Christiana Aretta writes a journal about food, photography, & toys.

For a couple of years, I studied life drawing and anatomy at the American Animation Institute in North Hollywood with Glenn Vilppu, who has forgotten more about drawing than I can remember.

Learning to draw is pretty much as frustrating as learning to walk or learning to read or learning to ride a bike. The trouble is, learning to do anything (and subsequently discovering that you really like doing it and want to get better) is really a continuously ongoing process of making mistakes. Sometimes the mistakes reveal a path towards something really cool and undiscovered. And sometimes they don’t.

Just like today’s picture.

(The recipe, by the way, is much more delicious than this picture indicates. I swear it on a stack of old, treasured comics.)

Mr. Vilppu was full of inspirational things to say when I would bring him my frustrations. One of the best (albeit over-quoted) was something Chuck Jones used to say, which went something like “Every artist has 10,000 bad drawings to make before they make 1 good one. The sooner you get through the bad drawings, the sooner you’re making good ones.”

I myself used to use this quote to remind my English students that making mistakes is not just ok but necessary for success. Of course, it’s a lot easier to say that as a teacher who’s already made the mistake than it is to hear it as a student who’s just made the mistake.

Canon EOS 5D 1/180th sec @f8.0, ISO 200. Main light: LumoPro 120 @ 1/4th power. Key light: 580EX II @ 1/16th power. Tin foil reflector.

I baked the cake in a 9×9 cake pan and planned to serve it as a single layer with icing. I even photographed it that way, using a folded handkerchief as a stand-in for the icing while I got the light just right. For some reason, I decided to do the final photograph as a double layer square cake. I’m generally happy with the light but I think the shape of the cake is just well, WRONG.

A typical triangular piece of cake would have a nice tapered point that the back light could shine through slightly, giving the cake a light, fluffy feel instead of the dense, asphalt-carrot texture it’s got going on now. Time to clear the plate err, slate – can’t serve cake that’s been sitting out under hot studio lights to guests.. that’s just plain rude.

The recipe comes from this recipe on Epicurious. I halved the original recipe, omitted the walnuts, replaced the oil with apple sauce, used on 1/2 cup of sugar, omitted the marmalade spread on the cake below the frosting and made a non-dairy version of the frosting (recipe below).

Non-Dairy Cream Cheese Marmalade Frosting

Ingredients

• 8 oz Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• A heaping 1/4 cup of orange marmalade

Preparation

1. Throw it all in a mixing bowl and mix it with a whisk or a mixer, if you’re lazy or a perfectionist. Slather on cake immediately or refrigerate until firm-ish, put into a pastry bag and pipe frosting on in a delicate basketweave lattice pattern. Eat on small dishes with tea, silver forks and pinky finger extended.
2. Freezes well for longer-term storage. Makes about enough frosting for the top of a 9×9 single layer cake

Canon EOS 5D 1/180th sec @f8.0, ISO 200. Main light: LumoPro 120 @ 1/4th power. Key light: 580EX II @ 1/16th power. Tin foil reflector.

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