Cake Engineer? You're kidding...

At this point I haven't decided what this blog will be about, exactly, but hopefully at some point interesting and knowledgable about food, and perhaps especially cakes, since that's what I do every day. "But," you're wondering, "how do you get a cake engineer?" Let me explain.

I grew up with lots of interests, knowing I had the ability to do whatever I wanted or put my mind to. Music and golf played a big part, and cooking was fun but nothing serious. I enjoyed looking at cookbook pictures and trying new recipes every now and then, and learning from my younger brother's experiments with pizza dough and bread sticks on Friday nights. But as I got older and had to start thinking about career goals, I decided to go in the scientific direction -- it had plenty of opportunities and paid well. I liked airplanes and most mechanical things (other than cars) seemed interesting so I decided to study mechanical engineering at Purdue University. I graduated, got married and moved away and went to work for a small automotive supplier for a couple of years. It was awful! There's no way I wanted to spend a third of my living hours doing this work, so I had to rethink my whole career. At least 8 hours a day, five days a week was a lot of time, so it'd better be something I enjoyed or found worthwhile. I thought back to all the things I liked to do before I dedicated so many days and hours of my life to engineering school, and started to think seriously about food. There happened to be a fairly well-known, well-reputed food business nearby, so I applied.

I was hired into a restaurant, into the most unpredictable, zaniest coffee shop you could ever find. But it was fun, fast-paced, had excellent food and coffee, was flexible and provided the perfect schedule for me to attend culinary school. The coffee shop was a transformation for me... of coworkers, of attire, of knowledge gained through mere interest, and of lifestyle -- working weekends, holidays, early mornings and sometimes evenings. But the people were lively, friendly and interesting, and I loved it. Still, I felt that I couldn't continue working in a coffee shop forever, that I should be doing something more skillful, and after a little over a year I had finished a baking and pastry certificate; so I applied to be a cake baker and decorator and was offered the job. Now, here I am.

This is where art and science collide into masterpieces. Cakes are so interesting... by looks, aromas, flavors, textures, and especially in how they're made. And then when you talk about wedding cakes, there's the drama of actually transporting the cake from point A to B in one piece, rain or shine. At first I was afraid my engineering training was being tossed out the window, but after almost a month in my new position I'm beginning to recall things I learned about mass production and battles between groups over how each will meet their production goals with limited time and equipment. Better, faster and cheaper? Sorry, you can only have two of the three. Heat and mass transfer -- why couldn't we have done finite element analyses on baked goods??? Statics and Materials Science -- how about a stress analysis on a five-tier crooked cake? How many dowels do you actually need to support it so you're getting the best possible cost for materials? Ironically, I work with two other engineers -- one is my boss, the other is baking and decorating cakes with me. So far, I love it.

That's how you get a cake engineer.