I never had any intention of becoming a cake decorator. I didn’t demonstrate even the slightest artistic talent growing up and majored in political science in university. In fact, I was a journalist for a number of years after moving to Israel and anticipated a career writing stories about local goings on, government crises, where to find the best falafel…..
When that didn’t quite live up to my expectations, I turned to baking and when my niece was born, I decided to debut at the Kiddush celebrating her arrival. I needed to wow them.
My father, a radiologist who had never baked or decorated a cake, came up with possibly the most absurd, time-consuming, labour-intensive, yet effective method to transfer a picture from paper to cake. Why not, he reasoned, enlarge a picture with simple lines, poke holes around the perimeter, then place the picture on top of the cake and repeat the hole-poking procedure so that the design would be reproduced. All you would need to do then is connect the dots! With no clue about how to make or use icing, the easiest (!) solution was to painstakingly place chocolate sprinkles end to end – with tweezers, no less – to create the picture.
Remarkably, the (peculiarly spot-less) Dalmatian pictured above took only three hours or so to reproduce. I was immensely proud of this achievement – so much so that I took up a position near the dessert table and watched hawk-eyed as the guests approached, admired, and contemplated lifting a knife to cut into my masterpiece. One look at my face was enough to convince them to taste the chocolate chip cookies instead.
Many years and one excellent camera later, I no longer take it to heart when someone destroys a cake I’ve laboured over. It does help that I usually just drop off the cake and run before that first ruthless cut.
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