vegan baker

I am on this long “what do I do with my life?” backpacking trip. I do know that this story’s been done to death, but I went to a particularly impractical college, and my boyfriend was all ready to pick up and travel, and, really, what else was I doing? I was working at Pottery Barn Kids, seriously. So I am in Chile.

And I think I know what I want to do with my life. I want to bake cakes.

I have been vegan for about a decade, and I have worked in ice cream stores about that long. I worked at one all during college where I was the store manager for a summer, which was stressful and stupid, but the one thing I really enjoyed was making the cakes. In good ice cream stores, a “cake” is made of ice cream, chocolate crunchies, whipped cream and enrobing chocolate, plus sprinkles and other dinky crap, and I became master of these things. Behold, the best wedding cake I ever made:

I know it isn’t the most glamorous photo. Remember, this thing was solid ice cream. It weighed over 70 pounds. I had to stand in the deep freezer to pipe that whipped cream on, and the sucker nearly melted on my lap on the way to the reception. But you know what was cool? It actually looked like a wedding cake. And they loved it.