I'm curious about other's reactions to something that has been rolling around in my mind for awhile. (lots of room to roll in there )

A non caker was talking to me about how much she likes to watch the cake shows (Challenge, Ace, etc) Then she said:
"The cakes are really beautiful but how could you eat it? I can only take so much manipulation of my food." (my italics)

And then recently I read someone's comment on here about some cakes being more like "crafts".

I didn't say anything to my friend because frankly I was caught off guard. Never thought about that before.

Are we touching too much?
Are we losing skills?

I bake bread, cinnamon rolls, bread sticks, pizza, pan dulce, empanadas, ect...

All of those things involve about as much touching as a fondant cake. My hands are clean, my kitchen is clean, it's not a big deal to me.

Cake decorating is a craft/art done mainly by using your hands - how can you not touch?!

Flamingobaker, for the non caker who can only take so much manipulation of their food - they are lucky not to know how much "manipulation of the food" the food industry brings...

As for cake decorating being craft - I am not really unhappy about this. My cakes are craft - meaning it needs skill you can learn. There are some/many artists here. I don't belong among them. I wasn't given the gift for colors, for forms. My cakes are still hit and miss. I will be happy to learn the craft well.
I am slowly getting where I can reproduce a cake without obvious mistakes and flaws or reproduce an object (toy, picture etc.) in cake. I don't think I can train myself enough to be real artist with gift for good/stunning design ideas.


You can see it here on CC - some newbies make beautiful cakes. You see flaws and newbie mistakes, because they didn't learn "the craft" yet, but the cake all in all is stunning.

I don't think anyone WANTS to actually *touch* a cake more than they have too -

Did you mention that gloves are worn alot by many, and it isn't always bare hands touching the cake?


More concerning is all the people at salad bars that me -
I DON'T DO SALAD BARS - *shudder* - all those toilet hands -

Bluehue

Salad bars, commercial buffets, smorgasbords, and anyplace that has a "all you can eat for $4.99" deal ..... all make me nervous. Locally, the $4.99 lunch deal place has a high number of HD violations (per the local paper). As I explained to my daughter, "When you have a cheap meal, then you're not making a lot of profit, which means you are cutting costs wherever you can, which means you are running the place with a skeleton staff, which means there is too much work for each person to do, which means some stuff isn't getting done, which means shortcuts, which means lack of proper cleaning, which means HD violations."

Our mothers and their mothers made our biscuits, pies, breads and everything else with their hands. Their hands likely were clean. My hands are clean. I make biscuits, pies, breads and everything else using those clean hands. That type of touching of food doesn't bother me.

What does bother me is watching Ace of Cakes and seeing Geoff carrying his fondant bundle around in his arms like a baby. Granted, in that episode, his red bundle of fondant was not going to be consumed, it was to cover a "building" not made of cake. But the open disregard of food as food on those shows bothers me.

Of course we all wear gloves when that cake comes out of the oven don't we.

Mike

I think I understand what the friend is saying. My husband watches hairy-armed men (I know, women can be hairy too) take the huge sheets of fondant up to their elbows and lay them over cakes. He remarks that he does not see how you can't get hair into the fondant that way. Many people comment on the hair that is falling into the faces of those who make cake on challenges. Yes, a lot of gloves are worn, but it's not often one sees gloves up to the elbows. Of course, we know hair can fall off your clothes (no matter how hard one tries to keep from it) into any medium whether it's buttercream, fondant, bread dough, etc. Are we handing food too much? I don't see how you cannot handle food in order to perfect it. I did think it was interesting to note; however, that last year on Amazing Wedding Cakes, the only shop that held their hair back was Cake Divas, and this year all but Christopher Garren's wore head gear that restrained their hair. And, does anyone else think it MORE gross to see sweaty chefs dripping into their food as seen on challenges like Chopped, Iron Chef, and Top Chef? Gag.

Being a former culinairy student, this was always sa "hot topic". Gloves are used mainly in plating but not always in preparing a meal. It is presumed that a chef's hands are clean at all times. Many people will not it food that is "fussy" or looks like it has been handled too much. What we do is an art and should be treated as such. I personnaly do not know or have not here of an artist who does not "touch" their work. I think people are just way to picky.

This is too funny because while taking Wilton course 3 at Michaels, a lady shopping in the store just decides to walk into class, and stand right next to me watching while I was kneeding fondant to cover my cake with. She looks right at me and says "Wow, everything is so hand made", and made a weird face.
I never thought that may be a turn off for some until that day. But thats where the intricatcies come into play. Machines cannot generate the types of masterpieces that we can with our hands!

I get what the friend is saying because to tell you the truth, now that I know how much handling (or crafting, whatever you want to call it) goes into decorating the more elaborate cakes, it sort of gives me pause when it comes to eating them. I'm not saying it's rational, but nevertheless it's just one of those personal things that makes me think I'd rather have one of those cookies over there instead of a piece of cake. It's also one of the reasons why I simplified my decorating style.

Ok that last part isn't true. I just don't like decorating.

I KNOW hands are clean and/or gloved. And I know about all the hidden germs. But, for example, she is looking at it as going right from "manipulate, squeeze, mold" to being eaten. Cookies, rolls, are cooked in between.

