My Life In Cake on WYFF News 4!

I was on TV at 7 this morning in Greenville!
It was quite an adventure.

Sweet Hearts and Broken Hearts

Valentine's day heart cakes (amazing photo courtesy of Becca Johnson):


And more sweethearts:
Anne Fitten Glen, of Edgy Mama fame, wrote an awesome article that was in the Citizen Times yesterday:

(photo courtesy of the Asheville Citizen-Times)

Short Street Cakes to throw Mardi Gras grand opening
small-business profile

Anne Fitten Glenn • published February 15, 2009 12:15 am


WEST ASHEVILLE – Fat Tuesday seems an appropriate day to open a cake shop.
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“My great love of food is rooted in traditions of celebration. Southerners celebrate Mardi Gras in a unique way, and there are lots of former New Orleans residents in Asheville, so we'll celebrate by opening the cake shop,” said Jodi Rhoden, owner of Short Street Cakes.

To be precise, the shop will open two days before Fat Tuesday, on Feb. 22, to coincide with Asheville's Mardi Gras parade downtown. Short Street Cakes' festivities will include free Mardi Gras beads, live music, a cake raffle, the launch of a new, expanded menu and the debut of the newest cake flavor, the Mardi Gras Queen Cake.

Rhoden, 32, started Short Street Cakes out of her family's home on Short Street in 2005 soon after her son was born. She baked her goods in a vintage 1963 Frigidaire Flair oven that a neighbor gave her. The Flair now holds a place of honor in the new shop, and Rhoden has graduated to cooking with professional Garland Sunfire ovens.

Rhoden amassed several years of baking experience, initially with a nonprofit program in Boston. A social worker by training, she taught baking as a job skill. After moving to Asheville in 2001, the Georgia native worked for West End Bakery, where she learned to decorate cakes.

She claims that her lack of formal training means she “tends to bake more like my grandmother than like a pastry chef.” She touts her cakes as all-natural, made from scratch, and created “with love.”

Rhoden started making wedding cakes for customers from home and developed a word-of-mouth clientele. She then added birthday cakes and cupcakes to her repertoire. Rhoden realized she needed a bigger production space. So she took Mountain Bizworks' Foundations course and developed a business plan for a production and retail shop.

“I thought I could continue working out of my house, but I realize I need to be able to provide what people want,” Rhoden said.

And they seem to want cake. Rhoden's blog, My Life in Cake, has increased visitors to her Web site and gained her a local following. Her blog won four awards at blog conglomerate Blogasheville's annual awards ceremony in September.

“Blogging and social networking have been and remain affordable ways to advertise. Blogging's an accessible way for me to be creative and write as well,” she said. In addition to her business, Rhoden also writes about the history of cake and how people celebrate through food and in particular through cake.

Customer Ada Volkmer discovered Short Street Cakes after she and a friend, Heather Rayburn, went on a quest to find the best cupcake in Asheville. They wrote about the adventure on Rayburn's now-defunct blog.

Rayburn wrote, “Holy Moses on a cracker! This woman knows how to bake a confection of pure, unadulterated endorphin-filled love. This is Jodi Rhoden, blogger of My Life in Cake, and the best cupcake maker in Asheville. Hands down!”

While picking up triple chocolate ganache cupcakes for a party recently, Volkmer said, “There's not a day that I don't dream about Jodi's cupcakes. The cupcake-to-icing ratio is perfect.”

Rhoden continues to combine social justice practices with baking. Her business goals include offering fair wages, sourcing as many ingredients locally as possible, and using minimal and green packaging, while keeping her prices affordable.

For example, she collects vintage cake tins, and customers can put down a deposit, take a cake home in one of her tins and return it later, eliminating the need for disposable packaging.

“I see this as a great opportunity for me to reactivate my social beliefs and commitments while making a living as a baker,” Rhoden said.

Minicupcakes cost 80 cents to $1, while standard-sized cupcakes cost $2-$2.50. The store will have cupcakes on hand six days a week, plus a whole cake or two. Most cakes need to be pre-ordered and cost $25-$50 depending on the size and flavors. Wedding cakes are priced per serving.

And my sweet family brought me flowers and Waffle House breakfast on Valentines Day:


(and ate some cupcakes).

