Birthday Cake

Baked this past weekend: Chocolate with Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

Proud Baker

Along with the vintage kitchen tools, old photographs, and random cake-related ephemera that I have collected over the years, I have a small number of badges...


...including this one from the Girl Scouts of Maine.



I can already see myself as an old woman, standing (hopefully) for the millionth time over Stella, my Kitchen Aid, and wearing an old cotton apron onto which I've stitched these suckers amongst the stains and rips. I may not have made it long in the Girl Scouts, but I'll always proudly be a Baker.

Belated pictures from my visit,

one chilly Sunday last November, to Will Cotton's pop-up bakery at Partners & Spade in Manhattan.

"Why should a woman cook?"

"So her husband can say 'my wife makes a delicious cake' to some hooker..." —Joan Rivers


Poster image snagged from Facebook

That gem is from this clip of the upcoming documentary, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Check out Break Thru Films and Facebook for more info!

On blogs and blogging and to-do lists

Cake Toss by Amy Cutler

I love lists beyond all reason and must write at least three or four different ones a day: grocery, to-do, try to remember, etc... . But sometimes I feel I need a list for my lists! So many things get lost in the shuffle, forgotten as the ink fades away. I wish I had a reason for why this blog landed on one of those disappearing pages, something more exciting than "I don't know what I want to say so I won't say anything at all" or "sometimes this whole internet thing just freaks me out." Having a blog can so quickly start to feel like another one of those things you have to do...the pleasure packs up and runs away on an extended vacation to a place with no phone service or internet connection.

Thankfully, as with all things that are at the core of who a person really is, the passion always comes back—maybe changed a little from all of the sightseeing and good sleep, but better. Stronger and clear-headed.

I've been working on a new website, www.jessicasreed.com, that will serve as a home for all of my cake projects, as well as launching pad for the custom cake baking business I hope to begin. Because of these things, among others, I have decided to give myself the gift of more time by ending Cake Thursday. All cakes and invites will be archived on the new site (as well as living here).

My plan now, while I get the site up and running, is to start gathering up the dust bunnies that have accumulated around PoC these past few months and start posting again, hopefully at least once a week. There are so many interesting and wonderful things I've learned about, tasted and tried over the years that I sincerely hope will interest you all. If there are things you'd like to know about or see on this blog, please let me know (info@jessicasreed.com)!

Thanks for sticking with me and Pictures of Cake...

Jess