FamilyAudrey Shulman was good at baking but less confident talking to men. She decided the way to a man’s heart might be cake – and her whole life changed
Audrey Shulman’s epiphany struck as she stood in a Los Angeles bar slicing a cherry cake. She had baked it and brought it along to celebrate her flatmate Chrissy’s birthday – but as she served it to her party of friends, she couldn’t help noticing that every man in the place was eyeing her and eyeing her cake ... and they all looked hungry.
She wasn’t used to this kind of attention. “I was 26 and had never really had a boyfriend,” says Audrey, who is now 28 and has had more luck on the dating scene, pretty much as a result of this night.
As all these men smiled at her, itching to be invited over, it struck her that a cake could make the perfect dating aid. An idea formed for the year ahead: bake 50 cakes and take them to 50 bars. Offer slices to potential boyfriends until one surfaces. (If you bake it, they will come!) Audrey kept a blog of her encounters and recipes, which she has now turned into a bittersweet book Sitting in Bars with Cake.
Audrey, who was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, describes herself as “a homebody” in the American sense, always happier baking cakes (and eating them) than hanging out in bars. “I’m from the south, so hospitality is a big thing for me,” she says. “I love looking after people, making them comfortable. I’m very maternal – sometimes to my detriment.” At college in Vermont, she hosted weekly tea parties, which went down well – but when it came to dating, the boys chose the “messy, mad artist girls” every time.
By the time she had moved to LA with her college friend Chrissy, she felt very behind in matters of men. “I had a job in reality TV, I was outgoing in other ways, but with men, I was always trying to catch up and that made me more uncomfortable and self-conscious,” she says. “I tended to freeze.”
A cake, she thought, could be the ultimate icebreaker, the conversation piece that would give her the confidence to approach strangers and maintain eye contact. “And it wouldn’t matter if I was blushing because the guys would be too busy eating cake to notice.”
Her friends got right behind her. (Chrissy, also single, was keen to go “cake barring” too.) Audrey didn’t tell her parents lest they feared for their daughter, loose in LA, luring strangers with cake. But when she came clean, they became her biggest cheerleaders. “They’ve been married for 32 years,” says Audrey. “They’d love me to find someone.”
There were critics, of course – anonymous posters on her blog. “I had to stop reading them,” says Audrey. “People were saying it was anti-feminist, that it was pitiful for women to bake cakes to secure men. To me, it was a brave project. I was walking into bars, sometimes on my own, being proactive about wanting to date. I was having fun with my friends. I never felt pitiful.”
As it turned out, cake seemed to bring out the best in men, wiping the sleaze off the pick-up scene and sprinkling it with sweetness. In her book, Audrey describes encounters with musicians, fraternity boys, skateboarders, IT workers, an adult film-maker, a rocket scientist and a Bulgarian table tennis player. Some talked to her until closing time. Many helped her to clean up. A musician proposed on bended knee (the recipe behind that was her Cajun French grandmother’s coconut cake). One bulldozer of a guy (“destined for rugby or bodyguarding Britney Spears”) wanted to pass on his recipe for cheesecake.
“Perhaps when someone offers you something sweet and wholesome, you’re a little bit more sweet and wholesome back,” says Audrey. “I think cake is a reminder of birthdays, of growing up and having parties. My friend tried going into bars in New York with cupcakes and it didn’t work. People took one and walked away. With a cake, someone cuts it for you while you talk, you share it out, it’s a bit messier – a nostalgic, happy thing.”
On top of that, men in bars are always hungry. “They are drinking, their stomachs are empty – they flip out,” says Audrey. “They’re over complimentary. ‘You made this? You must be an angel!’ One guy told me, ‘This is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me!’”
Audrey has packed her book with cake recipes that capture each encounter – bitter, sweet, savoury, alcohol-soaked – but found, as a rule, that men are not fussy. “Putting lots of thought into flavours and frostings goes unnoticed,” she admits. “Most didn’t get round to asking what cake it was until they’d finished eating it.”
Some servings led to dates – one man was a boyfriend for a couple of months (for a while, the project stalled). Ironically, when they first met, this guy had held on to his slice of cake for ages without eating it. (“He later admitted that he wasn’t a dessert person,” says Audrey. “He’d only taken it to talk to me!”)
