Let Them Eat Cake

Jay Johnson -- I am obsessed with cake. As someone who takes design videos for Design2Share's YouTube channel, I take videos of great architecture. I shoot monuments. I shoot interiors. I shoot parties. I shoot people talking about design. But there is a recurring theme of cakes in our channel that might be stretching the "design" mission of our site a wee bit.

What follows is some rationalization.

I like the design of cakes. They are beautiful objects. Some may taste hideous and sickly sweet, but most look great due to all the thought and effort put into them. They are Constructed Cooking Projects, usually coming out of the oven as a square, round, oval, or rectangular blob of ugly baked flour, eggs, sugar or honey, and fat. Then comes the design magic: shapes are stacked, cut and layered with fillings, spread over with layers of buttery, sugary frosting, and then further decorated.

I admit to also liking the taste of cakes. Some can be very sugary, but others are pure bites of heaven. I like the cupcake, the petite version of the larger cake, because they can be savored without guilt. The end is quickly in sight. A special thank you to New York's famous Cupcake Cafe for hours of bite-sized pleasure!

But some large cakes you never want to end. Solo or ala mode, cakes are just desserts indeed. Interestingly, the word cake is of Viking origin, and being a Johnson, I shall from now on consider cake to be my birthright.

But my research also unearthed that cake is a word derived from the Old Norse word kaka. Ewwwww.

In looking further into my cake obsession, I learned that cake parties were the height of American entertaining fashion during the late 1800s. Some favorite cakes were innovated during this cake-crazy era, like the angel food cake. There is something winningly pleasurable about the concept of cake parties, don't you think? Calories be damned!

Then there is the enduring King cake parties around Mardi Gras each year (see photo), venerable traditions around a beautifully decorated ring-shaped cake that are rich with historic meanings. Explore the history of cakes, and you'll be in for some fascinating reading.

I gravitate towards being a video cake paparazzi because cakes tend to show up wherever I like to be. Weddings? Those are cake events. Birthdays? Cake events. Baby naming parties? Cake events. Showers? Cake events. 

Funerals? They stump me. I don't go to those very often, and certainly would never take videos there (unless the tombstones and mausoleums were interesting!), so I cannot confirm the cake's importance or non-importance in those rituals.

Cakes are the center of many happy times, no doubt about it. While I consider Thanksgiving to be a pie event, we should consider inserting more cake into it -- like a nice pumpkin spice. Hmmmmm!

There are even national cake celebration days, putting cakes in the center of their own All About Sugary Me universe:

• National Cheesecake Day falls on the 30th of July each year.
• National Spongecake Day is on the 23rd of August.
• National Angelfood Cake day falls on the 10th of October.
• Don't forget to celebrate National Fruitcake Day on December 27.
• Where you a Mayan in a past life? Don't pass up Chocolate Cake Day on the 27th of January!

My all-time favorite cake inspirations come from Molly O'Neill's New York Cookbook. It's probably one of the finest cookbooks on the market, for starters. The collection's core idea is sheer inspiration. This New York Times food columnist knows her food sources. She ferrets out the best New York gourmets and neighborhood chefs and focuses on their recipes and the colorful history behind many a dish.

Check out the cake recipes in Molly's "A Little Something Sweet" section, and you will swear that cake has more meanings than you've ever thought possible.

Thrill to recipes like Ebinger's Blackout Cake, Fallen Chocolate Souffle Cake, Estelle Parsons' Walnut Torte, Selma Frishling's Passover Nut Cake, Aunt Olga's Cardamom Cake, Evelyn's Sand Torte, Doris Hosking's Tomato Soup Cake, George Washington's Carrot Tea Cake, Aunt Phil's Brown Sugar Cake, Carrot Top Cake, Ray Kraft's Sauerkraut Surprise Cake, Kate's Cafe au Lai Cheesecake with a Mocha Crust . . . you get the idea! It's a treasure trove of mouth-watering cake delights (and other sweet treats, like classic Coney Island Fudge).

In the over 300 home videos contained in my Design2Share Video Diary on YouTube, you will see examples where I have taken my video camera -- a sturdy palm-sized Radio Shack $99 camtastic Sanyo special -- and shot many cake videos. "These are a few of my favorite things," and here are three of my favorite cake videos: Baby Naming Party Cakes, Birthday Cake Assembly Line, and Wedding Cake Appreciation Video.

And consider the title of this diary entry, "Let them eat cake." It seems that this was not spoken by Marie Antoinette, but rather by the wife of Louis XIV. The reference isn't even to a yummy dessert, what we know as cake. It was actually a reference to oven cake, an object used to clean out brick ovens when soot and grime built up. So this was really an endearing way of saying, "Let them eat trash."

Now that's kaka!

Let's hear about your favorite family celebrations . . . and unforgettable cakes! Thank you for your comments . . . .

Photo credits: Wildflowers, Mardis Gras Parade Schedule.

Your Everyday Facist Architecture

Jay Johnson -- A few years ago I was eating lunch with an interior designer, his mother, his sister, and his sister's boyfriend. The boyfriend is a university professor, an expert in art history. He haunts European libraries, researches beauty inside medieval churches, and loves the world of art.

