Adelie Penguin Cake

My brother recently celebrated a multiple-of-ten birthday, and my sister-in-law organized a surprise party for him. I don't know what made me look at airfares, but when I found they were ridiculously cheap, I decided to fly home to be part of the surprise.

Of course I felt honor-bound to create a cake. (As usual, skip to the end for specs and recipes.) But what design? Sister-in-law suggested: his whippet; a bicycle; his whippet riding a bicycle; a penguin. Given that bicycle and whippet riding a bicycle were way beyond my skills, I tried sketching the whippet (curled up, for ease of sculpture). I came up with a cute sketch, and was looking forward to decorating in all those shades of brown, but realized the whole concept was just gross - eating the family pet and all. So I tossed that, which left penguin.

I know how to do a penguin, but figured Charlie deserved an original. So I combed the web for pictures of other kinds of penguins. Adelie penguins were the obvious choice for sheer cute-power (although you have to admire the rockhoppers' attitude). Found an excellent photo (which I have now misplaced) of a penguin jumping, thought, "Wait, I've seen that before!" and found a penguin in exactly the same attitude in Mr. Popper's Penguins. Robert Lawson's illustrations are impressively true-to-life.*

I knew I was on my own for this design, since Matt was not accompanying me to St Louis. Intimidating, but also exhilarating to be able do everything exactly as I pleased. Plus, I had my mom for a sous chef and dad for a portraitist, so I wasn't completely without resources.

My brother didn't identify the cake as a penguin at first -- thought it might be the Doubtful Guest. An understandable mistake, but the lack of tennis shoes should have been a dead giveaway.

Design Process

I will include a wordy and picture-laden discourse on designing a cut-up cake in a future post. It would make this post excessively long.

Specs and Recipes

I used my usual chocolate sheet cake recipe from Cooks Illustrated (Issue 48, Jan 2001), and the same frosting recipes as for the emperor penguin. The white sour cream frosting recipe didn't make quite enough -- you would want to increase it, say one and a half times.

I poured unsweetened chocolate glaze over the assembled cake before frosting.



The feet are dried papaya spears, as is the beak. The feet are curved spears cut to appropriate thickness. The beak, of which I am particularly proud, I carved a little. Technically speaking, the feet ought to have had long black claws, but I decided that would be too distracting. A wee nubbin of licorice whip defines the chin.




The eye is a sugar eye I bought at Cookies for the cookie-making party. Orient the pupil carefully - it makes a real difference to the facial expression. Before you call me on it, yes, the pupil probably is made with food coloring. A white jordan almond with a dab of chocolate ganache would be truer to the manifesto (unless of course the candy coating is whitened with titanium dioxide, but at a certain point, I just stop asking).

The cake board is foam core covered with tinfoil and then waxed paper. I used a spatula to gently scrape off icing drips, and polished with a damp paper towel. Use the latter sparingly -- I managed to tear a hole in the dampened waxed paper by overly vigorous rubbing.


*I've ready MPP multiple times, but only this time made the connection that it has the same illustrator as The Story of Ferdinand. Once I realized that, I saw that Mr. Popper's grief-stricken posture near the end is exactly that of the frustrated toreador in Ferdinand. Um, yes, I am a children's literature geek.

Baby Dragon Cake

We made this dragon cake for a young friend's first birthday. It was one of our more difficult collaborations. Matt wanted a flying, twisted, fire-breathing serpent. I wanted something that I felt confident we could achieve in cake. We produced a vast number of sketches, and very nearly ended up making the cake into a representation of . . . a nicely frosted 13x9 rectangle.

We finally settled on a fat baby dragon without too many protruding edges or inside corners. My inspiration for the design came from the book Artie and the Princessby Marjorie Torrey. (This is a wonderful old children's book, and it's a pity that it's out of print.) Our dragon didn't actually end up looking much like him, but Artie got us pointed in the right direction.



Despite the struggle and fuss, I think our dragon turned out pretty well. I am particularly proud of the decorations. Some day, though, we'll probably try the flying, twisted, fire-breathing serpent.

Pattern

Here's a look at how we start translating the design into the actual pattern. A lot of trace paper is involved.

Cake

We made the double chocolate sheet cake from Cooks Illustrated (Issue 48, Jan 2001). I wouldn't be surprised if the recipe is also available in one of their The Best Recipecookbooks. As with all the recipes in Cooks Illustrated, this one is tasty and reliable. After cooking, we froze the cake to make it easier to cut.