In the broken heart department: my computer took a 7-day vacation at Charlotte Street Computers. Its taking me some time to catch up. If you've contacted me about a wedding, and haven't heard back, hang on, I'm coming!

The soft opening at the cake shop is going beautifully. Short Street Cakes is getting lots and lots of love. And the feeling is mutual.
xo
jodi

Short Street Cakes in Verve Magazine!

Check out the brand new Nov/Dec issue of Verve Magazine- there's a sweet article on cupcakes on pages 46 and 47, featuring me, Short Street Cakes, and my Frigidaire Flair. Here's an exerpt:

"Rhoden of Short Street Cakes says the cupcake, compared to a cake, has a favorable moist-to-crunchy ratio that could help explain its ascending status in the public’s hearts and mouths. “They bake differently,” she says. “You get a little cake and a lot of crust. People like crust. And you get a lot of icing and a lot of cake in each bite.” And then there are the practical reasons behind the cupcake’s popularity. You don’t need a plate or a fork to eat one. “It’s a portable passion,” says Corley. Self-indulgent self-restraint may be the last word on the subject. Unless it’s been a really bad day, says Andrea McMullen, “one single person can’t eat a whole cake.”

ALT-CUPCAKE: Jodi Rhoden bakes her cupcakes in a retro 1963 Frigidaire Flair oven and makes sugar-free, gluten-free and vegan versions, along with traditional recipes. Rhoden represents the indie end of the Asheville cupcake spectrum, baking her cakes and cupcakes to order out of her home on a 1963 Frigidaire Flair oven given to her by an elderly neighbor. Her products start with local apples, organic local eggs, locally milled organic flour and organic spices. For Rhoden, an activist and former social worker, the choices are not just about the flavor. “It’s about contributing to the local economy and creating a new business model,” she says. “I want to bring other producers along with me.”

Short Street’s menu features homey recipes like carrot spice cake as well as decadent ones such as triple-chocolate ganache. Rhoden makes sugar-free and gluten-free versions of her cupcakes and has vegan recipes as well. “Vegan cooking is a whole different thing,” she says. “You can’t just take a regular recipe and ‘veganize’ it.” Her standard chocolate cake recipe is vegan because it tastes more chocolatey (dairy products mask the taste of the cocoa).

Rhoden, whose cupcakes were featured in Brides magazine earlier this year, emphasizes taste over fancy appearance, foregoing elaborately drawn icing figures in favor of simple swirls or accent flowers grown in her backyard. Her food-coloring-free icing and cake recipes are “old school Southern” with a different feel from the European tradition of desserts. Her bridal clients tend to be very laid back. “I tell them, if you want your cake to look like a piece of Wedgwood china, I’m not your gal,” she says."

Read the whole article here. Article and image copyright Verve Magazine, article by Joanne O'Sullivan, Photo by Rimas Zailskas. Thanks, Yall!

When Good Things Happen to Good Cake

This just in!!!
The NC State Legislature just passed a new provision to the tax law exempting "artisan bakeries" from charging state sales tax!
From the NC Department of Revenue:
"As rewritten, prepared food other than bakery items sold without eating utensils by an artisan bakery is subject to the applicable State and local rates of tax. Bakery items (bread, rolls, buns, biscuits, bagels, croissants, pastries, donuts, danish, cakes, tortes, pies, tarts, muffins, bars, cookies, and tortillas) sold without eating utensils by an artisan bakery are exempt from State tax and subject to only the 2% local tax applicable to sales of qualifying food. An “artisan bakery” is a bakery that derives over 80% of its gross receipts from bakery items and whose annual gross receipts, combined with the gross receipts of all related persons as defined in G.S. 105-163.010, do not exceed $1,800,000.00."
Cake lovers, rejoice- you now have 4.5% less to pay for your baked goods, as long as you buy them from a qualified artisan. Less sales tax for the state of North Carolina = more cupcakes for you. Awesome.
xo
jodi

Short Street Cakes on Pies

In case you missed it in the Citizen-Times on Wednesday, (I dunno, maybe due to the fact that the front page news was something about a historical event of international import or something), there was a sweet little article about pies, along with a few recipes from the pie department at Short Street Cakes. Click here to read the article, and here are some of the recipes:

Fall Pies using WNC Local Produce
By: Jodi Rhoden, Owner, Short Street Cakes, Asheville, NC

Pie Crust Recipe (adapted from “The Gift of Southern Cooking” by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock)

1 ½ c. unbleached all-purpose flour
1 t. salt
½ t. sugar
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
2 tablespoons lard (substitute margarine if you cannot find non-hydrogenated lard)
4-6 tablespoons ice water

Place flour, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Whisk to combine. Cut chilled butter and lard into pieces and scatter on top of the flour mixture. Cut fats into flour using a pastry cutter or two knives, until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle ice water on mixture, one tablespoon at a time, and gently fluff the mixture until one large dough mass forms. Knead gently, 3 or 4 times. Flatten dough into a disk and wrap well with plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight or for at least 2 hours.

