Have Your Cake and Eat You Too
By Veronica MacDonald
An Accidental Anthropologist
A person’s photo can be superimposed onto a sheet of cake, according to a poster in the supermarket bakery. A thousand occasions pop to mind – birthdays, milestones, life events. What’s an occasion if it isn’t celebrated with fluffy cake?
Cakes at weddings are a major photo op. Guests would be miffed if the band calls out the last dance and nothing dessert-like has surfaced yet. Some guests might even sniff, “Where’s the cake?” and leave in a huff, tucking their would-be wedding gift under their arm on the way out.
Why else would people gather in an office to celebrate something if there were no cake? Cake is the perfect food for minimal time commitment. You can fit it somewhere in between lunch and the four o’clock meeting. You go in, wait for the congratulatory speech, grab a piece of cake, pat the honoree on the back, and duck out. All good workers eat at their desks anyway.
And then it dawns on me. If a person’s photo is on the cake, you’d actually be eating his or her face. Some parts of the world would call that cannibalism.
Why not go to the convenience store and buy a Twinkie? They’re sweet and fluffy too, and no suggestions of cannibalism. Plus they last a really long time.
Ah, but American cakes have everything to do with how they are decorated. You’ve got the three-tiered wedding cake designed to feed a crowd. It is distinguished by the bride and groom on top, small details, and a high price tag. Then there is the flat sheet cake for office parties. It usually has some sort of frilly icing around the corners. And of course there is the small, round supermarket cake perfect for the I’ve-forgotten-to-buy-anything-for-a-dinner-party scenario. Or you could splurge and get one from an upscale coffee shop or bakery. Again, who wouldn’t like cake?
But let’s not forget the miniature varieties, perhaps a step down on the cake caste. The cupcake is a schoolchild’s favorite birthday treat. Many mothers stay up late decorating them to earn the “supermom” moniker. The afternoon coffee cakes are also taken for granted, as well as the much-ridiculed bundt cakes and fruit cakes. It is much more glamorous to be a wedding cake, or a cake with a photo on it.
Hopefully you never find yourself at an event where you are on the cake. If the guests eat your face with glee, you may discover how they truly feel!