| THE LEARNING CURVES |
| Jackie
learned her skills by trial and error, and in the early days
there was a fair bit of error. She'd often devise grandiose
cooking projects without much forethought. |
"I decided to bake a cake in
the shape of a brownstone building for a real estate agency's
anniversary party. Naturally, I'd never done anything like
it before. I thought, I'll just cook a series of sponge cakes,
four flavors, three layers of each and stack them on top of
each other. Simple. Then I'll sculpt a sugar paste façade
and secure it to the front of my building. Easy."
|
| Physics
(which she initially failed in high school) came into play. |
"I found
that 12 individually baked cakes are not square and they
are not solid so you can't just stack them. I never even
considered supports. And gravity had its own ideas about
the horizontal placement of the façade. I was crushed."
|
| Exhausted, late,
faced with a kitchen embalmed with flour and sugar and frustrated
by her realization that it was never going to happen the way
she pictured it, Jackie broke down and cried. This was a theme
of the early days. Then she snapped out of it and exercised
her emerging damage control skills. She assembled just half
the building and laid the façade on top, serving the rest of
the cake on the side. They absolutely loved It! This, too, was
a theme of the early days. |
| Next Page - Bright
Lights, Big Kitchens or click
on headings below |
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about
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