Roll out dough and line an 8 or 9 inch pie plate.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Fill with one of the following pie fillings. When you place the pie in the oven, reduce heat to 375.

Apple Custard Pie with Crumb Topping (Recipe by Jodi Rhoden):
A great WNC apple for this pie is Mutzu. Its firm, like a Granny Smith, but sweet like a Golden Delicious.

Combine, one ingredient at a time:
½ cup brown sugar
2 T. flour
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 egg

Add:
2 cups diced apple pieces

Topping:
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ cup butter
Combine ingredients with fingers and sprinkle over pie filling. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes, or until the pie becomes slightly firm in the center.

Pumpkin Pie from Scratch (Recipe by Jodi Rhoden):
Choose a small, fleshy pie pumpkin from a local WNC grower (find them at one of the many tailgate markets in the area, or the Farmers Market on Brevard Road). Slice pumpkin in half from top to bottom. Scrape out seeds and stringy pulp, and roast the seeds! Place pumpkin halves, cut side down, on a baking sheet and bake until soft.
Let cool, then scrape out the pulp.
Mash the pulp in a bowl with a potato masher.
Place pulp in a strainer, and strain over a bowl for 2 hours, or overnight in the refrigerator.
Some bakers puree the pulp at this point, but I think its optional.

Now, for the recipe:
Combine, one ingredient at a time:
1 ½ c. pumpkin
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 T cinnamon
½ t. ginger
¼ t. nutmeg
½ t. salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup sour cream

Preheat oven to 425. Pour into prepared pie crust. Turn down oven to 375 and bake at 375 until the sides are firm but the center is slightly jiggly.






I know, I know, its Short Street Cakes, not Short Street Pies. But I can't help it. When the weather turns and the leaves fall, I'm all about some pie.

The Lovely Ladies of Short Street Cakes

This weekend is the biggest yet. I know I keep saying that, but its always true, because it keeps getting bigger. Tomorrow I have one wedding, and Sunday I have two, but one is in Winston-Salem. For 350 guests. Vegan.
So I took the bull by the horns, bought a bunch of new tools, pans, and gear, rented Blue Ridge Food Ventures for the weekend, and hired staff. A little planning goes a long way, and today was awesome, and fun, and oh-so-productive.

So here's some pictures from our first day of the biggest wedding weekend of 2008. Notice all the huge ovens. The copious speed racks. The stainless steel tables. The MIXERS.
I covet.
I do.

This is Eileen.


Eileen is a star. Artist, framer, (as in, she frames pictures, she's good at it, you should hire her) mom, grandma, and occasional Short Street Caker, Eileen is my steady when I need a hand. Me and Eileen go way back, to 1997, from back in the Pennsyltucky days. Lucky for me, Eileen moved here about a year before we did. Lucky for me, too, Eileen spent 7 years working for a caterer in Pennsytucky working huge events, including delivering wedding cakes. So when I say steady, I mean, nothing phases her, she's seen it all, she doesn't balk at the craziness of this work. And we get nice and silly together, too, in the way only two people who have been through the odyssey of fear that is delivering 4 wedding cakes in a weekend can.

And here is Ashley:

Today was Ashley's first day. Ashley did a great job and she's just about as cute as a damn button. She was really excited about baking, about working with the big mixers, and about wearing the cat apron her mom made her. Ashley's a songwriter and a musician. I haven't heard any of her music yet but I bet when I do she'll be my favorite and I will be telling y'all all about it. And best of all: Ashley lives on Short Street! (And because Ashley couldn't work tomorrow, there's ANOTHER resident of Short Street coming to work with us, and I totally didn't plan it that way! Short Street Cakes, indeed.)

And then, of course, there is moi.