As the months passed and “cake-barring” became a weekend routine, the original aim of finding a partner faded – especially so when Chrissy had a sudden seizure and was diagnosed with brain cancer. “I thought we should stop the project, but Chrissy didn’t want to,” says Audrey. Life became, she says, a “forced marriage” between sugar and sickness, bar hopping and pharmaceuticals.
“Cake barring provided this desperately needed routine and normality. We were driving to bars at all hours of the night instead of staying at home and crying. We were decorating cakes when we could have been researching brain cancer statistics on the internet. We were learning how to be with boys at the same time as we were learning how to be with oncologists. It was such a crazy time, but it kind of all melted together cohesively. It was like this fearless year for both of us – I had to be brave in my cake-barring exploits, and Chrissy had to be brave in her illness. She did a far better job than I did.”
In one moving blog entry, Audrey recounted the moment Chrissy awoke after surgery and asked Audrey groggily how her day had been. Audrey found herself wondering why she would ever need a boyfriend when she had Chrissy. “Chrissy always supported me in every way I hoped a boyfriend would,” says Audrey.
“She was unfailingly supportive of my writing – bringing me library books she thought I’d enjoy, encouraging me to network, championing the blog. Back in college, she’d write me good luck notes before I had work being performed, or if something didn’t work out with a boy, she’d write encouraging notes on Post-its and put them in my mailbox.
“Her illness made me realise how much I had; despite no boyfriend. Chrissy and I had led a very happy coexistence in LA for four years, and a happy friendship at college for four years before that – boyfriends were never part of the equation. My life was full and fulfilling, and it could always be so. There was no big empty space waiting for a man.”
Tragically, Chrissy died in March. By then, their year of cake-barring had long finished, and the book was written and almost published. “It’s impossible for me to look at the book and not think of her – she’s really in every page,” says Audrey. “Chrissy was such a huge champion of this project, it would be a discredit to her if I didn’t keep going full steam ahead. It’s my way of staying connected.”
Though the cake-barring did not lead to love, Audrey’s single status no longer felt so important – and she was also a lot more comfortable around men. “I’d realised there’s no secret to talking to them,” she says. “I hadn’t met anyone yet, but there were a lot of sweet, thoughtful guys out there and eventually I’d find the right one. It would happen when it happened.”
Which turned out to be true. As Audrey embarked on her book, someone she vaguely knew, who had read her blog, asked if she could set Audrey up with a friend. He turned out to be Jamie, 32, a TV producer.
“We took it very slowly, first having coffee, then two months later, meeting for a game of tennis,” says Audrey. “When I’d finished the bulk of the book, we finally got together.”
A peach cake baked especially for him sealed the deal, and they have been together for six months. “He’s a really good person,” says Audrey, “and he’s been unbelievably supportive about Chrissy.”
Jamie was the first person to read the book proof and, at Easter, Audrey took him home to Nashville. Perhaps best of all, he really, really likes cake.
Curry Carrot Cake with Gingery Frosting: a tempting offering from Audrey’s book
Ingredients for the cake
115g unsalted butter, at room temperature
200g sugar
3 large eggs
210g grated carrot
310g all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp curry powder
½ tsp salt
240ml plain yoghurt
Ingredients for the frosting
480ml Greek yoghurt
½ tsp ground ginger
3 tbsp honey
2 tsp lemon juice
Grated carrot, for garnish
Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/gas mark 5. Butter two 23cm round cake pans, line the bottoms with rounds of greaseproof paper, and dust the pans with flour, tapping out the excess.
Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy, then add the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl. Stir in the grated carrot.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, curry powder and salt.
Working in batches, stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture, alternating with the yoghurt; stir until just combined.
Divide the batter between the prepared pans. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean. Allow to cool for five minutes, then loosen the sides with a knife and invert on to racks to cool. Peel off the greasproof paper and transfer one cake layer to a serving platter.
To make the frosting, whisk the yoghurt, ginger, honey and lemon juice together. Spread some of the frosting over the bottom cake layer, top with the second cake layer, and spread the remaining frosting over the top and sides. Garnish with carrot shavings.
Sitting in Bars with Cake: Lessons and Recipes from One Year of Trying to Bake My Way to a Boyfriend By Audrey Shulman is published by Abrams Image, £15.99. To order a copy for £12.79, including free UK p&p, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEoKyaqpSerq96wqikaKSZm7KiusOsq7KklWR%2FcX2UaJipql9mfnC1jK2pop2UYq%2Bit8innmalqWLEosWMraZmqp%2Birq%2BvxA%3D%3D