Cake and genius

The next time I go to NYC, I'm eating this. All of it. 

Notwithstanding all the terrible stuff in the news, let's celebrate the greatness of a nation where people can demonstrate their brilliance (and make tons of money) through creating baked goods.

We live in remarkable times. For better and for worse.

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With the whole newborn thing happening, I've searched for mindless TV to watch. One of my favorites is Netflix's Chef's Table. It's beautifully shot and features talented people doing their best work. It's not normally a show where words amount to much. That's why Christina Tosi's rant on cake is so startling.

It's superficially about cake, but there's so much more here. You can hear her frustration about toiling decades in the high-end NYC restaurant scene. You notice the barely-veiled astonishment at how off most judgments are regarding the way a given dish should be. 

You can't help but apply the spirit of what she's talking about to topics far away from baking.

Sometimes the genius is in recognizing obvious things everyone else misses.

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The scene opens with Tosi seated alone in an industrial kitchen. We've just seen nostalgic scenes from her midwestern hometown in her mom's kitchen. She starts talking about food's role in celebrations and it's mostly forgettable until her monologue takes an unexpected turn:

...I never really thought much of cake. Cake is the thing that you're raised as a child in America to be like the most exciting most celebratory dessert you can have. And it was just okay. It’s spongy. Usually there’s not much flavor. It’s usually a little dry. There's a not lot of texture. It’s just like a world of missed opportunities. I knew I needed to define my own relationship with cake and that cake could be a lot better than what it was.

One of the underrated, yet defining features of expertise is that subtle, gnawing sense that something isn't quite what it could be. 

Also from being in culinary school, around all these insane masters of beauty and perfection when it comes to finishing a cake. They had, like, tired me completely. To the point of like, ‘I don’t think cake should be frosted.’ I’ve seen how obsessed you can get with frosting a cake and that time should be spent elsewhere. That time should be spent in the actual layers of cake, in the frostings or fillings or whatever it is, but it shouldn’t be spent on a turntable trying to make the perfect, perfect, perfect frosted cake. For what? We’re not in pottery class.

“I don’t think cake should be frosted” is an astonishing statement from a woman who spent the previous decades of her life, among other things, training to master cake decoration. Not content to stop there, she -- against her high-priced culinary education -- reimagined cake as whole. 

Also worth noting is that she did this when shows like Cake Boss established the trend of elaborate frosting designs and customers expected to see something Renaissance-level in their colored sugar. Through this cake, Tosi essentially said to her customers, "What you think you want isn't actually what you want." That's a hard argument to make to spouses or children. Telling it to NYC diners requires a level World Series of Poker-level of "put your money where your mouth is."

There’s a world of flavors. There’s a world of texture. Cake should be delivering more than that. And when I start to think about all these different moments and decisions and time and work put into making the most delicious cake and cake soap and frosting and crumbs and filling...why would I cover it up? It is that dollhouse moment of looking in and being like, ‘I want to see the world of amazing things that’s happening on the inside. The little intricacies of how I’m thinking about your perfect bite of layer cake.’ So we don’t frost the sides of the cake. That’s my diatribe on cake.

Here she takes something thought to be sacred about her profession and strips it back to reveal its original purpose - creating the perfect bite. The elaborate (and often unappetizing) designs that command high prices -- and therefore the attention of most pastry chefs -- are a distraction. A dessert should first be fantastic to eat.

Because she sees what a cake should be, she is also clear on what it shouldn’t be. Because she knows what she wants in her cake, she doesn’t spend any time paying heed to someone else’s idea of cake. She reallocates the time spent doing stuff that doesn't further the goal of making delicious cake. 

The substance is cake, but the principles and creativity could be applied to anything.