Frosting

We used a double batch of the Quick Icing recipe from the 1997 Joy of Cooking. I wanted a very dark brown icing, almost black, so I thought I would add cocoa and blueberry puree. (At least, I think that's why I did it. The problem with posting months after the fact is that I just don't remember any more.) Unfortunately, I couldn't add enough puree to get the color I wanted before the frosting got way too thin. Tasted good, though.

Another time, I would use the fruit puree to replace the liquid in the recipe, rather than in addition to it. Also, the puree made the frosting look grainy. I think the puree probably would have worked better in a cooked frosting (for example, Quick Icing 2 from Joy).

Blueberry Puree

I started from a fruit puree recipe in The Cake Bible. Thaw 14 ounces of frozen blueberries in a colander over a bowl. Smush the thawed berries so more juice goes into the bowl. Microwave the juice on high for eight minutes until it dries up and smells burned - discard. (Another painful reminder that all microwaves are different. Four to six minutes might have produced the desired reduction.) Puree berries in the blender (with reduced juice, if you manage it without incident). Add 2 teaspoons lemon juice. Makes 1 1/4 cups.

I now have a cup of puree lurking in my freezer just waiting for me to need purple frosting. It may be a while.

Decorations

Outlines - licorice whip
Horns - dried papaya and cantaloupe spears
Nostrils - dried cranberries
Eyes - dried bananas with chocolate-covered coffee beans for pupils
Belly - slivered almonds
Toenails - cashews
Tail - sprinkled with extra coarse sugar

Chocolate Glaze for the Wings

Melt 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate and about 2 teaspoons of butter together in the microwave. Pour over wings (place licorice whip first as a sort of dam). Reheat the glaze as necessary to facilitate pouring.


Transport

Figuring out how to transport these large cakes is often a problem. For this one, we tried using a flat Rubbermaid box, with a bit of non-slip shelf lining to rest the cake board on. It actually worked quite well, although we didn't end up keeping the box because it was too big to have hanging around the house, and isn't wide enough for all of our cakes.

Other Ideas

In the course of brainstorming, we came up with lots of ideas that might be good for other dragons. Keep in mind that we decided against some of these because we were skeptical they would succeed.

• add a treasure hoard made of mixed dried fruit


• make a cloud of smoke out of meringue, with dried papaya for tongues of flame


• use cake to make a gout of flame and cover with apricot puree and papaya spears


• use cacao nibs or finely chopped candied ginger for texture on part of the body (like the belly)


• make frill and wings out of fruit leather - cut large pieces into a the shape of a wing and fold it up (I haven't found any commercial fruit leather without artificial color, so you might want to make your own -- per Article 5 of the manifesto)


• make frill and wings out of crepes


• drizzle a fruit glaze on the wings instead of the unsweetened chocolate


• use a pale green frosting (with matcha green tea powder) for the body


• make teeth out of flat pieces of dried fruit cut into interlocking triangles

A Word About the Blog's Title

In general, when we speak of cut-up cakes for grownups, we do not refer to "adult" cakes, although I did have one minor lapse. I was showing pictures of my cakes to a five-year-old girl recently and, encouraged by her enthusiasm, showed her a picture of the lapse, thinking I might get a really good giggle out of her. She was Not Amused. At her age, I suppose I might not have been either. I hurried on to more acceptable subject matter.

Volcano Cake

I had a party on May 18, and wasn't sure which of the designs in the queue would be best for the event. When I found out that May 18 is the anniversary of the 1980 Mount Saint Helens eruption, the choice was obvious. A volcano it would be.

I made a chocolate angel food cake from my go-to cookbook of the moment, the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts. I'm not sure I'd ever made an angel food cake before, but I'll definitely be doing it again. It is a hoot to beat twelve egg whites to stiff peaks, with the beaters wallowing in this incredibly sensual bubble bath. (It's faster with a standing mixer, if you have one, but the kinesthetic experience of using the hand mixer is worth it.)

