How Carrot Cake Led Me on a Cross-Country Culinary Journey

When I first met my chef, Allie, I was intimidated by her. I was nervous to engage in a conversation and I came into the kitchen with a militaristic mindset that was drilled into me in culinary school. My chef was to give instructions, I was to listen and never say no. Conversation was about what needed to get done and nothing else.

Allie once called me a liar to my face. I was given the task of creating the restaurant's famous carrot cake. It was the perfect classic carrot cake. No pineapple. No nuts. Simple and wonderfully delicious. The cake was delicate, light, and incredibly moist. It was like eating a cloud that consumed your body and filled it with comfort. The warming spices of ginger and cinnamon hit your nose before you put the bite into your mouth, and then the just-sweet-enough-tangy cream cheese icing exploded in your mouth as you hit the cloud of cake. I had made this cake several times, and every time I made the perfect carrot cake, my coffee-filled stomach nagged with hunger. After all, carrot cake was my favorite cake. My timer went off. Forty-five minutes was the perfect time for these cakes. I opened the deck oven to pull the cakes out, and they were as flat as my boob-less chest. Pancakes. The worst part of the cakes not turning out wasn't the cakes themselves. It was the conversation I knew was coming from my chef.

"Make it again," Allie said under her breath. She said it short yet powerfully. I could feel her eyes rolling, and the sensation of failure rolled down my spine. As chefs, we are constantly fighting for more time and working under conditions where time is never available to spare. It's like pretending the ice cube on the counter will stay frozen forever while you watch it melt. Time ticks by, and the seconds go by regardless of what we can control. We dance with control as chefs, and yet our biggest collaborator is time. Patience. Time makes great food. I had just lost an hour's worth of work and wasted ingredients that were considered expensive. Carrots from the local gardener now burnt to a crisp. The jar of Nielsen-Massey Madagascar bourbon pure vanilla bean paste was worth more money than I made in a day.

Without stopping to examine the cakes further, I immediately tossed the cakes and grabbed the prep to start again. I didn't have time to sit with my shame or talk it through with my chef. I was now on the fuck-up island and needed to quickly figure out how to survive. As I was scaling out the flour, I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong. I had made this cake before and never messed it up. I could make the cake blindfolded. My coffee-filled stomach was starting to turn sour, and I wished I had brought antacid medication. I double-checked everything—the oven temperature, the parchment-lined pans, the labels on the ingredients I was using. As I was finishing up scaling all my ingredients, my chef looked at the eggs and told me to double-check their weight. Maybe we had gotten a small batch of local eggs? Not all eggs are considered equal when pastry becomes precise. I double-checked the egg weight. I put the batter-filled cake pans and prayed as I put them in the oven again. I now had forty-five minutes to bust out the hour of prep I was already behind on. Shit.

I hate kitchen timers. My heart still skips a beat when they go off. It's triggering because it's a reminder to check your work, and sometimes the work doesn't go as you had planned. When you're met with abuse or yelling on the other end of your mistakes, the timer becomes anxiety-inducing. I held my breath as I opened the deck oven again, only to be met with the same flat pancakes. Oh no. Before I could even take the cakes out of the oven, Allie was at my side.

I was met with rapid-fire questions from Allie that I knew better not to answer, "What did you do? Have you made these cakes before? Look at this. We can't keep making these over and over. Sarah, what did you do wrong?"

"I'm sorry," I said, now feeling like I was going to vomit.

"Walk me through how you made these cakes because clearly you aren't paying attention," she spat through her teeth as her brown eyes got bigger and bigger. I could see the anger-heat rising in her neck and head. It looked like she might even lift off the ground.

I couldn't look her in the eye as I tried to get the words out, "I don't know what's causing it. I've made the cakes before, and I'm doing every technique you taught."

"You're a liar," she said as her body language made me look her in the eye. I had never been called a liar before, and the stomach acid rose in my throat and made my eyes sting. "Don't make these cakes again, I'll do it myself. Isn't it almost time for you to leave anyways?" Allie said as our fellow co-worker Anne came in for her shift.

