Modern Art Desserts

Eat Your Art Out!
Foreword by Rose Levy Beranbaum
 
I first met Caitlin in 2004 when I visited her Miette Bakery production in Oakland. The purpose of the trip was to interview top bakeries for an article for Food Arts Magazine called High Tide in the Bay Area Bakeries. The concept was that, although San Francisco had led the way in artisanal bread baking, it had lagged behind in the area of pastry. Michael Battery, visionary publisher of Food Arts, perceived this as changing and assigned the article.
 
Meeting Caitlin turned out to be the highlight of the interviews. I had been given a set of questions to ask each baker. When I asked Caitlin where she and her partner, Meg, had gotten their training, to my astonishment Caitlin s answer was that she had started with The Cake Bible (my book). Was it any wonder that she captured my attention? But beyond the compliment, and in addition to her solid organizational and technical skills, I was struck at once by Caitlin s extraordinary creativity. The signature Miette cake, which she named the Tomboy, consists simply of three unadorned dark chocolate layers, filled and topped with a contrasting white buttercream, and decorated with just one small pink sugar rose in the center. Caitlin most generously gave me permission to include the recipe in my book Rose s Heavenly Cakes and even sent me some of the pink sugar roses for photography. The art director loved the cake so much that she used the photo to span the end pages, and by enlarging it created an impressionistic dreamy appearance, contrasting spectacularly with the all-dark chocolate cake I had designed for the cover.
 
Over the years, as I watched Caitlin s work evolve, I saw that generosity, creative genius, and integrity were the hallmarks of her personality and character, permeating everything she touched. With every project or visit, Caitlin continued to gain my respect, and ultimately a deep friendship evolved. It may sound like a

Foreword by Rose Levy Beranbaum 
Introduction 
Equipment    
Ingredients 
            
A Trio of Thiebaud Cakes    
Thiebaud Chocolate Cake    
Ryman Cake    
Lichtenstein Cake    
Mondrian Cake    
Diebenkorn Trifle     
Dijkstra Icebox Cake    
Kahlo Wedding Cookies    
Build Your Own Newman    
Kudless S mores    
Warhol Gelée    
Castrillo Díaz Panna Cotta    
Avedon Parfait    
Tuymans Parfait 
Matisse Parfait    
Kelly Fudge Pop    
Zurier Ice Pop    
Cragg Ice Cream Cone     
Cartagena Ice Cream and  Sorbet Trio    
Fritsch Ice Cream Sandwich    
Wong Ice Cream Sandwich    
Sherman Ice Cream Float    
Laskey Lemon Soda with Bay Ice Cubes    
Koons White Hot Chocolate with Lillet Marshmallows    
Fuller Hot Chocolate with Marshmallow and Sea Salt    
Woodman Cheese and Crackers    
Bradford Cheese Plate    
            
Resources
Acknowledgments 
Index 

A self-taught baker and longtime owner of the San Francisco cake and sweets shop, Miette, CAITLIN FREEMAN was inspired to bake by the confectionary paintings of California painter Wayne Thiebaud. After selling Miette in 2008, she started the pastry program at Blue Bottle Coffee Co. and coauthored The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee. Her artistic creations for the Blue Bottle Café at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art have been featured in the New York Times, Design Sponge, Elle Decor, San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, and more. She lives in San Francisco, California.

"Cookbook meets exhibit catalog in this art-themed collection."  
Library Journal
 
"Let them eat cake and art! Thanks to Caitlin Freeman, an author neé pastry chef with a unique and fresh talent, we can do just that. Freeman has written a visually rich book of charming dessert recipes from which you can re-create edible versions of your favorite works of modern art." 
  Trendland

This book gets my ganache flowing if only art history always tasted this good.
  Todd Selby, photographer and author of Edible Selby
            
  Brilliant, quirky, and irresistible. Having tasted many of these dishes over the years, I m not sure what s more exciting, the recipes or the stories behind them. All dessert books should be this much fun!
  Daniel Patterson, chef-owner of COI restaurant
 
  Only Caitlin Freeman is brave enough (and crazy enough) to dream up desserts  inspired by works of modern art and inventive enough to pull it off. Who looks at a  Cindy Sherman self-portrait and sees an ice-cream float made with bubblegum soda,  or at a Richard Avedon photograph of a beekeeper and pictures a glossy honey-pistachio parfait? This is more than a cookbook, it s a journal of the creative process.
  Oliver Strand, food journalist and coffee columnist for the New York Times
            
  The desserts Caitlin Freeman has created for the SFMOMA Blue Bottle Café are  masterpieces in their own right. It s one thing to make the most perfect white cake, frosting, and ganache; it s another to use those media to create art, as she has  with her Mondrian Cake. That is Caitlin s special gift, and one that she has generously  shared in this beautiful book. It, too, is a masterpiece.
  Charlotte Druckman, food journalist and author