Yes, you can bake a cake
Bake Me A Cake
By Ginny Roces de Guzman
Photos by Neal Oshima
Fully Booked, 160 pages
Many professional bakers claim that baking a cake is “easy as pie” — mix it in a food processor, bang it in the oven and all of a sudden you’re Nigella Lawson. But as a novice baker I’ve rarely found this to be true. Maybe I attach so much anxiety to cake making — will it rise, will it be moist, will it look as good as the photo — that the cake feels the pressure in the air and fails to inflate to expectation.
But the new cake book Bake Me A Cake once again promises to fulfill my dreams of baking glory. According to author Ginny Roces de Guzman, all I need to do is learn four basic cake recipes — for sponge, butter cake, meringue wafers, and chocolate cake — and I can become master of my cake domain.
It’s a simple idea but a groundbreaking one. One of the founders of popular bakeshop Sugarhouse, De Guzman surveyed the cookbooks out there and realized that all the cake recipes in them were simply variations on classics given the author’s interpretation.
Cake it away: In the highly stylized chapter spreads, the cake is the star. “I wanted my cake book to show my version,” she says. “If you know how to make the basic cakes, you can create your own specialty, your own spin on a flavor, your signature cake.”
In developing cakes for Sugarhouse, it dawned on her that all the fancy creations, stripped of their glossy icings and toppings, were really made from a few basic cake bases. “It’s how you literally apply the icing on the cake and top it with the extras that will turn the base into a bestseller or the flavor of the month,” she claims. “Imagination and combination of flavors define a new cake creation.”
So she divided Bake Me A Cake into four chapters according to cake type: master the recipe for basic sponge cake and you can make a Gateau Nelusko or a Malacañang Roll; bake a basic butter cake and transform it into calamansi muffins or a Red Velvet Christmas; from meringue wafers you can fashion your own pistachio sans rival or chestnut torte; while a chocolate base allows you to do the Impossible Cake or the Cocoa Chanel.
Piece of cake: The Pandan and Macapuno Cream Cake The book’s layout is logical and easy to follow, and a major part of the visual appeal is the cake photos. Each of the 50 recipes is beautifully shot by one of the country’s best, most visionary photographers, Neal Oshima. “Ginny had a very strong, original concept for the book: that most cakes could easily be made from four basic cake types,” Oshima says. “We structured the book around this idea and experimented with several visual styles before we found one that worked best.”
Oshima has photographed almost two dozen food books, including Memories of Philippine Kitchens, which won the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) Jane Grigson award — one of the highest awards a food book can receive — and Kulinarya. “Food is one of my favorite subjects,” he claims.
De Guzman found his résumé intimidating (“Why would he want to do my little bake book?”) but found that they meshed well together because they both liked food to look natural and uncontrived. “Neal is experimental; no formula,” Ginny says. “If something’s not working, he’ll try to do it another way; he doesn’t stop until he feels it’s right.”
Oshima says that when he started taking pictures of food, “the look was everything in perfect position, sharp with deep focus. Recently it’s become more naturalistic and casual.”
Color wheel: The Flower Power cake begins with a chiffon base; cutting up marshmallows to create flower art is the fun part. Photos by NEAL OSHIMA Making food look good is akin to making food taste good, according to him: “Get the best ingredients and treat them with the utmost respect,” he says. “Light is extremely important to create the sense of texture and volume. Getting as close as possible to the food helps engage the viewer. Often in a photograph, what is not stated or revealed is more important than what is; always leave the viewer hungry for a little more.”
A multi-awarded art photographer who’s exhibited in galleries abroad, Oshima likes working with food because he says, “Food doesn’t talk back! Food is alive: it takes a patient photographer but at the same time one that acts decisively when it’s at its peak. I love the way it smells, tastes and memories are triggered by simply looking at good photographs of food.”
For Bake Me A Cake, what you see is what you get: he shot real, edible cakes that they could eat afterwards. “Food styling was by Ginny, though we worked with Raena Abella, a set designer, and would collaboratively choose props and backgrounds,” Oshima says. “The highly stylized chapter spreads were my idea; originally I thought we could do the whole book that way, but if we had we would still be shooting.”
The current trend of anyone with a camera and an appetite fancying themselves a food photographer, uploading their snaps onto blogs or Facebook, doesn’t faze Oshima. “I really like the blogging and Facebook trends in food,” he says. “DIY food photography is completely valid. I think it’s important that people reexamine what they put in their bodies according to taste, culture, health and sustainability. It’s absolutely vital that we take control of what we consume.”
The Debutante: A three-tiered dark chocolate cake filled and covered with thick swirls of blush-pink marshmallow icing. When formulating and testing a new recipe, De Guzman usually reads through the recipe first and checks the balance of the ingredients. “From here I can tell if a recipe would work,” she says. “I tweak the ingredients to introduce another flavor profile or change the texture of the cake. Then it’s kitchen work to do the actual baking. Oftentimes, it takes two to three trials to get a recipe right.”
Color wheel: The Flower Power cake begins with a chiffon base; cutting up marshmallows to create flower art is the fun part. Photos by NEAL OSHIMA
Her favorite recipe in the book is the Frozen Zuccotto: “I love the combination of childhood ice cream and cake. I also like Lamingtons because they remind me of our family’s years in Australia. And of course, the Fabulous Trifle, since it’s often our Christmas Eve dessert.”
In a world-class publication like this — Fully Booked’s Jaime Daez was the one who offered to make De Guzman’s dream book a reality — it fills you with pride to see a recipe for ube cupcakes merit the same space as one for a classic dacquoise. Indeed, there are a number of recipes that feature local ingredients like mango, guava, and pandan. “They’re lovely, underrated tropical flavors and need not always be savored in ethnic sweets,” Ginny says. “I thought it would define the cookbook as Filipino, different from the proliferation of Western cookbooks.”
I asked her what cake or dessert would best represent the Philippines, and she replied, “Probably a trifle — it would be the halo-halo version of a cake.”
What would De Guzman advise tentative bakers like myself about getting “foolproof,” consistent results?
Café olé: The Coffee Dacquoise, a French pastry made with layers of nut-flavored meringues “You got the word right: ‘consistent’ means you must have done it a couple of times,” Ginny says. “Practice is the key. The recipe is at best a precise guide, but the baker must experience the viscosity of egg whites transform to an airy meringue, the smell of baking butter cake wafting through the kitchen — a sign that it is done even without looking at a timer. Baking is a tactile, sensory activity.”
I’d still like to think there are some magic tools or gadgets that will turn me into a confident baker like Ginny, who started baking at seven, selling her wares at 10 and giving lessons at 13, but she assures me there’s no magic involved except what you bring to the kitchen.
“You can successfully make a chocolate cake with just a bowl, measuring cups and spoons, and a good arm,” she says. “A mixer would be a great help, and of course, a reliable oven.”
De Guzman is already thinking about her next project, a cake line inspired by Gaudi, the Spanish architect, which would again probably appeal to Oshima’s artistic sensibilities. “Now molecular gastronomy is demanding a greater sense of stylization and artifice,” he says. “Though it’s always evolving, good food photography is timeless.”
Red Christmas: The three-layered Red Velvet Christmas is a showstopper on any holiday table. Before I read Bake Me A Cake, I always thought of baking as being like a classically trained pianist: you had to follow the notes of a piece and try to give it your own interpretation. But now I know that, like a jazz musician, once you know the basic chords, you can improvise and riff on a theme all you want until you get a completely new song.
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Bake Me a Cake is available at Fully Booked.
