Today on Substack, we talk with Caitlin Carrick-Varty. Caitlin is a recent graduate, former Kaf baker and the writer behind Cake On My Face, a space where she writes letters to her brother Joe, to celebrate moments of joy, change, failure and accomplishment. Her website is for anyone who enjoys the stories behind a recipe and of course, cake, which she playfully encourages all readers to wear (a little bit of) on their face.
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Can you tell me how you got into baking?
When I was around sixteen, I had to take a year out of school because I was unwell. I started baking as a form of recovery. At the end of my street there was a local Farmers’ Market and I got a stall there and that became my focal point every week for about a year. I loved every part of it. I liked creating the menu, I liked looking through all my books to get ideas and I enjoyed the whole process of going to buy ingredients and doing the budgeting for it, baking all day and turning up at the market and meeting people and having conversations there. I should say that I wasn’t really making any money; I was doing it to cover my costs and for fun and then whatever I got on top of that was an added bonus. Now of course it’s a lot different and I value my time and my creative practice. It was a way of introducing myself back into life a little bit and it really worked.
How did Cake On My Face come about?
Funnily enough, once I started to get a little better, I stopped baking. I wanted to study History of Art and Theatre Studies, and Glasgow was one of the two universities in the UK that allowed me to do both. My grandparents and my mum grew up in Glasgow so I knew the place quite well and it felt like home. While I was there, I became alive to alternative artistic practice, photography and picked up baking again. Cake on My Face became almost a playing space to document the process of developing recipes and testing them out. Initially it felt like speaking into a void and I didn’t really like that idea of speaking to no-one or potentially to loads of people, both of those options were quite scary so I addressed it to my brother. Writing letters to Joe became my entry point into storytelling and food. My baking is really linked with a need to ground back into real life and attend some kind of therapeutic need within myself.
In the last year, the pull to write has been really strong and it has became important to me. I think if someone had told me that in primary school I would have laughed; I have dyslexia and spelling, reading and grammar is really hard. Luckily I have some really great friends who are happy to read my stuff and point out the spelling mistakes that the computer doesn’t recognise.
In what way do you find baking therapeutic?
I’ve always enjoyed using my hands to make things - it makes me feel good. Baking is a very magical practice, things literally change state and there’s something quite exciting and thrilling about that. It’s also quite transformative, seeing something outside of yourself through your input transform. I think that is just a pleasure. And then, there’s something that I particularly love about the sharing of sweet things – not a necessity but it makes living and breathing pleasurable. I saw a post on Instagram on World Central Kitchen, for Easter weekend they had a whole bunch of Easter cakes and they were so joyful, individually packaged Easter cakes they were handing out in the refugee camps, it was really touching to see this mass of sugar and sprinkles in such a desperate state, that was being turned to and being shared.
So many of the conversations I have with my dad revolve around food. He is a great cook and has really demonstrated to me how involved you have to be in the process of creating food. It triggers everything - your sight, your smell, your touch, your taste; it’s quite a profound sensory experience.
Are you very close with Joe? Does Joe have a sweet tooth?
Me and my brother are very close. I think there are certain circumstances that siblings sometime face that bring them very close together, by necessity really. He’s kind of my best friend.
And yes, he has a sweet tooth. He’s not so much interested in the process of making, which is what I love, but he’s fully into the eating. There’s a child-like instinct in him, that I also have, which is that ‘OMG YUM’ - a sort of instant grasping and gratification. It's funny because my focus is on cake but Joe isn’t really interested in the cake, Joe’s interested in the icing or ganache and anything on top of the cake.
What was it like working as a baker in Glasgow?
So for my last year at uni, my fourth year, I worked as a baker for Kelvin Pocket which is an absolute gem of café and has a beautiful team of people. It holds very fond memories for me. That was the first time I was paid to bake, and I remember sending Joe a video, saying ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’. I learnt so much in that kitchen and it was a really lovely environment to start my kitchen experience in.
I then moved to Kaf which was a much bigger operation and also meant I could learn how to laminate pastry which is a really valuable skill and something I want to keep doing. They are a lovely bunch. It’s a very different way of working with food in a professional kitchen. There’s a big difference between the Instagram you see and the hard graft everyday in the kitchen - the hours, it’s cold, it’s busy and stressful, it’s not glamorous work. There are lots of small independent food places popping up in Glasgow at the moment, which is really great to see. The Outlier, that's doing really well, West Side Tavern, is another one, and if I'm right, I think they used the kitchen at Kaf for a couple of their pizza pop-ups - it was nice, that borrowing and sharing.
Is cake your main love?
I think cake is what I love the most. Cake is my main love, both to eat and to make. When I was working at Kaf Coffee in Glasgow, I was chatting to the owner, who is an amazing baker, we were working one day and I was making some of their cakes for a wholesale order and she said, ‘You are really good at making cakes’, and I said to her, ‘You are really good at making cookies.’ Each individual bake is such a speciality. I honestly just can’t get my head around making cookies, I’ve even developed recipes for them on my website but there’s something about making cakes that I’m addicted to.
What influences your baking?
Some of my cakes are very plain – no decorative touches at the end – and some of them are very heavily decorated, almost like sculptural pieces. I was thinking about this recently, and for me it’s about whatever impulse, environment or context that was behind making the cake that dictates its form.
I also don’t think I can quite express to you how many cookbooks I have, it’s an embarrassing amount of cookery books. I remember reading something from the owners of Honey and Co in London, that a cookbook should be like an art book; it’s not for following exactly and that’s very much how I treat my baking books. I love them and I treat them as art books - they are there for ideas and stimulation. Cooking is a visual thing and for me, the stories are also really important.
Honey cake with custard cream
It felt fitting to include a recipe today, given Caitlin’s love of recipe development and of course, cake! She very kindly let me include her recipe for her layered honey cake with custard cream.
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