Confections of a Closet Master Baker

by Gesine Bullock-Prado

  But they never spoke out against my rampant profanity. And Kalika, during an innocent conversation, described a recent night out at a local music spot as a “veritable shit show.” She is always five minutes early to work. Meeka revealed an uncanny ability to find four-leaf clovers and is learning to play the harp. Ray and I decided that home schooling and religious dedication might actually be the only way to raise a child. These two had come out so well.

  Then Mr. Sands was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was, they knew, a death sentence for their father. But they also knew there were miracles. They kept showing up for work on time and in good cheer. Kalika mentioned that St. Anthony was a particular favorite of her father’s. So in the morning, in the quiet time in the bathtub when the world was asleep, I prayed to St. Anthony. I prayed for a miracle for a kind man who had raised unbelievably lovely children. Even though I was buck naked among the bath bubbles and each time I said St. Anthony I felt compelled to say his name like a Jersey gangster, “Ant-Knee,” I was still praying. And I was praying like I meant it. That’s how good the Sand Sisters were.

  But sometimes employees just don’t work out. There was the kid whose daily habit of eating multiple bulbs of raw garlic in order to purge himself of the toxins of the world left everyone around him gasping for fresh air. Garlic is a little like skunk; you smell a hint of it far away and there’s something strangely pleasant about it. Up close and personal, it’s downright noxious.

  There was the middle-aged woman who started off as the dream help we were desperate for, until she became increasingly unstable. She started to look at our young dishwasher like a ravenous wolf and, unsurprisingly, was making him feel very uncomfortable. We found out that not only was she generally emotionally erratic, she was also a convicted felony sex offender. We could have saved ourselves a lot of pain had we Googled the scamp.

  So now we’ve taken to doing a quick search of prospective employees. Just in case. Young people, they’re prone to drunken hijinks, and lately everyone is documenting their youthful indiscretions and posting the evidence online. I’ve got no problem with that. I once did a backbend in the middle of a local watering hole at college after a sloppy date with Mr. Bacardi. I was hosting a little shindig called “Jamnesty” to raise money for Amnesty International and to get signatures on petitions in hopes of securing the release of poor souls trapped in foreign prisons for speaking their minds. Or maybe for posting drunken pictures of themselves. A local made me an offer: “Girl, I’ll sign that thing if you do a backbend over that rope.” It was a red rope dividing the bar area from the dance floor. I’m a dedicated human rights activist. And I was very drunk. Problem is I’m not limber. So once I got myself into the backbend, I couldn’t get out of it. I wish I had a picture of that moment because I’ve never been able to do a backbend since.

  Long story longer than it needed to be, the bottom line is that I understand, and I expect to find embarrassing pictures of prospective employees online. What I don’t expect is to find a close-up of a prospective employee’s lady parts. Posted not by some evil ex-boyfriend who took the pictures unbeknownst to the poor girl, but by the proud owner of the coochie herself. On a popular public forum. Multiple pictures. And once the pictures loaded, I said what any slightly open minded but really kind of prudish woman would say: “Oh, for f*ck’s sake.”

  By all means, be proud of your nether blossom. Take pictures if you like. But I’ve got to wonder about your judgment if you plaster them like billboards on the information superhighway. I’m sure you’d say that if you were working in my establishment, you’d keep your bits under wraps. But how can I be positive? And what if I find you posting a picture of one of my pastries in a compromising position? I don’t think I can live with that.

  Then there are the dishwashers, and even with a thorough Google search, we get some prizewinners. When we finally finagle someone into taking up the challenge, they end up either landing in jail, going back into rehab, or heading straight to the hospital on their own time, despite my suspicions that dishwashing here at Gesine’s drove them there. Of our never-ending string of dishwashers, the first went to jail; the second drove herself crazy from the monotony and started to rock back and forth, humming maniacally as she scrubbed. Then she ran away to the circus. Our third, Matt, was showing some emotional fortitude, so I promoted him right out of dishwashing to retain his sanity and help in the baking. He was also skinny enough to fit into the ovens and liked curling up inside when they were off to scrub them clean. You can’t lose that kind of talent, unless they’re also aspiring musicians. Then they’ll leave you in search of rock-and-roll stardom like Matt did. He didn’t buy it when I told him that chicks dig bakers as much as sensitive singer-songwriters.

