Apple Pie Cake

I haven't written about food in a while. Odd, considering it's something I invest quite a fair amount of time in...

Over time I have come to accept that I am not a bright-eyed, blonde, bean pole with biologically impossible breasts and a wardrobe to die for. I am short, dark, have an 'unusual face' (yes, I have been told that), 'good child-bearing hips' (yes, I've been told that too) and as my little sister would say, 'the wardrobe of a hobo'. Still, there may be someone out there who finds the combination of 'good child-bearing hips' and the 'wardrobe of a hobo' to be everything they were looking for? Haha. Still, it's what I embrace and I know my cooking habits would not bring me anywhere near the blonde bean-pole dream, especially my most recent project...

The apple pie cake.

My dear friend Naomi (who I met on my wonderful art history course last summer) turned eighteen recently. I know... She's so young! I must admit that I felt spectacularly old (I'm only twenty...) when I attended her birthday party recently. That young thing and all of her friends were talking about university worries, the elation of leaving senior school and the dreaded A Level results day - I felt like I'd stepped in to a bizarre time machine. I am so old - my teenage years have vanished - I am half way through my degree - how did this happen?!

Anyway, my quarter-life-crisis can wait. Back to the cake. Ahh the cake... I wanted to make something special for the occasion and a generic victoria sponge or chocolate cake would not do. I wanted to branch out and challenge myself. Well, this cake certainly did that. It became my new monster.

A three tier cake. Light vanilla and apple sauce sponge. Apples stewed with cinnamon and nutmeg to separate the tiers. A caramel buttercream frosting to complete it.

This is all actually relatively simple to create. What matters is timing and organisation. There are a lot of things to manage at once - sponge, filling, icing (making caramel yourself is so challenging - impatience could get the better of you and make you burn it) and then of course there's stacking it all together. Did I mention this is hard to do when you have three pet cats lurking around the kitchen ready to thwart your efforts at any moment?

Oh, and travelling with it. That can be an issue. When I arrived at Naomi's home the poor thing had barely time to register my arrival as I crashed through the front door stressed over a cake where the top two tiers had slid off the base one with the icing all askew. Never mind, some readjustment got things back on track.

I think it's definitely something you'd enjoy the comfort of on a cold winter day (I'm thinking of any day in St Andrews to be honest... but especially when it gets horribly dark, cold and wet in winter). However, I was able to make it this summer because heat has still not reached England! Just rain and grey sky!

It's a good mixture of sweetness and spice - the stewed apples become almost caramelised, the frosting is just the right balance before being sickly and the sponge gives a warm kick. In terms of texture, the soft sponge (I think the apple sauce is what makes it so moist) is a great contrast with the slight crunch of the apple. 

I refuse to let this be a one time creation. It will resurface at some point. I'll be going in to the third year of my degree in September so I'm sure there will be many opportunities for baking procrastination! 

Identity

I think a lot of my friends know by now that I have a bit of an arty background - perhaps a couple of university ones don't? I was very close to going to art college at one point in time but honestly, I didn't have the talent or complete passion for it. After two years at university on a 'more academic route' I've confirmed to myself that I am more suited to Art History than creating art myself. Still, from time to time I dabble and return to my old ways - I dip in and out of life drawing classes when my workload isn't too much. Today I found myself creating this (it's not finished yet - whole right side to go - but I think I'm going to leave finishing it for a while). 

I'm not entirely happy with it, as usual - I don't know an artist who is ever completely happy with their work (one eye is definitely larger than the other and I don't think it really resembles me that strongly - bah, self portraits are so hard). 

Still, this is the start of an idea that I have been playing with for a while. There was a painting in the living room of one of my childhood friends that I always fixated upon when I was younger (my art historian roots already forming) - I sadly don't know the title of it or who it was by but I can picture it so clearly even now - it was a profile portrait of a man and he was composed entirely of different flowers e.g. his nose was made of rose petals. I always thought it was so clever. So, since quite a young age, I've always had this idea kicking around about creating faces out of different objects (not just flowers). 

The final aim for this work is to have my whole face covered in different quotes, images, symbols etc. that I think 'sum up' the making of me. For example, next to my eye on the right of the page is the moon, stars and the quote 'Dare to disturb the universe'. I've always had a fascination with the solar system (again this was something I've been attached to from a very young age), then this focus developed in to my awe about the vastness of the universe and power of nature. I thought the quote fitted in that it mentions the universe, but it also has two more links for me. It was the quote I used to structure my retiring speech as head girl to my senior school around, so it has a strong emotional attachment. Also, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' was the poem I studied for A Level English Literature - I had one on one classes and they were such a joy - the poem spoke so strongly to me and I really look back on those studies as a time where I grew and found myself. 

The struggle with this work hit me today when I took a break from it. Firstly, it made me start to think the spectacularly frustrating question of 'Who am I?' Didn't I go to university to answer that question? I suspect I might get glimpses in to an answer (I have never felt so comfortable in myself as I do at university) but somehow I think I may have to settle with the fact that it is one of life's maddening unanswerable questions. To even fully know yourself can be hard - I still manage to surprise myself from time to time. Furthermore, you can have the amazing moments of finding those special people who bring things out of you that you didn't know you were capable of. Ahhh, back to the same track, the wonderfully complicated nature of human beings. Another less pressing but still tricky issue is how to depict parts of what make me - my drawing remains at a basic stage - the question of how to depict music or academia is going to be a challenge. Still, I remain hopeful that things will work and I'm not going to come back to this work straight away. I need some time to step back and think about what to do next, I'm just glad I finally got it started.