The discussion went something like this -- remembered sketchily through the hoppy-lemony haze induced by a great Belgian clouded ale:

Art Historian/Professor -- As a decorator, what is your favorite style?

Designer -- I don't lean to one style in particular. I'm fairly eclectic, and my preferences often depend on my clients' tastes.

Art Historian/Professor -- Fair enough. But what style influences you the most, barring your clients?

Designer (ironically) -- Well, that would be fascist architecture, I think. Probably Italian fascism.

Art Historian/Professor (aghast, gasping) -- WHAT DO YOU MEAN? No, no, no. You can't mean fascism!

Designer (even more ironically) -- I just adore a good fascist building. You can't beat it.

Art Historian/Professor (deadly serious) -- No, please don't say that. Even in jest. Fascism has no soul. It is sterile. It is evil.

Designer (perfectly serious) -- I do like fascist architecture. There is something amazing about the look of the buildings. It's all about scale.

As this discussion escalated, we were taken on a verbal tour of great cathedrals, where sacred architecture was held up as the platonic ideal of beauty. The adoration of the divine, the purity of form, the elaborate grand design of pious artwork and decoration -- we covered all this ground. And at the other extreme was the monolithic, sterile, atheistic, alienating buildings created by Albert Speer (Hitler's favorite architect) and Mussolini's men, from Gruppo 7 to Marcello Piacentini.

The designer was goaded into being a champion of fascism, but he did not love fascist architecture in a literal way. He personally despises double-volume entry foyers in McMansions or huge columns anywhere inside a home. He prefers residences that have livable, warm, human scale to them. But some of the furniture and other decorative pieces can absolutely be oversized to play mindgames with scale and give a sense of humor to his favorite decorating projects.

I was a quiet observer of the conversation. The sister was also mute. The mother was morbidly fascinated with the turn of the conversation, half amused by the sparring and half wondering how her son could be so balmy. But she really knew he was teasing.

The conversation stuck with me. During a recent visit to Washington DC by Amtrak, I was struck by the scale of Union Station and recalled this dialogue. There's a strong Neoclassic and Art Deco beauty about Union Station that underscores the designer's points about fascist architecture (or Italian Rationalism, as some label this design movement). Both Neoclassicism and Art Deco contributed to the surprisingly diverse expressions within the Italian branches of fascist architecture.

In Italy, fascist architects tried to recapture an "ideal" from medieval and renaissance Italy. The movement actually saw the rebuilding of plazas and piazzas throughout Italy, creating cobblestoned spaces with impressive new buildings that were made to look old in order to promote civic pride and encourage tourism. American tourists, we have been duped!This trick of architectural revisionism was very surprising to me and is documented in an excellent book, Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle, and Tourism in Fascist Italy. Taken literally, fascist architecture took Italy from something real, authentic, and a bit grubby and transformed it into a big, clean Epcot Center exhibit.

That's not to say that the scale of many fascist buildings isn't grand and awe-inspiring, like the famous Square Colliseum and the EUR community in and around Rome or the train station in Florence. There is a reason why many art movies filmed around the EUR in order to capture the plight of humans as they live in an overscaled, totalitarian, souless world. Ah, the angst of it all. Big buildings, puny people.

In the over 300 home videos contained in my Design2Share Video Diary on YouTube, you will see examples where I have taken my video camera -- a sturdy palm-sized Radio Shack $99 camtastic Sanyo special -- and taken videos of different architectural styles. I'm a design sponge, so any architectural style fascinates me. I'm the midwestern-raised lad who applauds any attempt by people to build or make anything. I would give every Broadway show a standing ovation, but I've learned to curb my enthusiasm and act in synch with my seated fellow New Yorkers.

I had my camera with me during my DC trip and shot two videos of Union Station that will get you thinking about so-called fascist architecture here in America. The first video takes you from the outside of the station into the front foyer. Grand indeed! The second video has me sitting down inside the front foyer and shooting panoramic views. Imagine yourself in fascist Italy. It's not too much of a stretch, oddly enough.

I look back on the conversation between the art historian and the designer with a bit more insight now. I think both admired the same inhumanly huge scale we see in many civic buildings and in public spaces everywhere. Let's face it -- fascist architecture, whether in a luxury home or a railway station, can be breathtaking.

Where do I fall in this debate? I prefer small packages, thank you.

A beautiful church, especially a grand cathedral, is awe inspiring. There's no doubt about it, and I admire the design achievement. But most of these buildings are human-dwarfing structures that emphasize the totalitarian aspects of theology: you, tiny human; Me, God.

I contrast these huge houses of worship to the beautiful one-room Friends Meeting house I visited last Sunday morning, with small-scale simplicity and rustic charm that made me feel achingly close to the Divine within . . . as opposed to forcing me to look up and away for a little spark of heaven.

So are you a fan of grand-scale architecture? Please post your comment . . . .

Photo Credits: New York Architecture, Amazon