Week 7: Nana's Baking Class

 

I feel like almost anyone you ask will tell you one of their fondest childhood memories and it will be from their grandparent’s house. For me, this is definitely the case. I grew up living with my grandparents until I was about seven. I have tons and tons of memories from their house and everything I did there.

I grew up with a grandmother (we will call her nana), who baked cakes in her spare time. When I say she baked cakes, I don’t mean a box of cake mix and a tub of store-bought frosting in the classic glass Pyrex dish. I mean bakery style, wildly intricate details and cakes that had waterfalls in them. I was fascinated every time she pulled out her big, old plastic tub of cake supplies from the basement. I craved the days where she made cakes. I wanted so badly to learn her every move when it came to making and decorating cakes. I would always take her scraps of cut up cake that she trimmed off the sides, the extra frosting she didn’t use, and all of the leftover decorations to make something of my own. I thought it was so cool that I could color the frosting to make it whatever color I wanted. I loved all of the sugar flowers and gum paste characters she had for me to go through and choose the perfect things to top my creations.

Since she knew how much I loved watching her, she decided to have her own “cake class” as she called it. She picked me up from school on a Friday and I went home with her. Little did I know, I was in for the best treat ever. She had planned a whole day of teaching me how to make a cake, showing me how to decorate it, basically giving me a class on exactly what she did.

I woke up Saturday morning to the smell of warm vanilla cake filling the hallway and my room. I rolled out of the bed, still fairly groggy but excited to see what she was up to. I walked into the kitchen and instantly recognized the sound of her KitchenAid mixer whipping up a batch of frosting. This frosting was, and is, infamous in our family and friend group. If you tasted that frosting, you knew exactly where that cake came from. Anyway, I hear the mixer whipping frosting, I smell the most delicious and warm scent of vanilla cake. The freshly baked cakes always had this super sweet scent from the Baker's Joy cooking spray she would use in her pans. I was so excited to see what she had planned.

Once the steaming hot cakes were cooled down, it was time to start! Nana grabbed a cake board, plopped a dollop of frosting onto it and set it on the counter. I remember staring at it wondering why in the world she just smeared frosting onto a cardboard circle. Then, she dropped the cake gently onto the middle of the board, right on top of the frosting. Turns out it acts as a glue and holds the cake down onto the board better.

Once the first layer was on the cardboard circle, she started smearing frosting all over the middle of the cake she just laid down. Then, she dropped the spatula back into the frosting bowl and turned to me as if to say “you’re turn”. I grabbed the next layer of sweet-smelling cake off the cooling rack and gently placed it onto the layer nana just frosted. I tried my hardest to make sure the layers were even so my cake wouldn’t end up tipping over. I took a big dollop of frosting just like I saw nana do and smeared it all over the top of the layer I just added. I was so proud of myself. Until I realized my layer was sliding right off the bottom layer because I was using full strength and force to spread this frosting onto such delicate cakes. For the next layer I made sure to take it slower.

Finally, all of the layers are assembled. Now what? I had no idea what to do so I just stood there staring at this three-layer cake I just made. Nana told me I needed to frost the entire outside now. I had to use the white frosting first and then I was allowed to color it and decorate how I wanted. I iced the whole cake, very fast so I could get to the fun part, so as you can imagine the cake was rather…lumpy. I missed several spots, so they were just naked cake pieces, I overdid it on a few spots, hence the lumps.

I was happy with the job I did. I was done and it was finally time to decorate! I was ecstatic. I immediately started rifling through nana’s entire collection of food coloring, trying to pick the BEST colors for this cake. For some reason I settled on this oddly bright orange, a pale baby pink, and teal. Yup. Teal. At the time, this sounded like a great plan. I started whisking these little bowls of frosting with food coloring. The orange was bright and colorful immediately after I started stirring. The teal was the same. The pink, kind of blah. It wasn’t my favorite. So I decided hot pink was the better choice and quickly added massive globs of food dye to the bowl. Sure enough it was bright pink within seconds. I had all of my colors and I was ready to to go. I started frosting the teal on the bottom half first. Then for some terrible reason orange followed it. Do you know what happens when you mix teal and orange? Not good things. In the end I had a brown cake with some hot pink spots and sprinkles all over it. Also I should probably add that I used about 14 packages (ranging from 6 per pack to 12 per pack) hard sugar flowers and shapes. The cake was terrible but I LOVED it. I was so proud and overjoyed that I made my very own “nana cake”.

In the end, I really believe that nana having her “cake class” is what made me fall in love with baking. I still bake often, and I have definitely perfected my frosting colors and decorating technique. Thankfully. It’s memories like this that come to mind when I pull out my KitchenAid mixer and start using all of the thing’s nana taught me. Now, I take her cakes and treats and show her how great she did teaching me what she knew. Anytime I hear a mixer going now, I instantly smell the sweet vanilla cakes and that “secret recipe” frosting. Every time.