Your cake lady, the one who keeps you in sugar, the one who loves you the best.

I'll be in touch about how the biggest wedding weekend of 2008 goes.
xo
jodi

Gratitude

Or: How I learned to stop worrying about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket and love cake.

As I was sitting on my porch at the end of a long day, I began checking down my usual mental list of bakery to-dos: find a space, hire staff, figure out payroll, coordinate the rest of the fall weddings, make changes to the menu, work on spreadsheets, design the space, go to the bank, et cetera ad infinatum, when I was struck by a realization.

I've come so far, and I'm so incredibly grateful.

Two and a half years ago I was a new mom with no job. My husband was struggling to make ends meet while going to school and being a dad. We had a mounting pile of debt and no idea how to deal with it. I spent much of the last two years wondering how we were going to make ends meet, and dealing with a seemingly never-ending series of minor personal and financial crises, while laying the foundation for Short Street Cakes and being a full-time mom. I've spent a great deal of time since my son was born asking for things from the universe: stability, clarity, patience, a way forward, a sustainable way to stay here in Asheville and maintain a home and a family and not go crazy in the process. And tonight, I find myself in the same spot, asking for more things from the universe: a home for my bakery that's not my house, more stability, more clarity, more patience, a way to continue forward. And these things are noble goals. But right now, tonight, I'm going to stop asking, and instead I'm going to say "Thank You." Thank you to the Universe/God/Big Mama for providing me with that stability, and clarity, and patience for these last years, (and, you know, forever). Thank you to the friends and family who love me, and listen to me, and reach out to me, even when I'm swirling in chaos. Thank you to Duncan, my best friend. Thank you to Jasper, my wish upon a star. Thank you to Lexi, the best Best Girl ever. Thank you to Asheville, for being my home for these seven years and nurturing my growth, my family, and my craft. Thanks to all y'all beautiful people who keep buying my cakes!!!! Thanks to Mom and Dad, and Marcos, and summer camp, and ACRC, and to yoga, and Grace Leigh, and Elyse Manning, and the witches, and Emma Goldman and Alan Ginsberg. The reality, right now, is this: I'm making a living as a self-employed cake baker. I'm creating work that is meaningful to my customers, and so gratifying to me. I'm learning every day, the kind of learning that's exciting and makes you hungry for more. I'm home with my son a few days out of the week, and I get a break a few days a week when he goes to preschool. He's freaking HAPPY. Duncan has a new-ish job that makes him happy, too. The stability, and clarity, and patience (well, I'm still working on the patience) that I've wished for has been steadily growing in my life for these years. I'm doing this thing!!! And I am so incredibly grateful.

Like, Really. Really. Grateful.

I've been listening to NPR and Naomi Wolf YouTube videos all day, and, as predicted, global capitalism is crumbling and the world is in a food, climate, economic, spiritual, and all-purpose general everything crisis. As usual, the leadership of the United States is behaving badly. People are on edge, and the tipping point seems near. In the coming weirdness, and it seems pretty certain that the weirdness is coming, there will be more human suffering. I hope to be a part of helping to lessen the suffering in some way, whatever that may be. But I also feel that the coming weirdness is just a part of history's ebb and flow, and I want to stay grounded, here and now, in what is real. We're going to survive these changes, whatever they are. Who knows, we might be better for them in the long run, if we fight for what we believe in, stay grounded in who we are, and remember to help each other out.

I have alot of big ideas for my life in cake (the life, not just the blog), for Short Street Cakes and the future of our lives here in Asheville. I want a busy, happy cake shop. I want to run a small business that contributes generously and justly to the world. I want us to travel with Jasper and show him the vastness of the world. I want to go back to SUMMER CAMP. I want to swim and learn martial arts and quit smoking and have a garden again and coordinate activist campaigns and do all the things that I haven't done much of in years because, well, cake. And I will do those things, eventually- but I'm not going to worry about them tonight. Because- as excited as I am for what my life in cake can become- tonight, I'm just grateful for what it is.

