pristine and spongy white with a delicate golden crisp crust between the cake and the frosting – like caramelized sugar – separated by a thick, healthy layer of frosting between.  And the frosting! The frosting was white and creamy, yet held its form perfectly when slicing the cake as if not to disturb the labor of decorations that adorned this splendid creation bringing it into a state of royal perfection.  The flirtatious tango of the brightly glazed kiwi and mandarin slices, daintily making their way to and fro across the surface of the cake, interweaving between the swirling majestic peaks of lightly whipped frosting and all kept in place and secured by the old bakers standbys the cherry – cherries the size of cherry tomatoes - interwoven and painstaking placed just so as to create a harmonious balance of color and appease even the most critical of clients.  This was not just a cake, but a work of art, dare I say, a labor of epicurean love.  It would be a shame to cut into this cake.    

And really, it was a shame to cut into THIS particular cake as it should have remained in the store window where it came from.  One of the things that I have learned in life – especially when traveling in Asia – is that while “imitation may be the highest form of flattery” it is often and by far not the most accurate.   Kinda like a “knock off” Rolex.  On the outside it looks like a Rolex, but on the inside you find has plastic gears and held together with chewing gum.  Evidently, to my great surprise, this can be done with food as well, but of course, I did not realize any of this until I had already put a VERY LARGE bite into my mouth because I couldn’t cut it with the chopsticks. 

You see, the “sponge cake” in question was not angel food cake.  In fact, it was not cake at all, but instead white bread – like Wonderbread white bread.  No sugar added…at all.  No sweetener added…at all.  Nothing.  Nada.  Thus, it was two rather spongy tasteless slices of white bread.  The “frosting” was butter – not butter cream, but unsweetened, natural, no salt added, artery clogging butter and a LOT of it – as in ½ inch thick (after all it was used to decorate a “cake”).  The kiwi and mandarin slices were real fruit (and not decorative plastic), but were congealed and securely fasten in place with a thick shellac of harden, unsweetened gelatin.  And for the pièce de résistance the cherry that looked so much like a cherry tomato…WAS INDEED a cherry tomato covered in the same thick hardened gelatin.   

Now in order to fully comprehend the level of disappointment after the emotional buildup that had taken place to this – after all it is cake – I ask you to try to remember back to a special Christmas of your childhood.  Come on, you can do it.  The Christmas where there was that one special toy you saw in the catalog, that you begged your parents for.  The collection of Star Wars figures or a new diorama kit or whatever it was that you REALLY had to have!  Not only did you promise to be good for the remainder of the year, but went out of your way to make sure your room was clean, took out the trash, brushed you hair and parted it in the way that you hated, but your mother loved, etc. and then waited for that blessed day to arrive.  Early Christmas morning you sneak out of bed to the tree and there is THE box – the exact shape of the gift of your dreams.  Your hands tremble with anticipation as you stealthy unwrap the box as so no one will know.  You slowly open the box of delight only instead of the long anticipated gift, you find….your pet hamster “Sparky” that went missing two weeks before…and it’s not breathing.  That was roughly the same emotional shock and letdown as I had once wrapping my tongue around this culinary monstrosity.

What I thought was going to be a sickly sweet and decadent treat ended up being two large slices of white bread smothered and smeared with over a ½ inch of butter and laded with a lacquered, tasteless fruit assortment. This was not the sort of cake you find on “Cake Boss”! This was the sort of cake you find on “Animal Planet”!

“So how is the cake?” she asked

 My eyes widening from shock and cheeks bulging. “mmmmm” I managed.

“Is the cake good?” she repeated

My eyes darting around the room looking for the nearest wastebasket and my tongue involuntarily trying to push out of the twitching corners of my mouth so as not to trigger my gag reflex.  “You can’t be rude.  You have to eat this” I told myself “they’re all looking at you.  But how can I eat this without vomiting?  Wouldn’t throwing up in the middle of the office on someone’s birthday be even ruder?” I began to consider my options. “mmmmmmm” I repeated, giving the thumbs up symbol “can I have some water?” I mumbled out of my full mouth.

And so as I stood in the middle of the room, I slowly finished off a pound of butter with white bread, cherry tomatoes, kiwi and mandarin, and a gallon of water, I kept thinking to myself that this was some sort of office hazing for the new guy.  No one could really like this, right?  But I lived and learned.  In fact, I carefully avoided passing the bakery in case in a low moment of forgetfulness or desperate sorrow that I may be tempted to try a slice again.  I warned others to do the same.  My arteries began to unclog and my stomach and I eventually were on speaking terms again.  Life is good when you know what you’re getting into.

One or two years later, my parents came to visit my wife and me in Seoul.  I thought about giving them one of these cakes, but really…that would be too cruel (well, that and the fact that they heard the above story before)   One night, after work I came home and my wife and parents were in the kitchen cooking and over dinner we discussed the days that we had had.  My parents told stories of the museums and various sites that they saw and how amazed they were by Seoul – how it was combining the Western culture while keeping the traditional customs – highly neat and très chic.  Shopping malls, ice cream parlors, Buddhist temples, etc.  Then after dinner my mother walks out of the kitchen with a huge grin on her face and hands behind her back and proudly proclaims “look what we bought today!” Looking up, I expected to see a souvenir of sorts “We passed a bakery and we just couldn’t resist and bought you this!” revealing…(of course)….a large cake for desert as that day was my birthday.  They didn’t believe me when I told them before.  They do now.