I should confess here that, in yet another flagrant violation of Article 6, the manifesto article banning obscure tools and ingredients (an article more honored in the breach than in the observance), I used powdered egg whites. These can be a little hard to find (try a health food store or the Jewish section of your local grocery store), but they are a fabulous invention. I don't mind separating eggs, but what on earth would I do with twelve egg yolks? For that matter, I wonder what the powdered egg white people do with the yolks. Sell them to mayonnaise makers? the buttercream factory? (In the process of looking for a good link I discovered that Deb-El, which makes a common brand of powdered egg whites, also makes mayonnaise!)

Another excellent feature of the angel food cake is the apparent daring involved in cooling and decanting it. I remember being wildly impressed as a child when Mom cooled the cake in its pan hanging upside down on a soda bottle (the cake that is, not Mom). Glass soda bottles being a thing of the past, a wine bottle is an adequate substitute. I still find the process darn impressive.



Since the footprint of the cake was relatively small, it fit on a cookie sheet (a large platter would make a nicer presentation - we just don't own one). I used a long serrated knife to cut chunks off the top of the cake to create an irregular mountainous shape with plenty of ravines. I piled the chunks at the base of the cake to create a more conical shape. A few smaller chunks went into the crater to soak up extra lava. You could also strew some chocolate-covered nuts, raisins, or espresso beans about as rubble.

At this point, the cake did not look like delicious food. The addition of ash and lava greatly improved things.



I sprinkled the mountain with powdered sugar, followed by cocoa. If you're a gadgety person, we highly recommend this flour duster. It's great fun to use and works beautifully. (Article 6? Never heard of it.)



I was mostly going for an ash effect. You could also apply a thick layer of powdered sugar, if you wanted snowpack or glaciers, although that veers toward violation of Article 2, which decrees that taste not be sacrificed for visual aesthetics.

Next I applied the hardened lava, made of chocolate glaze poured down the ravines. I topped the lava with a bit more ash after the chocolate cooled.

The molten lava was a raspberry sauce from (you guessed it) the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts. I filled the crater with the sauce and poured some along the paths of the cooled lava.



The crowning touch was the dry ice. We bought the dry ice from the fish counter at our local grocery store. (Other possibe sources: party supply, welding supply, ice cream shop, or theater supply). Note that two pounds of dry ice, well wrapped and stored in a chest freezer, will reduce to about two ounces in less than two days. Ahem. Fortunately, two ounces was just about the right amount.

I had chosen to make a thick, delicious molten lava, knowing that it might not put on a very spectacular display, which it didn't. But the burblings and wisps of smoke were still a great hit at the party. Finkbuilt has ideas for increasing the vigor of the eruption, which I chose to ignore.



If I felt the need to impress a younger crowd, I might violate Article 4, the manifesto's ban on non-food items, and put a small bowl of water in the top of the crater to improve "smoke" production. A small waterproof flashlight shining up through the lava in the crater would also be a nice touch.

I didn't have clear memories of eating homemade angel food cake, so didn't know what to expect. Wow. Store bought angel food cake has nothing on this puppy. You know how store bought angel food is kind of tough and chewy? This cake was melt-in-your-mouth soft and stayed that way for the several days it took me to mop up the leftovers. I didn't get any help from Matt. He said it was the best angel food cake he'd ever had...and he still didn't much like it. The guests at the party more than made up for his lack of enthusiasm. Everyone went back for seconds without prompting. One of the virtues of a fat-free cake? You can eat a lot of it.

Emperor Penguin Cake

This is the first cake Matt designed for me, and it remains one of his best efforts. He is particularly proud of how efficiently the design uses the cake.

The penguin is straight out of Antarctic Antics: A Book of Penguin Poems. This is one of our favorite books. Where else will you find poetry with rhymes like "can't you be" and "anchovies," or "featherweight" and "regurgitate"? Well, maybe here someday, but in general...

Other than keeping the pattern, we didn't document the first iteration very thoroughly. So when it came time to make a cake for a fundraising auction, I decided to dust this one off and refine it a bit. Well, I decided, and Matt ended up doing all the work while I was occupied with other auction preparations.

Actually, I did make the cake itself. It's the Black Mocha Cake from the Moosewood Restaurant Book of Desserts. I hadn't made that recipe before, and it turned out to be tasty, but extremely moist - reminiscent of a pudding cake and not well suited to a cut-up cake. So we froze the bejeebers out of it, and it worked pretty well. (On the cake's little sign at the auction, we called it a "moist gateau," figuring that would have more cachet than "pudding cake.")

