If you have read my profile in depth, you know that I like to bake. Specifically, I like to bake for people who like to eat. I consider my specialty to be cakes, although I do dip my measuring spoons for bars and cookies at times. I don't even say cupcakes, because I consider them to be the same as cakes. My "signature cake" is Banana Snack Cake. You are probably wondering what makes the BSC my signature cake.
In another life, when I lived at home, we had a milk cow. The drawbacks of having a cow included 6 A.M. milking, poopy tail swishes in the face, and getting stepped on. Advantages included all the fresh milk a family could drink, plenty of cream, and the opportunity to make butter, among other things. When our cow dried up, we couldn't bear to drink store milk, it tasted like water. To solve our problem, I made a deal with a neighboring dairy man: I traded him homemade cookies for milk. This was a sweet deal all around. Every couple of days I would go down to the dairy with a couple dozen cookies and our milk can, drop off the cookies in his office, and go home with a gallon of milk. This lasted until his wife learned of our deal - she had been wondering why he had been gaining weight! After that, I gave the cookies to her and she froze them. That was probably the beginning of my baking career.
Things really started cooking after I bought one of those cookbooks at the cash register - you know, the impulse buy. It was a cake recipe book by Pillsbury, with a picture of a whole wheat Bundt cake (quick flash to My Big Fat Greek Wedding) on the cover. It was loaded with good recipes. Not knowing how to make anything else, I often opted to bring a dessert to dinners and potlucks, and soon I had developed quite a repertoire.
My repertoire has grown a lot since those beginning days. Now I frantically write down recipes as I watch Martha Stewart (Triple Chocolate Brownie Cupcakes are a hit with the younger crowd!), scan the Internet for unusual recipes (Green Tomato Cake is delicious, no matter how it sounds), and beg for recipes of desserts of which I have heard rumors (Pink Lemonade Pie). Every once in a while I go back to that original Pillsbury book and find something new and outstanding (Coconut Macaroon Cupcakes) or go out on a limb and try a recipe included on a box label (German Chocolate Cake). For a while I was on a tear making cheesecakes, and last summer I made Chocolate Truffle Bombs, to the delight of my daughter.
There are some people who really love my cakes, and I do something special for their birthdays. I give them "cake credits". I make a card and write in there something like, "This Card is Worth X number of Cakes". I keep track on a chart at home of how many cakes each person has. Whenever they want, they call me up and order a cake. I have given them a list of my ever-expanding repertoire, and I make notes on my own list, to remember who likes which one, and if they like it with or without the frosting, nuts, etc. To get back to my original point (can you remember what it is?), the cake that gets requested the most is Banana Snack Cake. Certain individuals like this recipe made into cupcakes, because that means automatic portion control. Others like the recipe as it is, in a glorious 9 X 13-inch cake pan, so the pieces can be custom cut.
Recently I agreed to make cakes for a birthday celebration to which over 100 people attended. I have never made four cakes in one day before, and I developed an assembly line attitude to get the job done. The initial step is to whip egg whites into stiff peaks. Stiff peaks used to scare me until I started making the Coconut Macaroon Cupcakes, and now they are a piece of cake. Pun intended. So instead of whipping up the egg whites in the mixer, then adding the rest of the ingredients and messing up the bowl, I whipped up four sets of egg whites and had them sitting around the kitchen in various bowls. Then I dirtied the bowl four times in a row. It surprised me that it was an all day enterprise, but frosting is not something I make very often (see Dixie Spice Cake). All that baking and cooking and then everything has to cool before the two mediums come together. People were horrified that I would make four cakes in a day, especially after (I didn't tell you this part) I made a batch of Ultimate Brownies and a batch of German Chocolate Cupcakes the day before. I don't see it that way. I like to bake.
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