Sitting in Bars with Cake: Lessons and Recipes from One Year of Trying to Bake My Way to a Boyfriend Read online

  Editor: Camaren Subhiyah

  Designer: Darilyn Lowe Carnes

  Production Manager: Anet Sirna-Bruder

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014945996

  ISBN: 978-1-4197-1582-2

  Text copyright © 2015 by Audrey Shulman

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

  Published in 2015 by Abrams Image, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Abrams Image books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact [email protected] or the address below.

  115 West 18th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  www.abramsbooks.com

  DISCLAIMER

  The people who appear in this book are based on my sugar-fueled, alcohol-addled memories of meeting guys in crowded, noisy bars well after my bedtime. Some recollections may be a little hazier than others, so please excuse any imprecision and enjoy the show.

  For Chrissy and Katy,

  who are way better than boyfriends.

  CONTENTS

  Welcome!

  Getting Started

  Chapter 1: Sweet

  The Guy Who Made Contact with My Mouth

  Sticky Maple Kiss Cake with Pumpkin Frosting

  The Guy Who Was in a Frat

  Sweet Greek Walnut Cake with Yogurt Frosting

  The Guy Who Just Got Ditched

  Chocolate Marshmallow Cake with Southern Comfort Frosting

  The Guy Who Told Me He’d Send Me His Recipe

  White Chocolate Gravel Cheesecake

  The Guy Who Proposed

  Blushing Berry Cake with Champagne Frosting

  The Guy Who Danced Like No One Was Watching

  Dreamsicle Cake with Orange Frosting

  The Guy Who Didn’t Like Sweets

  Angel Food Cake with Chocolate-Avocado Frosting

  Chapter 2: Salty

  The Guy Who Asked If I Was a Grandmother

  Peanut Brittle Cake with Old-fashioned Frosting

  The Guy Who Liked to Talk About Himself

  Bacon Sponge Cake with Potato Chip Frosting

  The Guy Who Claimed to Be Full

  Chocolate Prune Cake with Salty Frosting

  The Guy Who Got Handsy

  Bear Claw Cake with Drippy Caramel Frosting

  The Guy Who Inhaled the Cake

  Sloppy Joe Cake with Cracker Jack Frosting

  The Guy Who Was Married

  Great Scot Skirlie Cake with Toffee Frosting

  The Guy Who Acted Interested

  Pretzel Roulette Cake with Pistachio Filling

  Chapter 3: Bitter

  The Guy Who Said You’ll Never Meet Anyone in This Town

  Skinny Espresso Cake, No Whip

  The Guy Who Came with a Party Bus

  Gin and Tonic Cake with Lime Zest Frosting

  The Guy Who Criticized the Cake

  Olive Oil Cake with Sesame Seed Frosting

  The Guy Who Was Recently Dumped

  Bitter Chocolate Dumped Cake with Cheap-Wine Frosting

  The Guy Who Used My Nose as a Pickup Line

  Chocolate Poppy Seed Cake with Chocolate Frosting

  The Guy Who Was Engaged

  Hidden Layer Chocolate-Raspberry Torte

  The Guy Who Knew Too Much

  Orange-You-Glad-We-Met Marmalade Cake with Marmalade Glaze

  Chapter 4: Fruity

  The Guy Who Had Mermaid Hair

  (Let’s Get) Baked Apple Granola Cake with Honey Frosting

  The Guy Who Invited Me Back to His Place

  Chocolate-Bananas Cake with Chocolate-Coconut Frosting

  The Guy Who Licked Elizabeth’s Leg

  Puckering Lime Cake with Sour Frosting

  The Guy Who Thought This Was an Art Project

  Sangria Party Cake with Triple Sec Frosting

  The Guy Who Directed Adult Films

  Seedy Cherry Cocktail Cake with Brandy Frosting

  The Guy Who Liked Guys

  Peachy Keen Cake with Minty Frosting

  The Guy Who Took My Cake

  Melonhead Cake with Fizzy Frosting

  Chapter 5: Savory

  The Guy Who Was a Hot Rocket Scientist

  Curry Carrot Cake with Gingery Frosting

  The Girl Who Didn’t Have Cake for Her Birthday

  Chocolate Chick-ory Cake with Dandelion Frosting

  The Guy Who Asked for My Email Address

  Artichoked Cake with Balsamic Glaze

  The Guy Who Seemed Right

  Squashed Blossom Cake with Pine Nut Frosting

  The Guy Who Preferred Pie

  Sweet Potato Cake with Cauliflower Frosting

  The Guy Who I’d Grown Up With

  Sweet Pea Cake with Crème Fraîche

  The Guy Who Pointed Out the Obvious

  Sage Cake with Ricotta Frosting

  The End

  Acknowledgments

  Index of Searchable Terms

  Dear friends,

  I’m so delighted you’re interested in reading about my year of baking and bar-hopping to bait a boyfriend. Or maybe you’re just in the market for new cake ideas. Either way, I hope you’ll get a kick out of these retellings and recipes as if you’d been accompanying me on my cake exploits. (I’m sorry we didn’t know each other then, or else I would have invited you to join.)

