vegan baker

I hate my birthday. I know it is cheesy and sort of melodramatic to feel this way (”oh look at me, I hate to be looked at!”) but I always have. They’ve improved since I switched from a partner who forgot them to one who agonizes over everything he does for me, but I still hate the premise of being looked at and talked to by everyone who happens to know. But while I hate my own birthday, I do love celebrating when other people have them.
    And it’s not just birthdays, really, it is whatever gets you excited. The wonderful thing about making cakes is that people nearly always buy them for happy things. I have brought tears to the eyes of old ladies with their grandchildren’s christening cakes, I’ve made a sister literally shout out with joy at the sight of her younger sibling’s graduation cake (it was a little much), and I’ve made ridiculously debaucherous 21st birthday cakes which I’m certain got big laughs. These are all events I’d have hated had I been central to them, but which were great when all I did was sculpt the cake and step aside.

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.