Alright so don't kill me, as much shit as I talk about not being a pastry chef well here I am being a part-time pastry chef. I know my family and close friends are so sick of hearing me say that but then every time they look up, I am making treats or baking some kind of cake somewhere. But whatever that is neither or there and people change! (Essence if you are reading this LMAO). I tried my hand at a Dallas Cowboy cake that somebody inquired about a few days ago. They sent me a picture, I took a a second to think and said fuck it, why the hell not? The bottom layer is a traditional yellow cake, which I love because it has a similar taste to butter cake which is my absolute favorite. and the top layers are marble. I could never get into marble cake but hey, to each is own. I can make a decent basic decorative cake.
While baking this cake I turned on my Jhene Aiko pandora station and could not help but think of one my exes. He is a true die hard Dallas Cowboy fan and he will be until the day he's six feet under. I was thinking about what it would have been like if he and I were still together and I was in the kitchen making his favorite sports team cake but for somebody other than him LOL. He's dramatic so he probably would have jokingly scolded me. A thought like this hadn't crossed my mind in ages but these are my very real and candid thoughts. This cake made me think about how much he used to make me laugh when he would be watching the Cowboys games, yelling at the tv, trying to teach me football language and talking shit on twitter. I used to think he wanted to be a Dallas Cowboy at one point and he probably still does. It always amazes me how something you are doing or the music you listen to can easily trigger a memory of a place and time you were once in, with the person in which you shared that space and time with.
These things remind you that sometimes no matter how much you are over a person, pieces of them are still very much engraved in you some way, some how. I thought about sending him a picture of the cake as I took a very brief mental stroll down memory lane and then suddenly decided against it. When I am baking and cooking my mind drifts off into the strangest corridors in my brain. The files and tabs that all of a sudden open up while I am cooking are what put me in the zone to produce a hell of a product.
Anyway, frosting and fondant are both a bit tricky for me though. I guess I haven't frosted enough cakes or covered enough cakes in fondant just yet to get the cakes as immaculate as I would like them. I think I am going to start taking classes once or twice a month at my local bakery to perfect frosting cakes and covering them in fondant. Aside from my chef eye and noticing every single detail, I can assure my clients every single time that the taste of my cakes will always, always, always produce an uncontrollable, overwhelming warm fuzzy feeling. This actually is the second cake I made because the first one was whack and it wasn't as aesthetically pleasing as I would have liked for it to be. SO . STARTED THE WHOLE THING OVER!
I love sharing my pastry journey with you guys because in this sharing I get to purge some of the stories of my past love life. As always I hope you enjoy. Follow me on instagram @chefmorghan to see how this cake was made. Until next time ...
With Love & Food,
-Chef Morghan