  Our fourth dishwasher would leave for costume changes, returning in sequins or clown wigs. Whatever struck her fancy. The fifth I adored because she had such a bubbly attitude, but it turned out she was always funny and happy because she was always drunk. The sixth was the girl who worked for three days and scrubbed everything like a demon, but didn’t show up on the fourth. Her boyfriend came to the store “sweating in a manner inappropriate to the day,” as Bonnie described him, and told no one in particular that his girlfriend was in the hospital from drinking too much punch. Our dishwasher later told us that she had no idea the stuff was laced, to which the rest of us replied, “Any party punch is laced unless you’re in elementary school.” And then there was the unfortunate girl who started her shift by licking the stacked bowls clean, stole the last chocolate chip cookie from the still-warm sheet pan, snuck into the cooler, grabbed a handful of sliced brie and another fistful of bacon, and then locked herself in the bathroom for hours.

  Our current dishwasher Nancy drags herself in in the morning just at that critical moment when we’re about to open but haven’t gotten everything out yet. The faint smell of Parliament menthols clings to her wife beater. Her utter lack of perceptible consciousness, so contrary to the manic panic we’re whipping up, always manages to piss me off. I want her to walk in and acknowledge our stress, to lock into our lunatic energy and get crazy on the dirty dishes. But she sidles up to the sinks and gives everything a lazy once-over. The heaps of dishes, in arrangements so architecturally dicey you’d think we’d piled them with malice, seem to strike her as a vague nuisance that she’s not ready to fully embrace. She also has a very tenuous relationship with gravity, so the second she moves to organizing the multitude, there are thunderclaps of crashing pots and shattering plates. We’re not holding out much hope for Nancy. Her hands have begun to shake, she speaks to herself as she’s rinsing off caked dough from mixing bowls, and her eyes are glazing over. I’m betting she’s got less than a month before she falls off her recovery wagon and lands back in a court-appointed detox. Tim and I discuss whether or not we should call her outpatient rehab facility and tell them our concerns. We live in a strange town, aptly nicknamed Montpeculiar, where any and all of her symptoms are embodied in most of our downtown residents and more than a few of our local politicians. So we’re having a hard time telling whether she’s just exhibiting the standard symptoms of being a local or whether she’s in trouble.

  I’d never managed more than a handful of employees. In Hollywood in the early 2000s, just four of us manned an entire entertainment company. And while I, along with my sister, was the boss, we were all productive adults who needed very little supervision, and that didn’t much lend itself to developing a maternal affection.

  But despite some odd ducks, every day Ray and I are amazed at how lucky we are with the people who end up staying. And invariably, the people we fall in love with and never want to leave, grow up a little at our shop and move on.

  So when Agnes told us she was hanging up her espresso tamp for good, finishing college, and getting a big-girl job, I wept. When Adrienne made the announcement that she was moving to New York City, I fell into a deep depression. Then Jenny moved to another town and started up her own shop. And Cool Whip moved aw
ay to work at the Olive Garden. Everyone leaves with our blessing for their futures, but we curse them all the same for making us care about them, changing us in ways we were determined not to be changed, and then leaving us with an empty position to fill.

  In the meantime, if you see a want ad in the paper that reads like this: “Nice people wanted for work in pastry/coffee shop. We’re as flexible as a gummi bear in the hot summer sun” you know that we’re hiring. But be forewarned. If we like you, we may not let you go.

  New England

  THE NEW ENGLAND CAKE marries both the old and the new England and reminds me of the insane joviality and old school Vermontness of Agnes, Adrienne, and the Sand Sisters. The pound cake is a play on the very traditional and well-loved U.K. dessert staple, sticky toffee pudding. By adding the deep tones of coffee and brown sugar and the toffeelike bits of sweet dates, the cake takes on a very sophisticated flavor. Combine it with a Vermonty maple buttercream and the result is divine. The bright maple sweetness of the buttercream offsets the more earthy tones of the dense cake. This is a mature cake for mature audiences only. It’s that sexy.