And by skills I guess I do mean piping.
Yes, leveling and fondanting (is that a word?) a cake takes skill and practice, but after that, cutting out strips and dots and flowers does not.

flamingobaker,

Yes, piping takes skill and steady hands (some of us don't have that steady hand anymore), plus an artful (is that a word?) eye to know what to pipe where. That same artful eye for shape, color, size, space is required for a pleasing arrangement of fondant shapes.

It's all art, just different medium.

I don't like peoples hands all over food either. I don't care if you just washed them. Most people do not ever wash their hands correctly. You are supposed to have sudsy soap and vigorously scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds and rinse under running water. Sing Happy Birthday twice folks. I usually spend a little more time on my hands, front, back in between my fingers and making sure to scrub under my nails with a finger brush. I just like super clean hands.

But even then our hands shed about 40-60 thousand-THOUSAND cells a day.
There is no way to completely avoid this and most have healthy immune systems and you are never phased by it physically. But knowing it is gross.

If you don't ware gloves you are literally baking a piece of yourself into everything you make. ~Shudders~

I think chefs should ware head bands or something and be given a break every hour to wash up and wash off the sweat. Most just use a towel and mop their heads while cooking-some don't and just drip that salty goodness right into your food. And most who do have a sweat mop towel will use that to dry their hands after washing them. UHHHG! It's so gross.

Not only that Kate...LOL Lots of pickers have dogs to help keep away birds and rodents and they will lift a leg now and again. And lets also not mention that usually there are no restroom facilities out there in the fields. So even if they do bring in Port-a-potties I doubt there is hand washing going on there.

The veggies and fruit are picked by hand if not by machine, sorted by hands, boxed by hands, unpacked at stores by hands, and then riffled through and picked over by countless consumer hands before you even touch that tomato.
That is why we wash our food.

My mom said rinsing is fine...LOL When she saw me pull out my scrub brush and go to town with actual soap on some fruit and tomatoes. "You'll bruise those tomatoes!", she warned.

But when I went through it all and her little light bulb flashed brightly for a second or two and, by Georgie- she got it! Yes we even vigorously wash fruit we cut. While cutting right through the rind or skin those germs can be dragged right through the food on the knife. Washing is the only way.

I have to say that any decorated sugar cookies are almost always handled by hand - in order to flood coat evenly, to rotate or get the right angle when applying extra details. Then you may have to transfer to a drying rack in order to make more room for the next tray of cookies. And let's not even go into bagging them up!!! My hands are soooooooo darn chapped after a large cookie order, I can hardly bend them to wrap around a pastry bag for the next order. I am meticulous with my cleanliness and always have my hair pulled back. And yet, you just never know...

We had a lady come thru our office today selling banana bread for some church mission project, and while we don't necessarily care for solicitors, we allow her since its a good cause, and yet all I can think of is 'where was this baked? did your cat lick on it before it gat wrapped up? how many tasting spoons went back and forth into the batter? etc"

Sad, as I am doing the same thing with cakes and hoping that people trust me to be as clean as possible, but I couldn't help but wonder... (and yes, its very good banana bread!)

The nose is also a big no-no. The average person touches their nose or face many, many, many times an hour.
The germs and bacteria that live in the nose include Cold and Flu germs of a sick person, Staff like MRSA and E-colli bacterias.
One swipe of an itchy nose with out washing your hands can make others sick.
MRSA is every where right now. And just a light hand washing is not enough.

My mother who was not sick or ill at all had nasal surgery and wound up with a huge MRSA infection in her nose at the surgical site. So we got some info from the lab and her doctor. The lab explained to the doctor that most people are carrying staff bacteria, MRSA and E-colli around in their noses and don't know it at all, until their immune systems are compromised and they get sick and get an infection.
Nasty stuff in the nose.

I don't bake for others except family and friends on occasion. But when I do bake or cook for guests, I tie my hair up and wear a head band and wash and glove. And wouldn't ya know it that is when my nose itches the most. It drives me nuts..LOL So I take off the gloves and go blow in the bathroom and re-wash twice..LOL I wash in the bathroom and then go wash again in the kitchen. IDK until I have washed twice I won't touch food. A Little OCD maybe.

Not only do you carry that stuff in your nose, it is on your skin. It is all about common sense.

If everything we used/touched were sterile, guess how sick we all would be then?

I think if we worried about every contamination we would go crazy. It is a real concern though. Dr. Oz's show really adds to all of the fear, they said that all of the fruits and vegetables are touched by human hands 20 times by the time it gets to the store. Then they set up a camera in the store to watch shoppers, and everyone was squeezing the produce, rubbing their noses, it was quite an eye opener. I was basically worried about pesticides, now something else to think about. Also the mrsa problem is scarey, they banned doctors from wearing necktie's in england, because they were so contaminated. Cake decorating shows are kind of hard to watch sometimes, but I enjoy the process so much I try not to think about it.

There is no way to be sterile nor would I want to try to achieve that. Going too far reduces our good bacteria.
But good washing makes sense and prevents a lot of infection and the spread of illness. Illness and disease are more prevalent in areas with lower hygiene.