Exploding Cakes......Should They or Should They Not?
My friend Annie shared this interesting e-mail she received from a cheerfully deranged baker:
<<I swear I'm not making it up! As a bit of backstory, I was replying in a forum where another pastry chef was trying to figure out how to make a Star Wars cake actually explode. I had written that perhaps exploding cakes weren't such a good idea, so why this guy wrote ME about it.....I have no idea...... Begin forwarded message:
A questing pastry chef,
C
I wrote the guy back and told him I only specialized in non-exploding cakes. :-)
On a serious note, I have respect for cake as food. I don't believe it should have moving parts, rocket engines, or explode, a la Duff Goldman. That's sort of where I draw the line.....eating cake is the other half of the equation, and when you add all that "interactive" stuff, it just adds an aura of inedibility to me! Whatever happened to "Wow! This cake is delicious!" I'll take taste over pyrotechnics any day......>>
Anne Hjelte/Welch
Home Page: http://www.cake-o-rama.com
Blog: http://valanne.vox.com
Hear, hear, Annie. I think that the Food Network (which, by the way, I ADORE) is encouraging cake people to take their "productions" higher, bigger, louder, and scarier than is really necessary just for the sake of drama. Hey, I'm all for artistic, inventive, creative detail and the occasional coffin cake with the moldy sarcophagus inside, who WOULDN'T love that? The one Cake Challenge they had, I think it was called Extreme Cakes, was, I'm sorry, really dumb. No disrespect to the contestants, they just did what they were supposed to do but NONE of those cakes could honestly be called "Cake". They were "structures" made of edible (and non-edible) material. There was a lot of concern about the potential flammability of materials with the giant sock monkey (luv u Elisa!) and the Swiss Army Knife one could easily have pierced someone with a flying whatever.
I think exploding cakes should probably stay inside the realm of the cartoonist (perfect for a Bugs Bunny or Road Runner episode) or a pyromaniac's pleasant daydream. I say, "Keep Cakes Explosive Free". Don't be afraid of your cake.