The cake is presented on a piece of plywood that is first covered with gray paper, and then waxed paper. This creates a nice icy effect, and the waxed paper is easy to clean up when the icing goes astray.

The cake is quite sweet, and when you add frosting, it teeters over the edge of too much. To reel it in a little, Matt crumbcoated the assembled cake with an unsweetened chocolate glaze (recipe below). He used a skewer to score lines into the glaze to mark the border between the white frosting and chocolate ganache that were applied next.



The "black" parts of the penguin are sour cream chocolate ganache (recipe below) - a lot of it. Matt used 10 ounces of chocolate. You could certainly use less without being accused of skimping, although it's easier to apply if you can spread it thickly.

After applying the ganache, Matt filled in the white belly with sour cream frosting (recipe below). I am grooving on sour cream frosting these days. It's an easy way to make truly white frosting, it's got a little tang to balance the sweetness, and (unlike butter-based frosting) it doesn't harden too much to spread when you put it in the fridge. The only difficulty with sour cream frosting is that it doesn't set up very well. So on a hot day the frosting is apt to sag and adds an extra layer of adipose tissue to your penguin's belly.



While cake turntables are a boon for frosting round layer cakes, they aren't much help for oblong cakes. But hunching over the table is no fun either. Brilliant innovation: put a cardboard box or other object of appropriate height on the table and place the cake board on top of that. You still have to be careful when turning the cake board, but it puts the cake at a much more comfortable height for frosting.

The beak is defined with a sliver of a spear of dried cantaloupe (you could also use dried papaya).

The eye is a white jordan almond dabbed with ganache for a pupil.

The ear patches are grated zest from about 1/4 of an organic orange (it's best to use organic fruit for making zest). Our Microplane grater does a beautiful job of citrus zesting. Regular zesters are also nice, but produce zest bits that are too coarse for this application.

The wings are defined with licorice whip.

The feet are dusted with a crushed graham cracker. The first time Matt made the cake, he used cocoa powder, which also worked well.

At the auction, one of my colleagues spoke wistfully about the idea of a husband who makes cake. It is a very good thing.

Chocolate Glaze

Use butter and unsweetened chocolate in a ratio of 1 tablespoon butter to 1 ounce chocolate. Matt made 6:6, but 4:4 would probably have been enough.

Melt butter and chocolate together over double boiler or in microwave. If microwaving, do something like 20% power in 3-4 minute increments. Start stirring once it's melted enough.

Drizzle the glaze over the cake, spreading it with a spatula as you go. You will probably need to reheat the glaze once or twice during the process.

Ordinarily it would be best to apply the glaze while the cake was on a cooling rack and then transfer the cake to a clean platter for serving. In the case of a cake assembled from multiple pieces (like, say, a penguin), or in the case of a fragile "moist gateau," you'll probably have to apply the glaze to the cake after it's already on its presentation board. You can clean up later by scraping the excess glaze off with a knife and then polishing up with a paper towel.

Sour Cream Chocolate Ganache

Melt as described in the chocolate glaze recipe:
10 ounces bittersweet chocolate (Matt used 8 oz bittersweet and 2 oz unsweetened chocolate because we didn't have enough bittersweet)

Beat in:
1 cup sour cream (Matt used 3/4 c sour cream and 1/4 c whipping cream because we didn't have enough sour cream)
1 1/2 tablespoons coffee liqueur

Add:
powdered sugar to taste (probably start with about 1/2 cup)

Sour Cream Frosting

Beat together:
3 tablespoons sour cream
1/2 pound (2 cups) powdered sugar

Add one or two more teaspoons of sour cream as needed to achieve the desired consistency. Don't add more or the frosting will be too runny to support itself.

Grey Jay, Part 3 (Finishing)

We covered the back of the crown and the beak first with blue grey frosting and then with poppy seed filling. Theoretically one can buy poppy seed filling in stores (where it comes in cans and goes by "mohn"), but we couldn't find any, so we borrowed a friend's poppy seed grinder (dang that Article 6!) and made our own. One cup of whole poppy seeds made roughly 1/2 cup ground.



I used a similar process for finding a recipe as with the sour cream frosting. I ended up using this recipe, although this recipe (posting by martmurt a little more than halfway down the page) sounded very tasty, just likely to be too pale for this application. The finished product was fairly dry and crumbly, but moist enough that it could be squished together. Next time I would try making a smoother filling.



