Somewhere between earning that last credit needed to complete twelve years or so of education in the public school system and the next leap toward “getting on with life,” there’s a brief but important opportunity to indulge in the moment.
Food is a natural for making this ritual. Now ask yourself: Can you think of anything better for that than cake? Sure, ice cream on a day like today comes to mind, but it’ll have to stand second here — forever held in place by the phrase “cake and ice cream.” [1,2]
Executive Chef Jay Jacobs of Deliverable Delights Catering has said that “Today, parties revolve around our foods and desserts. Cakes show us where we graduated from, how old we are, or even take the place of a greeting card, …. Cake today is a right of passage, a calling card of who we are, showing our personalities, interests, where we have been or where we are going.” Very much along the lines of how Heidi McClelland has described modern senior portraits. [3,4]
See a pattern here?
Anne Schockley, owner of Baker’s Nook in the City of Saline told Saline Journal that May and June are her busiest cake months, “due to first communion and graduation.
“It starts with college and university graduations. That transitions to high school. For Saline, this is obviously the start of it. But we’ll be equally busy over a three-week span. Friends like to have their parties on different days and different weekends because there’s so much going on, and you want to go to your friends’ parties and have them go to yours.”
As a business, this means lead-times for special types of cakes and decorations extend from her typical of one week out to two and three. “We don’t ever freeze our cakes. We can only do so many in a weekend,” she added. Today for example, orders had to be ready for pickup starting at 2:00pm.
“Why cake as a go-to?” Chef Jay Jacobs mused. “What makes it better than ice cream, cookies? Over the years I would say that cakes have been a blank canvas just waiting to ‘pop’ and explode with the personality of the giver and receiver. Today, parties, foods, desserts all have become sophisticated, color coordinated, right sized, bearing a theme and planned for a target audience.”
Baker Schockley concurred. “There’s a trend toward fancier cakes now, not just sheet cakes. We’re asked to incorporate high school and college in the decorations, or sports that they played. We do a lot with mascots, including the Saline hornet of course. And yes, we do edible images.”
But all areas of the country aren’t as elaborate. “Down south, graduations are not as big,” she noted. “Here we could have two hundred or more people in a barn for the party. There, it’s more like fifty to 150 to be fed.”
Anne Schockley also said that college graduation parties tend to be less elaborate on average than high school — with smaller cakes. Not that anyone should need another reason to thoroughly steep in the moment with cake in this and coming weeks, but, if so, count all of the above as yet another pitch for action.
Congratulations to Saline High School Class of 2018!
References
- “The Power of Simple Food Rituals” Jill Metzler Patton (October 2014) Experience L!fe.
- “The Food Experience” Michael S Fenster MD, (March 1, 2016) Psychology Today.
- Deliverable Delights (Facebook Page).
- “The Class of 2019 Is Coming Up Next: Who Needs Professional Senior Portraits?” Dell Deaton (May 13, 2018) Saline Journal.
- Baker’s Nook (home page).
