Better late Than Never

So here it is, May 31st and I'm just making my way back here.
Every time I say I'm not going to get so involved in a film project (or TV show or commercial or whatever) to the point of pushing my personal life aside, I find myself actually believing it to be true. Yet here I am, 3 weeks later than I said it would be, mail piled sky high, laundry even higher, fridge is half-full (with only half of what is needed to make anything of substance) and me eating my words once again.

I won't go into the details of why I am not going to be finishing this film project to it's fruition, but suffice to say it is a blessing in disguise. Finally some time to devote to baking and writing and experimenting. But most of all, eating well and enjoying it.

I promised to make a birthday cake for a co-worker: cookbooks scattered across the counter with me calculating which part of which recipe will marry with the part of another to allow me to use GF ingredients and make a cake that passes muster with all. That cake never got made.
I did managed to squeeze a few hours out of another Sunday afternoon to bake a cake for a baby shower for the girlfriend of a dear friend in LA who happened to be visiting her little sister in NY for a ballet recital. A luscious and decadent Victorian Sponge Cake piled high with Cream Cheese Frosting. And since it was a baby shower, the requisite pink plastic bambinos were necessary. I didn't tell anyone they were left over from a public art installation that I participated in this past summer on Roosevelt Island. My contribution to 'The Encampment' art installation detailed the history of the Foundling Hospital during the late 1800's and explained the high mortality rate of the infants unfortunate enough to be born there or transferred there. I was going to use all the plastic babies to represent actual lives lost but in typical fashion, I ran out of time. My project was bigger in scope than time allowed. So what to do with bags and bags of teeny tiny plastic babies? Why, use them to decorate a cake for a baby shower!

I had the brilliant idea of using pink cotton candy to spin around the cake and let the babies float upon (there was no way I was making pink icing!) It looked beautiful. When I did it. At home. Before traveling across town. By the time dinner was over and the cake was to be served, the cotton candy had started to melt. It was still quite lovely, but not the vision I had imagined. definitely a decorating technique to be saved to just prior to serving. But oh was it good!
So good in fact that after everyone had had their first slice and a few were ready for a second, the baby mama's Father had decided to claim the remainder of the cake for himself. I'm not sure if it was a compliment or just peculiar manners, but he decided the cake needed no icing and began to scrape it off the entire cake, leaving blobs of my beautiful butter-cream based cream cheese icing (I never said it was low fat!) in piles on the platter. He said good cake needs no icing. So I suppose I'll end on that: my first GF Victorian Sponge Cake so good it was preferred naked! Like the baby's bum it was celebrating.