If you were going to make a cake with a heavy emphasis on poppy seeds, it would be worth your while to find a source for really fresh poppy seeds - they go rancid quickly. If nothing else, there's mail order. Any ideas on good places to order from?

The eye is a disk of licorice. It didn't contrast much with the poppy seed filling, so Matt added a dab of white frosting.



The leg is two pieces of Panda licorice (stick format) that Matt carved into shape. I think the licorice might have been nice for the beak too - less fuzzy than the poppy seed filling. I also think it might be fun to make an open beak holding a chunk of the leftover cake. Although disturbing if you think about it too hard.



After frosting the cake, Matt sprinkled whole poppy seeds on the wings and tail to sketch in the anatomy - he did a beautiful job of it.

Grey Jay, Part 2 (Frosting)

Crumb Coat

We like to freeze the cake before cutting and frosting it, to minimize crumbs. If you don't have room in your freezer, it helps to chill the cake in the refrigerator. I then apply a "crumb coat" - a thin layer of frosting to stick the crumbs down, so they won't get mixed up in the top coat of frosting. Until now I had just been using the same frosting I used for the top coat. This time, I tried making a thinner crumb coat (1 1/2 T butter, 1 lb powdered sugar, and 4-6 T water). That worked nicely and allowed me to spread it quite thin. I probably have enough left over to coat another cake (depending on the length of the perimeter).



White Frosting

I chose a sour cream frosting to get the white parts as white as possible. Using butter or vanilla would have added too much color. Theoretically one can use shortening but, as mycakes so aptly pointed out, that would violate Article 4 (use only food). I used my usual method when searching for a new recipe - pull as many recipes from the Internet as possible, write them all down, thoughtfully compare them for similarities and differences, and then pick one randomly.

Most of the recipes called for butter, but after I combined 1/2 cup sour cream and 1 lb of powdered sugar, it was obvious that the butter was completely extraneous. If I'd had a lemon, I probably would have added a little lemon juice to pump up the tang, for more contrast with the sweet cake.

Grey Frosting

Figuring out how to make blue grey frosting for the wings and tail was a challenge. When we made the jam cake, we used the bluest jam we could find without high fructose corn syrup. Still, boysenberry isn't terribly blue.

In earlier experiments trying to make green frosting, we had found that powdered spirulina showed promise as a colorant. (Spirulina is another violation of Article 6 - sorry. Health food stores are your best bet.) Matt found that adding about 2 T of jam and 1/4 t spirulina to 3/4 cup of the sour cream frosting produced a creditable grey. Add the spirulina very gradually until you get the color you want - a tiny bit goes a long way.



The only problem with this recipe was that it was too runny. This actually produced a lovely smooth top, but sagged a lot on the sides - I had to clean it up repeatedly. Another time, I would make a separate batch of frosting starting with just the powdered sugar and jam and then adding sour cream until I got a good consistency.



Buff

I was pleased with the buff on the front of the crown. (I tried to find a more technical word for that area. On the dog it would be called a stop, but all I could find in Sibley was crown.) I used cashew butter mixed with a few drops of maple syrup to make it spreadable. There's that pesky Article 6 again. But cashew butter is a lovely food and we recommend you keep some around anyway. It's particularly good for french toast and waffles (do you sense a theme?). In lieu of cashew, you could probably use smooth peanut butter and lighten it up with a bit of the sour cream frosting.



Next post, the finishing touches.

Grey Jay, Part 1

When I started to write about this project, I didn't realize just how involved the explanations would be. As a result, I've divided the write-up into three posts. Today's post is about the design and the cake. The second post will be about the frosting, and the third post will be about the finishing touches.

Background
Matt thought of this cake for the birthday of a good friend who has a terrible habit of luring grey jays when we are out hiking. If you are not familiar with grey jays, they are also known as camp robber birds. Where the jays are prevalent, they will try to steal any exposed food, even if you're only inches away. Melissa Anne, although otherwise a fine outdoorswoman, likes to put food in her palm, hold it up, and chirp to call the jays. We go backpacking with her anyway.

Design
This one was pulled straight from a wee picture in Sibley. Matt was able to freehand the full-size version after only about 3 or 4 iterations. I find this very impressive. I would have headed straight for the pictorial aids, a grid or a pantograph or something. (I hope to do a more in-depth discussion on re-sizing in a future post.)

