Modern Art Desserts

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of being a test-baker for Caitlin Freeman's new cookbook Modern Art Desserts, which will be released on April 16, 2013. Caitlin is the pastry chef of the Blue Bottle Coffee Company, which has cafes in the San Francisco Bay area, as well as New York, and serves by far my favorite coffee in the entire world. In fact, my husband loves their espressos so much that he rates all the ones he drinks elsewhere on a scale from "one to Blue Bottle." He's become a secret espresso aficionado over the past few years even though he was against me buying a coffee machine when I first moved in with him because he said he didn't like coffee. Things change! Maybe I'll be able to convince him to write a few guest blog posts on his coffee adventures around the world one day. Fingers crossed!

Anyway, last Saturday, I was given the task of making sure the Lichtenstein Cake recipe, a Roy Lichtenstein-inspired kind of red velvet cake, was sound. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to reveal any details about the recipe, but let me tell you that the cake tasted like heaven. It was smooth, moist and the cream cheese buttercream was amazing. In addition to tasting great, the cake also looked very nice with its Lichtenstein dots on top. Of course my cake didn't look as perfect as the one in the pictures in the cookbook, but I was still very pleased with my first attempt at an art-inspired recipe.

The cake is based on a painting currently in possession of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), 'Rouen Cathedral Set V' by Roy Lichtenstein. It is most famous for its thousands of hand-applied Ben-Day dots. The cake was inspired by the dark red one on the right.

Below are a few pictures I took of my cake. It was a bit dark when I finished frosting it, so the cake looks brown instead of red. Like it is the case with any other kind of red velvet cake, the color depends on the food coloring used; mine happened to not work very well, so the dots are pink instead of bright red. In case you would like to see a more perfect picture of the cake or would like to try the recipe, I can only recommend the cookbook. It does not only contain a lot of amazing recipes, but it is also supplemented with information on the art the recipes are based on, as well as personal stories of Caitlin's love affair with baking, such as her thoughts on red velvet cakes.