Art talk, book signing, cake eating
Join us today 2-4 pm for the West Coast Modern Art Desserts book launch party at SFMOMA!
Free with the purchase of a book at the Museum Store or with museum admission.
I know I should have told you all about this sooner, but Tess and I have been busy making Mondrian cakes non-stop for the past week for several events in celebration of the book. Here they are all ready to go for the East Coast book launch at Story in New York last Tuesday.
photo by caitlin freeman, april 16th 2013
That’s ten whole cakes. That’s a lot of ganache. Tess even made up a song about it. I heard her singing it while she was trimming the colored assembled sticks as I was on stand-by with ganache to glaze as she loaded the pan with perfectly square logs. We have a good system. To which we now had a song that went something like “Mondri-on-and-on-and-on….Mondrian-on-and-on-and-on…” to the tune of well, I can’t be sure, because that’s when my phone fell from the tray on the shelf into a fresh bowl of ganache. Later that day, Tess tallied up our ganach-ing: 40 Mondrian cakes. 12 frozen bananas. 1 iPhone. The phone still works (!), although everytime I try to take a photo, it looks like the subject is covered in ganache.
photo by tess wilson, 2013
I really believe that when Tess and I are in the kitchen together, it’s like the efficiency of three people. Tess is left-handed (which enables her and I to slice one assembled Mondrian simultaneously from either side without elbowing one other). In the book, Caitlin refers to Tess as ‘the willow-y stunner’. Although there is no doubt about it, it’s still going to take me some growing to get over the fact that Caitlin wasn’t referring to me here. So what if I have to get a milk crate to stand on to climb onto the counter to reach the blue food coloring and then ask someone to spot me on my way down?
Besides being a tall beauty, Tess is also an entertaining writer (stay tuned for some of her posts), exquisite florist, and the most comprehensive list-maker. She has impeccable insight, a knack for considering the big picture, and this unmistakable handwriting that she ferociously uses to label anything that hasn’t already been hit with a label gun. And when she serves Mondrian cake at events, I ‘m not sure if people are lining up because of the cake or her gracefulness. I could go on-and-on-and-on…
tess slicing mondrian cake
Like Caitlin, Tess also went to school for photography, so it’s thanks to her that some in-the-moment magic that otherwise would go undocumented are captured. She gets herself through any recipe that calls for gelatin (she’s also vegan) by singing a made-up song about sparkly meat juice, as she did during our Mondrian-athon. If it’s tough and you know it, sing a song about it.
And thank goodness for Caitlin, who on top of writing this treasure of a book, always comes in with fun stories, new things to think about and usually bearing gifts. This time it was our new smocks for our upcoming off-site projects, which we will be testing out today! Designed and made by Matt at Small Trade Company which is located above our cafe at Heath in San Francisco. He used this dark subtle pinstripe fabric that he says will definitely work in our favor to camouflage chocolate. I’m sure I have no idea what he’s referring to.
photo by matt dick of small trade co./ “turret smock”
