Monday, 13 July 2009

Festival Cliche': Cakes

By Ian Kleine

Cakes, have been, one of the thoroughfares of humanity over the years. More gentle than the tough cookie, more sweet than the coarse bread, more elegant than your pie; cakes can be considered as one of the epitomes of success for the baking industry. The cake, in my opinion, has had the most number of evolutions and changes in the history of mankind.

Traditionally, a cake is a type of food that is usually of the bread-oriented, and sweet and baked (though right now, there are cakes which can be cooked without the use of heat). The basic cake ingredients are usually some sort of flour (wheat, potato, depending on the gluten content which determines the quality of the cake), sweetener, binder (eggs and the like), fats, liquids and some sort of leavening agent. Though this is for the normal proper cake, there are other cake forms that are either incomplete, or have made substitutions but over all; a cake is a cake.

So what cake would be nice for doing a run inside a festival? Well, the first thing you'd have to do is assess the conditions and the environment of the venue. If you are staying in an open field, which is quite hot and humid, enough said. Bring an ice-box cake along, to contrast the burning sensation and to entice hungry and hot customers. Add a bit of mint to give that cool refreshing feeling too. Vice versa, bring freshly baked cake for cold seasons, brushed with chocolate that warms the soul (and your heart too). Served with bitter cocoa, it is for the win!

Cakes directly affect the various moods and tastes of each person or individual that tastes them. They can either relax the person or make them aggressive and hyped. Take the sour cake for example, a good dose of this would make you quite hungry and improves a great deal of your appetite. Have diabetic clients? Sweeteners are your best bet (skimp on the natural sugars though). Who knows, you might be able to pull off "mood cakes" and it would be a great hit.

Cakes are actually a good business to start with. You get your time needed, you have the opportunity to make new network connections and you get to make some nice friends as it is. You get your reputation as the cake man or the cake woman, but the idea is completely relative. You may need a lot of capital, but men need food, and cakes are certainly food for the gods.

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