Cake Shop Update

Hello Friends Far and Near!
I hope this lovely June finds you all well.
I am writing to give y'all an update on the status of the much-anticipated Short Street Cakes Cakeshop. As many of you know, I have been in discussion with the owners of the building at 428 Haywood Road in West Asheville for some time now about creating a cakeshop there, across from Harvest Records in the newly burgeoning neighborhood fondly referred to as "East-West Asheville." Well, friends, it is not to be. It turns out that it is just not the right fit for a food/coffee establishment, and I think it has been rented to a design company. But! Do not dispair! This is actually very good news. For one, I am really grateful for the experience and knowledge I gained from working hard to negotiate a lease. And for two, it means that the PERFECT spot for Short Street Cakes' Cakeshop has yet to be found! So- are you an East-West Ashevillian hankering for a cupcake? keep your eyes peeled for the perfect spot and give me a heads up! Or perhaps you think that the perfect spot is on Lexington? Or down by the river? Or right here at home in Montford? Where do YOU want a cakeshop? Let me know. I'm all ears, and I'm really excited to expand my capacity and have a shop to see all your lovely faces in.
In the meantime, its June, which means Wedding Season Craziness, so I'm actually a little relieved to not be working on a lease right this minute and to instead focus on making beautiful cakes right here on Short Street. And in July and August, as we look for the perfect spot, I'll be happy to catch up on some long-overdue work, like updating my menu with new and exciting flavors, putting pretty pictures and ideas on my blog, and maybe even taking a hike and a swim or two with Jasper and Duncan. Thank you, as always, for your love and support. Short Street Cakes started as a small creative project and now is a growing and thriving business! And I could not have done it without my family, my friends, my community, and my baker colleagues! Y'all are the best. I'm one lucky cake lady.
Much Love,
xo
Jodi
ps I've attached a picture of a wedding cake I did last weekend at Lake Lure. Floral design by Aria Floral Design Studio, www.blueridgeflowers.com. They're the best! This picture features one of their fabulous floral designers, Merideth Law.

Greenlife Prices

So I went up one dollar on the price I sell my 6" cakes to Greenlife Grocery. And then they went up five dollars on their markup to $15.99! After a week of worrying and fretting about the new price of my cakes, I had this brilliant and novel idea to ASK SOMEONE about it. So I did, and the helpful man with whom I spoke whipped out a calculator and said, "um, no, that's not right. They should be $13.89." And so they are. So if any of yall have been by greenlife lately, and went to buy your vegan chocolate cake, and found it to be highly expensive, I am pleased to announce that it is now only moderately expensive.
xo
jodi

A Snowy Day in February

Today is one of those days- one of those days where your son is teething (read: throwing temper tantrums), the drop-in childcare at the YW is closed, its snowy, and icy, and COLD. So you end up at home, cancelling your chiropractic appointment, while your child runs amok and you "work" on the computer, which is to say, you procrastinate completing the greenlife order by trolling the internet for listings of "asheville cake" "vegan cake" etc, and and submitting your name to multiple random business listing websites. Its a good day, just sluggish, and COLD. A good day for blogging.
Its been a few weeks since my last post. There are many reasons for this:
first and foremost, though, is that I think I have been having trouble finding my... "blogging voice."(is there such a thing?) I think of something I want to write about, and then I wonder if its appropriate. What is this blog? is it about cake? is it about my life? is it only about the pretty parts where my life overlaps with cake? is it a marketing tool? a forum for self-expression? And I start to write something. Then I second guess it. But I don't want this blog to be just a message board about impersonal things in town or things relating to food that I think are "neat." And I don't want it to just be a big blaring billboard for Short Street Cakes. So there. I'm writing. About me. my life in cake.
I've also been extremely busy this month. Its a good thing that I've been a waitress since I was 16, because I've gotten pretty good at balancing plates (and smiling while doing it.) And I've never had so many plates to balance in my life. (Um, by the way, if you don't have children, and no one has told you this: ITS REALLY HARD. seriously. Its not that I wouldn't do it again, and its not that I expected it to be easy, and its not that i don't love being a mom and love that little creature that i live with, but damn. Its really hard.) Working two jobs (did i mention that I wait tables at Marcos? God bless that place, those people, and the pizza they rode in on.) growing a business, being in a relationship, and being a mom, well, that's pretty much a full day there, every day.
I'm not complaining. (well, I guess I am complaining, but I really enjoy my life too.) And days like today, being a little bit lazy, and a little bit procrastinate-y, are necessary for getting stuff done in life too. Its winter, its cozy inside, and I'll work on the greenlife order when the boy wonder takes a nap. And tomorrow I'll research organic certification. And work on my food cost spreadsheets. And continue looking for a commercial space for my bakery. But today, I think I'll chill.
Oh, and PS, check out the mountain xpress this week- Hanna Rachel Raskin included Short Street Cakes in an article about "green food choices" for weddings. Yay!