  MAKES ONE 8-INCH THREE LAYER CAKE

  For the cake

  ½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, plus additional for buttering the pan

  3 cups sifted all-purpose flour, plus additional for dusting the pan

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  ¾ teaspoon salt

  3 cups packed light brown sugar

  7 large eggs, at room temperature

  2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  ½ cup heavy cream

  ½ cup hot coffee

  1 cup chopped dates

  For the buttercream,

  10 ounces egg whites (approximately 10 whites)

  2 cups maple sugar (see Note)

  1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into small pieces

  Note: Maple sugar is most often a mail-order purchase but is sometimes available in health food stores. If you can’t find it, use white sugar and add maple syrup to taste.

  Preheat the oven to 350°F. Put the oven rack in the middle position.

  For this recipe, you’ll need three 8-inch cake pans. Generously butter the pans and dust with flour, knocking out the excess.

  Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. Sift again into another bowl (the flour will have been sifted three times total).

  Beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or 6 to 8 minutes with a handheld mixer.

  Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla.

  Reduce the speed to low and add half of the flour mixture, then all of the cream, then the remaining flour, mixing well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of bowl and add coffee and dates. Mix on low until evenly incorporated.

  Spoon the batter into the prepared pans. Bake until the cake is golden and gently springs back when pressed, about 25 minutes.

  Cool the cake in the pan on a rack for 30 minutes. Run a thin knife around the inner and outer edges, then set the rack over the pan and invert the cakes onto the rack to cool completely.

  FOR THE BUTTERCREAM

  Combine the egg whites and maple sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer set over a pan of simmering water. Whisk constantly until the sugar has completely melted and the mixture reaches 160°F. Transfer the bowl to the mixer and, using the whisk attachment, whisk on high until the meringue forms soft peaks. On low speed, add the butter slowly until completely incorporated. Beat again on high speed until the buttercream starts to thicken and become smooth.

  TO ASSEMBLE THE CAKE

  Spread 1 cup of buttercream on the first layer.

  Stack the second layer on top and layer with another cup of buttercream.

  Place the last layer on top and use the remaining buttercream to cover the top and sides of the cake.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Sacred Time

  3 p.m.

  NN AND ANNE COME IN AT 3 P.M. They order their coffees, get a few flourless chocolate hearts, and sit at the table by the front window and kibitz for about an hour. Mothers and daughters, friends, newly minted parents out for a stroll with their sleepy babies; at 3 p.m. there is a steady, gentle stream of easygoing pastry-hungry folks. This is when I miss my grandmother and my mother most.

  For the German women of ritual who raised me—my mother and grandmother Omi—3 p.m. was the best part of the day, the sacred time for cake and coffee. When we lived in Germany, I couldn’t escape being roped into this ritual, and for a kid in the middle of high afternoon adventure, the timing was brutally off. Sitting still at that hour and savoring a hot beverage in a paper-thin porcelain cup was not a priority. And we didn’t even get the good stuff. Coffee was reserved for the adults. The cake was a bonus, but being allowed to shove it into my face at high speed and be on my way would have made the moment sublime. Wasn’t it enough to have to sit still without distraction through breakfast, lunch, and dinner with my family? Confining cake to the same ceremony was stupefying! When my mom took us back to the States, we continued our family meals but we were released from 3 p.m. cake and coffee; it was replaced by piano and ballet lessons and all the activities that fill an American kid’s life.

  My mother, sister, and I returned to Germany every few summers but I spent the entire summer of 1984, when I was fourteen, alone with Omi. She lived in a walk-up apartment across from a brewery in Nürnberg, the malodor of hot hops and yeast drenching the air. When Sandy and I had spent time there, we’d run up and down the six flights of stairs every few hours to the corner market. They sold Maoam chewy candies in packs of six individually wrapped morsels. Sandy’s favorite was raspberry and mine was lemon, though I’d get an orange once in a while to remind me why I liked the lemon so much. We limited ourselves to a few each trip, convinced we’d control ourselves. At the end of a long rainy day in front of the TV watching unbearably amateurish German programming, we’d be buried under a mound of purple, yellow, and orange wrappers.

