Let them eat whole cakes
On a decade of cake-making in Ōtautahi, the man who ate 40 whole chickens, plus a rose-flavoured snack.
Nau mai, haere mai. Welcome to The Boil Up, The Spinoff’s weekly food newsletter produced in partnership with Boring Oat Milk. Written by me, Charlotte Muru-Lanning. It’s lovely to have you here!
Changing seasons are distilled into the cakes made by Ōtautahi cake-maker Anna Worthington. Since starting her brand Cakes By Anna at the Christchurch Farmers Market ten years ago, Worthington has carved out a space for her distinctive cakes in the city. Poached apricots and copious amounts of freshly whipped cream are sandwiched between layers of sponge. Sometimes they’re cloaked in pressed blooms or simply dusted with icing sugar and a scattering of pastel-hued petals. As summer begins, and lush peonies and roses begin to envelop the city, they also spill triumphantly onto her cakes. While I was in the Garden City last week I spoke with Worthington about a decade of baking, and how cake making can be a lens into everything from gender norms to the best desserts.
How did you start out?
From a young age, I always liked being in the kitchen probably from observing my mum cooking in the kitchen at home. I've always been able to cook for myself. When I went to university I baked a little bit, that's when I first started. When I came back to Christchurch after travelling I wanted to do something in food and realised no one in Christchurch was making cakes that I wanted to eat. I taught myself how to do it. There was a lot of YouTubing going on to figure things out. I can't look at photos from back then, it's like, I “oh I can't believe I made that”.
A bit rough?
Definitely a bit rough. I mean it's fine but I'm kind of like I'd rather not look back too far, it can be a bit cringe.
Have your cakes changed over the last decade?
When I first started, I was trying to cater to everyone and saying yes to a lot of things that I didn't want to do. Now, I've found my customer and I'm making things a lot simpler now. Things like Victoria sponge cakes – I've only been doing those for a few years but I think, “why wasn't I doing this from the start?” – just sponge and cream and my own jams. For a lot of people, that's exactly what they want.
Part of why my business has worked well is because the style of cake I make I can bake, ice, and decorate quite quickly, so I can take on quite a lot of orders each morning. I also try to make them accessible, so they're not crazy expensive. Whereas, if I was getting into that more intricate stuff, I'd likely have to double my pricing. It would become a totally different product. I like making things people can order, not necessarily for a special occasion but for dinner or just because they feel like having a cake in their tin that week. I'm probably more influenced by flavour combos rather than style.
Where does that influence come from?
I just love cooking in general. A lot of my inspiration for flavours actually comes from savoury combinations. Eating is a big part of my life. It's hard to not be informed by that. Years ago, I had a salad that made me think how good orange and fennel is as a combination and I wondered if it would work in a cake – which it does.
There are a whole lot of connotations surrounding baking and femininity, is that something you’ve pondered much?
When I started, I definitely dealt with the whole “you don't look like a baker” thing. I guess people have assumptions of what people who work in food might look like, and it's a shame that they feel the need to share that. I think about femininity in terms of running a business and the day-to-day things I observe. A lot of people, mainly women, will buy a cake from me for dessert and be like “I might just have to pretend I made this”. In my head I think, “I'm sure you've done everything else so don't worry about it, fuck it”. When people are ordering cakes for their children, most of the time it's the mum. As I enter my mid-thirties I'm more aware of women's tendency to juggle everything — all that emotional labour. Whereas most of the last minute phone calls I get are men being like, I forgot my wife's birthday. I have a lot of great male customers who have all their shit together but most of the last minute requests I get are from men. And I'm like, you know your wife's birthday is the same date every year. This doesn't apply to the men I know and love – but I think they’re in the minority. I work with a florist and it's funny how the bar for men can be so low, that when a guy comes in to get a cake and flowers for his wife you kind of have to train yourself not to be like, “oh that's so nice”. That’s generally what women do all the time, they're always thinking about other people and doing a million and one things without getting that kind of credit.