I started scrubbing down my workstation and tried to fight back the tears. Would I get fired?! Wouldn't be surprised. I'm not a liar, but I knew trying to defend myself would make things worse. As I was using the squeegee to make sure there were no watermarks on my station, I heard Anne call Allie over. I was on my last squeegee when Anne saved me.

"Hey, this scale is broken. Look, an egg is reading at fifteen grams when it should be at fifty grams," she said as she pushed her falling glasses back up her nose. Allie immediately turned to me and didn't say anything, but her eyes were big again. I had been making the carrot cakes and all my prep that day with a broken scale. She wasn't inviting me to say anything, and just as quickly as she turned to me, she turned back to Anne to prep her for the evening service.

I gathered my knives and tools and walked down to the basement. I threw my white chef coat into the laundry bin, and the smell of sweat hit my nose as the coat landed on the pile. My legs were sore, and my black chef clogs had specks of white flour on them. I leaned over and used my dirty apron to wipe them clean. The clean shoes calmed a sliver of my anxiety that was spilling over my throat as my throat tightened uncomfortably. I grabbed my bike helmet and turned to go to the stairs leading to the back-alley door when I saw Allie come down the stairs. Those stairs were a way that we could leave the restaurant worn down, sweaty, and tired without being seen by the customers. She was the last person I wanted to see in that moment. I kept my head down and stared at my helmet as we passed each other, hoping my body language would show I didn't want to engage.

"I'm sorry I called you a liar," Allie said above a whisper.

"It's okay," I whispered back.

"Next time, check the scale," she said dryly as her mouth turned into a smile, trying to lighten the mood.

"Will do," I said as firmly as I could. Before I could finish speaking, she was already on to her next project and sorting through the pantry, completely engulfed in inventory. I hopped on my bike and rode the thirty minutes home, only to get in my car and drive to the suburbs to see my Mom in the hospital for psychosis.

When your family is sick, it influences your work. I wish I could compartmentalize the two, but illness does not allow the luxury. I knew I needed to talk to my chef about my Mom, but I was nervous. I could feel my heart in my legs when I first asked her to have a conversation. I explained that I needed to come up with a plan in case I needed to miss work unexpectedly to quickly rush home if things turned for the worse. I tried to come across as matter-of-fact with little emotion. I was trained to be a robot, not an emotional one. Within seconds, I could turn off my emotion and feel numb in the kitchen. Turns out, my boss has a Mom who lost touch with reality too. In a matter of two minutes, we were both crying outside the back alley staircase behind the restaurant, relating to each other. I went in not only getting a plan on how to miss work if I needed to but also found someone who could relate. I had never met someone who could see my pain for what it was. Who knew incredible conversations could happen in an alley next to a trash can? If you ask any chef, I would argue the alley is one of the most sacred places.

Since that moment, the person I least expected has become one of the biggest supporters. When I told her my desire of wanting to explore places with water, mountains, and great food through a cross-country food road trip, she told me she was going to help me make it happen. She sat with me in the basement of the restaurant for an hour after work next to the bags of flour and connected me to restaurants to explore in Denver and San Francisco because she's lived in both places.

After experiencing the hospitality and kindness of my pastry chef, I got to work. I actually planned the cross-country food road trip. I planned to stop and spend extended time in Denver, Bozeman, and San Francisco. I had $5,000 in my checking account, so I allowed myself $1,000 for the trip. When the day came for me to leave on the road trip, Allie told me I'd always have a place back at the restaurant if I wanted to have my job back. I didn't know what I was doing or where I'd end up. All I knew was I was going on a road trip to explore without a destination.

What if I told you I shadowed at a restaurant in Boulder, CO, and never came home? What if I told you the Universe caught me after taking a massive leap? What if I told you I met the love of my life on this road trip? I did. All because of carrot cake. 

Carrot Cake Recipe