Here are some interesting tidbits I recently learned about Dr. Seuss. Seuss was Theodore Geisel’s mother’s maiden name, which he adopted as a pen name in college after being fired from the school humour magazine for drinking gin during Prohibition. He added the title Doctor because his father had always wanted him to study medicine. His career writing children’s books took a detour during World War II when he began publishing political cartoons denouncing Hitler and Mussolini. He also enlisted, and produced a series of animated army training films.
However, by far my favourite factoid about Dr. Seuss is that his drawings contain no straight lines! That means that no matter how messily you recreate one of his designs, you’re never going to get it wrong. For someone who shudders at the words “Scrabble cake” with its requisite 32 stick-straight lines, a Dr. Seuss cake is beautifully liberating.
I loved the challenge of incorporating elements from three different books – The Cat in the Hat, The Lorax and Oh, The Places You’ll Go! The hat was made out of Rice Krispies treats. It’s malleable and relatively light compared to solid cake or fondant. You wouldn’t think that the greatest difficulty would be actually finding Rice Krispies to make into treats. But it turns out that Israelis aren’t all that fond of the classic cereal and it’s nearly impossible to track it down. The Krispies used here were actually imported from Canada by trusty couriers. This, you’ll agree, is not a practical long-term solution. Sending crates of it in someone’s lift, however…
The second challenge was in recreating the rainbow stripes from the cover of Oh, The Places You’ll Go! While flexible, fondant, especially a wide slice covered in individual narrow coloured strips, does not naturally incline to spiral.
The best part of the cake, of course, was the luscious chocolate cake inside, filled with and covered in chocolate mocha ganache.
(And no, the recipient’s name is not misspelled. Mooriam happens to be particularly partial to cows. Well, if you parents go and name you that…)