  This time I flew by myself from Washington, D.C., to Frankfurt and took a connecting flight to Nürnberg, where Omi met me in her Fiat 500. It was scarcely bigger than my suitcase. We pushed the passenger seat as close to the dashboard as it would slide and muscled my bags into the back seat. Omi was so tiny her seat was already pushed forward to the same position. I crawled in and folded up my rangy legs, my shins pressed against the glove box and knees to my chin. Omi ignored the operational guide to the manual drive, as illustrated in the neat little drawing on the gearbox, opting to pass first and second entirely and pop straight into third, making my already compressed body feel as if it were passing into the supergravitational pull of a black hole. Once she hit the main thoroughfare, she gunned the car into fifth gear, hammered the gas pedal down with her bunioned foot, and set the car screaming, hell-bent for leather. As we crested a hill, she’d pop the gear into neutral and take us into a Niagara Falls barrel ride to the bottom. To her mind, this terror-filled nosedive was an economy of money and motion.

  Omi maintained the same routine that I remembered from childhood: a small breakfast with tea; a large lunch of roasted potatoes, veal cutlet, butter lettuce salad, and a small bowl of sweetened yogurt with fresh fruit for dessert. At three o’clock, coffee and fresh-baked cake. At six, a slice of farmer’s bread with a bit of cheese or sausage.

  She also gave me personal freedom, trusting me to comport myself like a respectable young woman on walks from her apartment to the old city center of Nürnberg, where I would spend an afternoon exploring in a manner befitting a lady. I thought I had done a bang-up job. I bought a few shirts for the upcoming school year, visited a bookstore and pretended to browse the titles with interest, and sat in a pew of the Lorenz Kirche and practiced looking dour and saintly. I didn’t set one foot in the red-light district, even though I knew exactly how to
get there. I didn’t eat any street food; Omi made it clear that it was meant to be eaten only during the Christmas market, when all manner of public consumption was allowed. I walked home feeling very adult and noble. At the corner store, I saw a display for “Coke Light.” We’d had Diet Coke in the States for a while, but it was new for Germans. They’d retooled it to appeal to Europeans; the can was a pale blue, accented by yellow. In small type, there was a little exclamatory message, “Mit Zitrone!” accompanied by a picture of a lemon. It was worth a try.

  I enjoyed the soda on my short trip from the market to my grandmother’s, remarking at the pleasant bite of the citrus, swinging my shopping bag in time with my step. I fished the apartment key from my pants and made for the lock when the door swung open. Omi took one look at the open container in my hand and smacked me. “Drinking! On the street! From a can! Walking and drinking from a can!”

  I could see the table set for coffee and noticed that it was already 4 p.m. She’d made a small cake, enough for two. The coffee sat in a beautiful porcelain pot with two cups waiting and a bowl of freshly whipped cream snuggled up to it. There was no tea for me; Omi thought I was ready for adult fare. And here I was, face stinging from her slap, drinking soda from a can like a harlot, insensitive to the magic hour when we should have been spending time with each other savoring cake and sipping strong coffee. I didn’t begrudge her the smack; it was a direct way of expressing her hurt that I understood immediately. I’d much rather that than passing an uncomfortably silent evening with a passive-aggressive octogenarian. Also, it was better than some of the other punishments she’s meted out, namely, trying to bring down my sister at a full sprint with a wooden cheeseboard used as a boomerang. Sandy most probably had been abusing me and I’d ratted her out. As Sandy went tearing down the hall toward her bedroom, Omi sent the cheese platter spinning in hot pursuit. It slammed into the closet at the end of the hallway, just missing Sandy’s head and leaving a nasty gash in the wood, leading me to believe that my grandmother wasn’t beyond maiming her own grandchildren in the cause of justice. It could have been much worse.