  Here are some things you should know:

  Before last year, I could probably count the number of beers I’d had on one hand. You’d be more likely to find me making a Jell-O mold than doing Jell-O shots, cohosting murder mystery parties in the comfort zone of my apartment as opposed to driving around Los Angeles at all hours of the night trying to pick up guys in bars. I didn’t know how to pick up guys, well, anywhere.

  Then one summer, all that changed. My best friend, Chrissy, decided to have her birthday party at a bar, and as the self-appointed baker of our friend group, I brought along a cherry cake I had made from scratch. I was in the middle of cutting and serving pieces for our friends when I looked up to see that all of the guys across the bar were staring at me, and staring at my cake, silently formulating the best way to come over and ask for some. As someone who took prescription medicine for sweaty hands until well after college, this was a rather startling moment of discovery for me.

  Holding a cake = guys want to talk to you.

  Let me back up just a minute so you can fully grasp the importance of this revelation. I grew up being that girl with bad bangs on the bar mitzvah circuit who no one asked to dance. I never had a straight date to prom and wasted far too many months in college crying over boys who quickly lost interest in me after realizing I was more like a first-grade teacher than a tortured artist with loose morals. I thought maybe my luck would change after graduation, and I’d finally score a boyfriend when I moved to a bigger city and became a more assertive adult. Maybe people would stop giving me grow-a-boyfriend kitsch for Valentine’s Day and my aunt would stop sending me dating self-help books. Maybe I would finally connect with the right person and everything would just work out.

  So I tried to put myself out there. I went on a flurry of
online dates. I let people set me up. I tried dating a friend and even someone from work, but there was never any lasting success. I couldn’t tell if I wasn’t meeting the right people (maybe) or if something was wrong with me (probably). As much as I didn’t want to admit it, there was some ocean-size progress to be made in the getting-comfortable-around-boys department. So that night, as I stood in the bar holding my cake on its flimsy little tray, I had an epiphany.

  Homemade cake was the icebreaker of the century.

  I could go up to any guy in the bar under the pretense of offering him a slice; it was just like hosting a party at someone else’s house. My friends watched as I approached every boy within spitting distance, maintaining previously unimaginable periods of eye contact because now I had a conversation piece, and it didn’t really matter if I was blushing because the guys were too busy eating cake to notice.

  People go inexplicably insane when offered free dessert.

  “You made this?!” the boys asked, their mouths full. “Are you an angel?!” By the end of that night, I had talked to more guys over cake than I had during the entirety of my undergraduate career. Chrissy joked that all I needed to do to find a boyfriend was bake cakes and go sit in bars. I thought this was hysterical, but not something I could actually go through with. It implied a certain amount of kitchen labor and bravery, not to mention spending more time in the foreign territory of bars.

  The rest of the year went by, and I was still single and still tired of it. I really didn’t feel like making an online dating profile again and wasn’t quite ready to call it quits and throw myself into full-fledged spinsterhood. So in an uncharacteristically brazen disregard for rational action, I decided I would go back to what had worked for me: I would meet guys by taking cakes to bars on a regular and relentless basis. I just wouldn’t go to the same bar twice, lest I give up the whole charade.

  It sounded like a feasible strategy: bake fifty cakes and take them to fifty bars over the course of a year, offering pieces to potential boyfriends until one surfaced. If I was still single when it was all said and done, at least I would know I had made a pretty valiant effort to not be.

  So I did it.

  I did it for an entire year, you guys.

  I took fifty freaking cakes around town and spent a billion dollars on confectioners’ sugar. And now I have eight cavities and a helluva lot of stories to prove it, this book being a collection of my very favorite encounters.

  After making it through my dating-permissible years with such a paltry amount of male interaction, here was my marathon of being-with-boys experience. I met dozens of guys in dozens of bars: guys who were sweet, guys who were nuts, guys who asked me to marry them, and guys who were already married to other people. I had set out to find a boyfriend, but I was picking up a whole handbook of information instead—lessons you can only learn at two o’clock in the morning when you’re giving out cake for free. Every single guy I met was teaching me something, whether he wanted any cake or not. For example:

  • Male follow-up skills are slower than dial-up.

  • Rebounding is for basketball players and Taylor Swift, not you.

  • “I’m full” = “I have a girlfriend,” because guys are never full.

  Sitting in bars with cake meant opening myself up in ways I never had before. (Um, number one being I had to start drinking.) Yes, it was nerve-racking to go up to strangers every single week and offer them cake, and yes, it was embarrassing if they didn’t want any or their girlfriends surfaced mid-offer and I had to quietly back away from the table and pretend I was never there. It was disappointing when guys acted interested and I never heard from them again, and even more so when things progressed to dating but still didn’t work out. I was also eating millions of calories’ worth of cake batter every week and churning out thousands of dirty dishes. But I’d do it all over again. This dating strategy eventually came to feel normal—I even came to love it.