Are you a big cake eater?
Yup. More than I used to be actually.
What's the best time of day to eat cake?
I'm more of an evening cake eater. I quite like settling into a movie with a piece of cake. But I love when people come in and have a piece of sponge for breakfast. That's actually pretty good breakfast food. I probably wouldn't choose to eat cake during the day but I do eat a lot of cake at work, like trying little bits. I constantly have to be tasting. When I go home in the afternoon all I want is a sandwich or toast with butter or Vegemite. Just savoury.
What is your ideal dessert?
I hardly ever have dessert out. Usually I'm quite full on pasta. Or I'd prefer to have another glass of wine, or a cocktail. Sometimes it's the fact that dessert in restaurants can be an afterthought. But the best dessert is the Crepes Suzette at Londo. Have you tried them?
I have! It was my first ever Crepes Suzette.
Don't you think that dessert is perfect? I love the bitterness of the syrup, with the ice cream. And the chewy texture of the pancake. I really love Basque cheesecake too. I love cheese too. But I'd probably rather just have another glass of wine.
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Weekly bites
Few of us will have ever heard of, let alone tasted an egg yolk omelette before it became a key plot device in the story of how James Corden ended up banned from fancy New York restaurant Balthazar. Two weeks since omelette-gate unravelled publically, Emily Writes tries the (now) infamous dish – although this time in a Wellington cafe, and seemingly without being banned from the establishment.
The Ka Ora, Ka Ako Healthy School Lunches programme delivers free meals to 960 schools nationwide, with purpose being to reach the 25%of school children who need it the most. But Whangārei Girls High School year 13 student Ocean Bishop-Karanga believes the equity criteria used to deliver the programme is missing some of those students, reports RNZ. Her decile 5 school doesn’t qualify for the kai programme because overall, their equity ranking is too high, which Bishop-Karanga says is unfair. Alongside the help of her teacher and a group of peers, she investigated and found that one in five, or around 300 of her school peers had no food on a daily basis. In response, Bishop-Karanga and her peers have started a petition to parliament.
Philadelphia man Alexander Tominsky didn’t need to eat 40 rotisserie chickens in 40 days. But he did it anyway. While capturing daily selfies to document his journey on Twitter, the affectionately named “Chicken Man” also managed to capture the attention, and hearts of his city. The whole ordeal culminated in a mass viewing of his final chicken at an abandoned pier near a Walmart last week, featuring a red carpet, a white tablecloth and a supportive crowd. Somehow, the bizarre scene is one of the most cheerful things I’ve seen in a while. Thank you, Chicken Man.
In the first instalment of our food newsletter I wrote about sharing bowls of boil up over big round tables at my marae. Each week, as I sit down and write the newsletter, my hope is that each of you feels in some way part of a big shared table where we get to talk about the vital political, social, trendy, personal and delicious aspects of this country’s diverse and ever-changing culinary landscape. It’s so lovely to have you here, and we rely on our members to make that possible. If you’re not a member already and want to support us, please consider signing up. Tautoko mai, let’s keep a good thing going!
The weekly snack
Momchilovtsi Yoghurt Rose Ice Cream, $5.70 from Xinxing Asian Market Christchurch: As I mentioned up top, there were blossoms galore in Christchurch last week. On my walks, I spotted jolts of cherry red, orange and pink among the green, with petals freshly unfurled. And so it seems only natural that I decided upon a snack laced with a flower: rose. I ate this after a rather huge dinner, and so the just-slightly sweet nature of yoghurt paired with just the right amount of rose was a wonderful way to tie everything together. I feel that I need to make mention of the texture too: marshmallow soft. A stick ice cream might not be synonymous with sophistication, but these come as close as possible. And just like the roses around the city, I felt I’d come of age with this too. 10/10
Talk next week!
Hei kōnā mai, Charlotte