The Fabulous Flair

I wanted to tell yall about my oven. I bake all my cakes in a 1963 Frigidaire Flair. Not familiar? Please refer to http://www.danlangdon.com/flair.htm for more information. It's beautiful and modern and all chrome and glass and has the ovens on top, with doors that come up like a Delorian. (remember back to the future? That's my oven.) This amazing appliance was a gift to me from my friend Elaine Posenecker, who was my next door neighbor growing up in Georgia. When she went into a nursing home in her (i think) 80's, my mom and I helped clean out her house, and she and her kids offered for us to take whatever we wanted. I got a couch, a beautiful stereo cabinet, lots of baking equipment, and the Flair. I'm happy to report that Elaine is doing well in Texas, close to her son and grandkids, and the Flair has seen more cake in the last 4 years than in its previous 44 years of existence.

2008 is going to rock.

My name is Jodi. I have a son and a husband and a little pink house on Short Street in Asheville, NC. I've been a butcher, a baker, and a candle-stick maker (no, really. I have.) I've been an activist for alot of my life. I've been a pizza driver, a social worker, a camp counselor, and once I had a job dealing blackjack at casino parties in Atlanta. I've been a waitress. ALOT. Apparently now I'm a "blogger." But most of all I've been a baker.
I, in fact, have a bakery in my house. It is called Short Street Cakes. I started it when Jasper (my son) was 3 months old, because people kept asking me to make cakes for them. After the 3rd unsolicited wedding cake job, I thought to myself, "what if I actually TRIED to work for myself as a cake baker? what would happen then?" Thus, Short Street Cakes was born. I still work out of my kitchen, on Short Street, with various children and other vermin underfoot. (Just kidding about the vermin. I love children and my kitchen is impeccably clean.) I make wedding cakes, ALOT of birthday cakes, cupcakes, and I sell frozen cakes to greenlife grocery. I work in the early mornings, before Duncan (my husband) goes to work, I bake at night after bedtime. I bake with the little guy sometimes, but it takes the whole process into a different realm- and goes really slow, so I try to avoid it. Anyway, there will be more on all of that later.
So: my life in cake. This is how my life in cake started: I used to bake bread when I lived in Athens, GA. They were these terrible bricks of gluten, that my friends graciously pretended to enjoy. Then I got a job as a professional baker when I lived in Boston, from 1999 to 2001, baking bread in the Haley House Soup Kitchen/job training program. It was basically a social work job that required me to learn how to be a baker in order to teach people job skills through baking. That's where it started. Monica Contois taught me everything I know. Then I moved to Asheville, and worked at the West End, where Cathy Cleary and April Moon taught me everything I know. It was also in Asheville that I first met Elyse Manning, who taught me everything I know. Elyse is a force of nature in the kitchen, a terrible witchy mess of a mind-blowing baker. She's a legend. Whenever I'm stuck, having trouble with an icing that won't set right or a wedding that's starting too soon, I hear Elyse's voice, telling me to ease up, and let the cake be itself.
I have a website (www.shortstreetcakes.com), and a brochure, and fancy business cards that Michael Frey made for me. I have big dreams too, of lots of good cake for the people of asheville. it involves buying lots of eggs and flour and fruits from local farmers. It involves meeting, befriending, baking for, and working with lots of people that I would otherwise not know, and whom, furthermore, I LIKE. It involves the hope of making a living at my craft. It involves integrating many different parts of myself, my past, my ancestors, my friends, my future, my family, my values, and my love of cake. It involves transformation (of the firey kind). Cake is art: its the the little extra that you don't "need" but that makes life sweet. Cake is the celebration, the sacrificial lamb at the feast. Cake is my medium and my muse and it reminds everybody of their mama. So, this is my blog: my life in cake.
Look out for pictures, experiments, recipes, cookbook reviews, anectdotes, and general cake-related hilarity. I plan to spend LOTS of time procrastinating quickbooks here. Also, I look forward to meeting other cake-minded peeps.
happy new year, to my newfound friend, the "blogosphere."
xo
jodi