The place you are meant to be...(an artsy-fartsy, non-cupcake post)

Sometimes at night, I find myself standing in the darkness, staring out at the moon. Somehow, standing there alone, it’s comforting to know that no matter where I go in this world, the same moon is hanging above those I love. I catch myself wondering nonsensically if anyone else is staring at the moon at that moment, thinking about me… then I generally shake myself out of it and crawl into bed.

It’s so difficult for me to fathom how I came to this point, how I came to this place.  Nothing in my life is as I would have imagined it to be ten years ago, five years ago, three. I am not who I imagined I would be.

There is a section of path near our building where young oaks grow tall along the sides of the trail, forming a ceiling of leafy gothic arches and white sky. For that stretch of path, separated from anything to yank myself back into the present, it’s possible for me to imagine that I’m somewhere else…some time else. I used to wish for that. I used to wish to be in another time. I felt convinced I was meant to be in another era, another time in history. I grew out of it, I suppose. It was nothing more than the wistful dreams of an angsty teenager, convinced that no one in the world could possibly feel the same way. I’m sure at some point it’s a thought that crosses most everyone’s mind.

Our town is also a place that’s stuck, uncomfortable with its place in time. We all live in various remnants of its heyday. In the enormous brick cotton mill that made it a “company town,” in the rows and rows of converted boarding houses, in the mid-20^th century rowhouses of brick and shingle. The people, too, seem caught out of time. With no back porches, people gather on the stoops to escape the oppressing summer heat of their airless houses. Shirtless men sit drinking their beer for dinner, while women in shorts and tank tops smoke on the steps, keeping watchful eyes on the kids riding bikes, running up the sidewalk barefoot, drawing in chalk. A beat up sedan drives by, windows down, base thumping and vibrating everything within a 100-foot radius. An anachronism.

I can hear the cicadas now on my evening walks. I didn’t expect to find cicadas here, and the joy that I felt when I first heard their screeching calls took me by surprise. It is not a sound I had ever expected to miss. Like so much else, it reminds me of a different time.

Growing up, I was certain that I was going to be a country girl all my life. Keep me out of the cities, they’re too crowded. Now it seems that too has changed. While I’m not unhappy here, I find that I love Manhattan. I love the bustle, the subways, the characters, the rudeness, the kindness, the cafes and coffee shops and bakeries. We talk about a future there, but what use is planning anymore? And yet, when I go home, back to the mountains and the evergreens and the rivers, I find it hard to pull myself away. I love the calmness, the quietness, the predictability. Like so much else that I find I am no longer sure of, I no longer know where I belong.

I am sure that if I tried hard enough I could find a quote from someone long dead and purportedly much wiser than myself that would say something like, “The place that you are meant to be is the place where you are now.”

For now I know I will find no answers. For now, I will have to content myself with being right where I am, right when I am.

Red Velvet and Blue Suede

The weekend after I made the cupcakes of mass meltage, I was catering a dessert open house for the same woman. I met with her and she gave me a budget, and told me that she wanted traditional flavors, and she really wanted my red velvet cake and a coconut cake with lemon filling. Her daughter really wanted strawberry cupcakes, and her son wanted chocolate. her husband, apparently, didn't get a say. So of course I ended up making all of the above, along with lemon cupcakes. I also made sugar cookies and the crazy, ridiculous, super rich, over-the-top brownies that she liked last time.

The main conclusion that I came to after two whole days of baking was that if I do this for any sort of living, I'm really going to need another mixer. Mixing batter and frosting for strawberry cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, lemon cupcakes, red velvet cake, coconut cake, and brownies means that I washed that sucker 11 times. 11 times in a day! And that's not counting all the other bowls and prep dishes I had to reuse time and again. I really hate dishes.

After the monster week of fondant disaster, I didn't have the gumption to do anything stellar with the decorations--plus, it wasn't in her budget. I made blue, yellow, and purple molded chocolate flowers for the strawberry cupcakes, but I just relied on pastel metallic sprinkles for the chocolate cupcakes, and yellow and orange decorating sugar on the lemon cupcakes. I covered the coconut cake in--what else?--coconut, and I shaved some mild German chocolate to rim the red velvet cake.

I have to admit, when I went to the open house I had moments when I felt like a rock star. I had people seek me out and ask if I had made "my" red velvet cake because they had heard all about it and wanted some... but yet again, over and over, people said, "oh, YOU made those brownies? Those are crazy fantastic!" The irony of this is that I don't even enjoy eating brownies. They are usually last on my long, long list of crave-able sweets.  Theoretically I earned some future specialty business from the event, but none of it has hit yet.