  This is my frosting-filled record of the cake-eaters (and a couple non-cake-eaters) I met that year—the guys responsible for the unexpected education that got me to the other side of the being-with-boys department, a new place where I’m happier, savvier, and far more confident. I might even be better at baking.

  There are recipes to go along with the stories; I figured you might want to have some cake on hand while you read.

  xx

  Audrey

  GETTING STARTED

  Let’s get real, people. I’m a home baker. I have zero professional training, which means I’m not above cramming together a crumbly cake in a lasagna pan and covering the evidence with frosting. I’m pretty sure it will still taste just as good.

  This is great news for you. Even the most inexperienced of bakers should be able to make and enjoy the following recipes without spending their entire weekend (a) hunting for complicated ingredients, (b) slaving over the stove, or (c) popping muscle relaxers.

  Here’s a supply list to get you started. It covers everything from baking and getting ready to actually serving up cakes in bars, although I would recommend looking through your desired cake’s ingredient list before diving in (as some recipes occasionally call for something a little more unusual). Best of luck!

  Supplies

  unbleached white flour

  large eggs

  unsalted butter

  vanilla extract

  granulated sugar

  brown sugar

  confectioners’ sugar

  sour cream or Greek yogurt

  whole milk (although 2 percent will suffice)

  cocoa powder

  baby candy bars or cereal for decoration

  resilient apron

  27 rolls of paper towels

  durable sponge

  aluminum foil

  the Pandora Supremes station

  the Moulin Rouge! sound track

  This American Life podcasts

  nail polish (kept a safe distance from the cake)

  trail mix/banana chips (for fuel)

  ginger ale (for consumption)

  plastic forks

  paper plates

  napkins in a masculine shade (a lot of them)

  serving knife

  cake carrier

  Cakes for Pleasant Surprises, Thoughtful Gestures, and Full-On Victories

  Are you in the mood to whip up something sugary and sentimental, even erring on the side of adorable? The following recipes have been baked up to accompany tales of endearing reactions from my male, cake-eating audience. Yep—these are sweet cakes about sweethearts, who (shocker) actually exist on the bar circuit. Hopefully the sugar high will hit right about the time you arrive at a line or two reaffirming that there are, in fact, still scrumptious single boys floating around.

  The Guy Who Made Contact with My Mouth

  This guy looked kind of like George Stephanopoulos, if George Stephanopoulos was still young and really amazing at Ping-Pong. He’d been playing a rather captivating game of table tennis when I interrupted to see if he’d like my last piece of cake, which he promptly abandoned his opponent to eat.

  He turned out to be a nationally ranked athlete from Bulgaria, made especially evident when he threw an arm out to show how much he loved the cake and shot-put my empty cake tray clear across the room. While his opponent stamped his foot waiting for their game to resume, the Bulgarian insisted on feeding me bites of my own cake, taking care to wipe derailed frosting from my mouth. I had just started to get comfortable with the up-close-and-personalness of this gesture when, without any warning, he grabbed my face and kissed me as a thank-you for the unexpected dessert.

  There’d always been a certain layer of tentativeness during those rare moments when I’d found myself within feasible make-out distance of any male person’s face, so I was grateful to the Bulgarian for finally bursting the personal-space bubble by pulling me in and slobbering on me.

  Kissing in bars isn’t supposed to look particularly composed.

  Sticky Maple Kiss C
ake with Pumpkin Frosting

  For athletic foreigners, syrup-loving Vermonters, and boys who work to break long-standing personal-space issues.

  For the cake:

  1 cup (2 sticks/230 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

  1 cup (220 g) brown sugar

  3 large eggs

  1 cup (240 ml) maple syrup

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

  2½ cups (310 g) all-purpose flour

  ½ teaspoon salt

  2 teaspoons baking powder

  ½ teaspoon ground ginger

  ¼ cup (60 ml) milk

  For the frosting:

  4 ounces (½ block/115 g) cream cheese, at room temperature

  3½ cups (350 g) confectioners’ sugar, sifted

  ¼ cup (55 g) pumpkin puree

  1 tablespoon maple syrup

  Hershey’s Kisses, for garnish

  To make the cake: Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Butter two 9-inch (23-cm) round cake pans, line the bottoms with rounds of parchment paper, and dust the pans with flour, tapping out the excess.

  Beat the butter and brown sugar together until creamy, then add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Add the syrup and vanilla.

  In a separate bowl, combine the flour, salt, baking powder, and ginger.

  Working in batches, stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture, alternating with the milk; stir until just combined. Divide the batter between the prepared pans.

  Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of a cake comes out clean. Let cool for 5 minutes, then loosen the sides with a knife and invert onto wire racks to cool completely. Peel off the parchment and transfer one cake layer to a serving platter.

  To make the frosting: Beat the cream cheese with the confectioners’ sugar, then add the pumpkin and beat until smooth. Spread some of the frosting over the bottom cake layer, top with the second cake layer, and spread the remaining frosting over the top. Drizzle the syrup over the top and arrange the Kisses around the top border.