Make a shitty little cake for your dumb little friends

Family dessert 2025

My sister is on one of those kicks where she tries to hunt down ‘the best’ whatever whatever in town. Charcuterie board, cannoli, onion rings. I know this because she is telling me one day on the phone.

‘I’m looking for the best cake in New York right now.’

‘You can’t get the best cake in New York.’ (She lives in New York for context.)

‘The best cake is in LA,’ I state matter-of-fact.

Maybe it’s a stretch. You have a spoil of riches when it comes to top tier cakes in New York, and I’m not here to play the which coast does it best game (and I’ll be the first to admit my take means fuck all). There are plenty of cakes I’m jealous to miss out on happening in kitchens in all 5 burroughs. In all 50 states. Shout out Brooklyn, shout out SF, shout out Texas, shout out Illinois, shout out Maine, you get it (and I hope you know exactly who you are). I’ve caught a glimpse of infinite cakes I want to eat on my endless scroll. And are they all as good as the cakes I cram down my gullet here in southern California any time I can get my grubby little fingers on them? With all probability, yes. A cake is a cake is a cake, right?

Of course my regional bias for the cake makers of LA comes from the fact that I know the people that make the best cakes- I call many of them my friends (or enemies!), and they live here. Bourgeoise as it sounds, I have the privledge of eating their highly coveted wares from time to time, and when I do I swell with enough Angelino pride to make Kobe Bryant blush.

I’m sure if you were talking to the average New York pastry grunt they’d respond with the same affinity for their city’s culinary excellence. The competition of it all is a pretty boring exercise when the margins are so slim, but the nosiness amongst kitchen crews remains universal. It’s something I’ve become highly attune to- food people love that tawdry downton abbey shit. I eat it for breakfast. It’s always who works where, what they’re making, how they’re making it, what kitchens are ‘boy’ kitchen and what kitchens are ‘hip’ kitchens and what kitchens are a ‘fucking pain-in-the-ass’ kitchens and what their walk in situation is and how their line is setup and who’s the maitre d or some shit. All up in each other’s business because there’s no way we can get out of each other’s business.

With that incredibly longwinded caveat, I still scream LA’s dessert superiority with conviction. What can I say? You’d have to eat the cake here to know. Because I’ve eaten it. And I know, you know?

I’m not going to list them or their accolades. That’s tacky. You know who they are. You see them getting RAGGED on by the bad-take media, the tasteless ‘food-writers’ pushing their anti-intellectual propaganda about how vanilla cakes with whip from the ralphs refrigerator are really the pinnacle of the craft, churning out classically civilian thought-drivel for eater or ‘the slice’ or whatever, that understands exactly zero percent of the craft yet seem to speak for the everymen and women (and they/thems) of the world about their confectionary preferences… Ironically enough, the baker to writer pipeline is working overtime these days, but I’ve yet to see one shitty food writer make a passable cake.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty about the cake making grind to critique. Just like how substack doesn’t need another article dissecting whatever cultural moment Sabrina Carpenter is having or some listicle summarizing every imaginable trade into five neat need-to-know tenents, the baking scene does not need yet another cake trend to obsess over. The racket borders on parody at times. Long cakes, vintage cakes, floral cakes, photo-real whathaveyou. Whipping out every temperamental technique, fully committing to needlessly fussy finessing. Caks making is the art of depraved neuroses. It’s a metamorphosis that starts with a delusional assuredness that suddenly gives way to wicked fantasies of self-annihilation. Trudging down the three tiers of dante’s inferno. Staring at the pot of boiling syrup wishing to swap places with a candied orange peel. Quite frankly I’m not sure how some of these cake wizards do it. One cake a week is such an energy drain I cannot fathom making 10-20.

Sometimes making a cake in the age of information technology feels like setting up an easel in the national portrait gallery to practice your watercolors. The sheer impudence of it. There’s a crushing weight of comparison. Inundated by the perfect lines and intricate steady piping work of your peers (or the people you wish would consider you a peer). Princess cakes that look like scrupulously constructed cathedrals. Despite having enough experience to generally know which cakes are AI generated images and which ones are the genuine article, I recognize the fact that there’s people out there who can’t is incredibly beguiling. Have we reached peak cake frenzy? How many other bakers out there are gazing through the vast expanse of cakedom wondering when they’ll refine their skillset enough to go toe to toe with the grid?

‘That’s so dumb.’ One of these aforementioned cake wizards says to me as I try to describe this imposter syndrome.

‘No one gives a shit, they’re just going to eat it.’

What a concise and perfect summation of the situation.

Fuck it, dude. Make your shitty little cake for your dumb little friends. You don’t need buttercreams. You don’t need flowers. Make it however the fuck you want. It doesn’t need to be in trend. It doesn’t need buttercream. Give me single layered tomfoolery and a little whipped action. Slap some lemon curd in the middle. Crumble some cookies and throw that shit inbetween layers. Make it lopsided. They’re going to cut it up into pieces and shove it in their face just to tell you how good it was. Not to piss off the big box grocery store simps, but if it’s made with any sort of intention it’s gonna be better than the thing you can get at the supermarket. Whatever self-critiques you have will fall on deaf ears and no one will have much to say about how unfit it was for a black tie affair at the Chateau. By tomorrow you’ll be back at the oven again, pulling out more layers of chiffon and dacquoise, all while the ganache will weep in the sun and the colors will run, and the special thing you made will turn into the most delicious pile of mush you’ve ever had.