Around the Fourth of July, I decided I wanted to make a stacked cake. I made a few mistakes, though, and the cake wasn't stiff enough for stacking.  I ended up scrapping a whole cake (poor Sean...he had to help me eat the leftovers). My original plan was to make red velvet and "blue suede" and cover it in red cream cheese frosting with white stripes, but alas... it was not meant to be. In the end, I just made a blue suede sheet cake with red cream cheese frosting, white filling, and white fondant stars.  Sean said that he actually had a few people come up to him and ask permission to cut the cake because they thought it looked too nice to cut into. I'm not sure what the commentary was on the name of the cake (I thought it was pretty witty), but apparently they thought it was delicious.

Sean's little brother Anthony came out to visit us over the Fourth of July weekend, and his birthday is coming up this month. I told him I would make him any sort of cake he wanted (and though Sean was in the background trying to pressure him into asking for red velvet), he chose chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting.  And.... of course I biffed the cake. I inadvertently turned the oven off when I was setting the timer, so by the time I got it reset and the oven back up to temperature, the cake that resulted turned out dry, dry, dry.  And I also learned another hard lesson--"natural" peanut butter, which has zero hydrogenated ingredients, makes HORRIBLE peanut butter frosting. It's granular and separates and looks completely unappetizing (we're talking like something you'd find in a baby diaper unappetizing) and is just generally no good.  I stood there, looking at the mixing bowl in perplexity, wondering how in the HECK I was going to fix this, when brilliance struck. It wasn't working because nothing was hydrogenated, right? Or even partially hydrogenated? So obviously, I needed to add hydrogenation. Fantastic! Half a cup of shortening later, and it was a creamy dream.  Of course, I couldn't tell that the cake was a chocolate Sahara until we cut into it, at which point I lamented the death of a good cake. But Anthony, bless his soul, said, "Jill, I didn't even notice. I'm not a cake expert or anything, so it's fine!" Sean wisely said nothing at all, and just poured some milk on his cake. Me? I skipped the milk and went straight to the Baileys. Anything can be fixed with alcohol.

I don't think Sean ever got over his red velvet cake craving, so he told Anthony to ask me to make another cake, because apparently I can't say no to Anthony (and as though I would ever say no to Sean???). This whole red velvet kick of his has taken me by surprise. I mean, I'll admit that it's a dang tasty cake. But his hands-down favorite has always been spice.

"Is this your new favorite, or something? I would figure you would ask for spice," I said.

"Well, can't you kind of mix them both?" he asked?

"Hm.....," I replied.

So I did. I made some sort of super delicious red velvet spice hybrid. It was moist, delicious, and perfect with its sloppy cream cheese frosting. Sean took a bite, and said, "Ok, you've redeemed yourself." Anthony, mindful of my feelings, told me that it was delicious and very moist, but "the chocolate cake was good, too."

After work on Monday, Sean came home and asked if I was in a baking mood. Apparently, he needed to bring treats to his meeting with the State, and he told his team he would check with me. I really didn't feel like baking, but like I hinted earlier.... I can't say no to Sean. So out of my entire repertoire of cake, what does he ask for? The red velvet spice hybrid again.  I made 48 minis, some of which didn't make the cut because of symmetrical problems, and at least three of which Sean and I ate. But after I was done frosting them, I only had about 23. 23?? Where did the rest of them go? I just shrugged it off as really bad math (if I had eaten that many calories, so I didn't want to think about it) and cleaned up.  After all, Sean really only needed about 16. Well, when I was going to bed, I noticed a whole cooling rack of mini cakes that I had set aside and missed. After I got over my relief that I didn't unconsciously inhale 20 mini cupcakes, I froze them. I really didn't want to frost more at midnight.  When Sean came home that night with the empty cupcake carrier, I asked him if the cupcakes went over well. He nodded his head and kind of rolled his eyes in a little bit of exasperation and told me that he nearly had a mutiny on his hands when one of the teams thought they wouldn't be able to get any.  Next time I'll be sure to send the full 40.  And something tells me that I should start charging Sean. He would have just spent the money at Dunkin' Donuts anyway, right?

And you know what I did every single stinkin' time before I turned on the oven?  I opened it up and checked it out first. Even though I knew... I knew there was nothing in it. Yes, yes.... I can be taught.