The design is unusual for Matt in that it is made in only two pieces. Not as efficient a use of the cake as Matt would usually demand, but well within my tolerance.



Cake
Pairing cake and subject is one of the great mysteries. I honestly don't know why a jam spice cake was so apt for the jay when a lemon cake would have been all wrong. Is it all down to personal aesthetic, or are there some larger truths here?

We have three editions of The Joy of Cooking, one from 1953, one from 1975 and one from 1997. Each serves a different function. This cake is the Rombauer Jam Cake from the 1953 and 1975 editions. We increased it 1.5 times to make enough batter for a 9 x 13 cake. The recipe is from a time when spice cakes had the courage of their convictions. It calls for 1.5 teaspoons of freshly grated nutmeg. That is a lot of nutmeg. It also has 1.5 cups of jam (we used Smucker's Simply Fruit Boysenberry Jam). The jam makes the cake quite sweet and moist (and a kind of funky color). The sweetness isn't cloying because it doesn't all come from cane sugar and because the spice balances it out. We will definitely be making this cake again - it's very tasty and unusual.



Using a nutmeg grater was one of several places we deviated from Article 6 of the manifesto (use only basic tools and ingredients). On the other hand, the grater is basic for us. We use it particularly for adding fresh nutmeg as a french toast or waffle topping. If you like nutmeg, we highly recommend this little tool. Plus, it's just a nifty object. Ours is only one of the many kinds available.




Next post - on to the frosting!

A Cake Manifesto

Over the years, our tastes in cake and cake design have evolved in a more or less consistent fashion, allowing us to deduce the following ex post facto manifesto:

Article 1
The designs should be at least a bit more adventurous and sophisticated than for the average kids' cake. Olivia the pig - yes. Teddy bears - no. Cute - yes. Cutesy - no. Extra credit given if others can identify an animal by species (or at least genus).



Article 2
The design must never sacrifice taste for appearance. The cake is, first and foremost, a cake. The purpose of a cake, no matter how fancy, is to taste delicious.

Article 3
The cake should look like a cake. Yes, it also looks like something else, but only in addition to looking like a cake. While I admire the verisimilitude that can be achieved in making a cake look like a hamburger, R2D2, or the thoracic organs, I also think it's kind of gross. If the goal is to make a delicious cake, I want people to look at it and think, ah, that is a delicious cake.

Article 4
The cake must be made entirely of food. Nothing inedible, like dowels or toothpicks, to create structure. No plastic figurines. I would argue that this article precludes the use of silver dragees. Matt would disagree.

Article 5
Avoid food coloring. For one thing, food coloring isn't really food (cf Article 4). But mostly, I am fascinated by the challenge of creating colors without food coloring. Neutrals are easy. Small patches of purple, red, yellow and orange - not too tough. I have some ideas to test for green. Totally stumped on blue.




Article 6
A home cook with basic skills, equipment and ingredients should be able to make the cake. This is the one article we are most apt to violate. We love learning new things and playing with new toys. Also, adhering to Article 5 often requires going a bit afield to find ingredients.

Article 7
Decoration is achieved with diverse substances, not just frosting. This is often mandated by avoiding food coloring (cf Article 5). Frosting flowers, although seductive, never taste as good as they should (cf Article 2). While you can do incredible things with fondant, it almost always disguises the cake-ness of the cake (cf Article 3). Finally, applying rolled fondant or piped icing is not my idea of basic cookery (cf Article 6).

Article 8
The design should use the cake as efficiently as possible. This is primarily Matt's article. I concur with the sentiment from a thrift point of view, but Matt is the one most engaged by the discipline of figuring out how to turn a 13 x 9 rectangle into a complex organic form with only slivers of cake left over. The resulting tangrams are things of beauty.



Article 9
No part of this manifesto should stand in the way of your artistic vision or practical requirements. Need to save time by using a cake mix? You have our blessing. Crave the ability to make any color under the sun? Use food coloring and more power to you. Enchanted by a putto cake mold? Well, okay, but we'd rather not hear about it.

Article 10
If it's not fun, don't do it. Designing and making fabulous cakes is way too much work if you're not having a good time. A little teeth gnashing and performance anxiety is inherent to the creative process, but don't push yourself further than that. In the end, a cake can only be truly fabulous if it nourishes your body, your mind and your soul.