ROUNDS 37 & 38: ROOT BEER CAKE & PUMPKIN 2.0

courtesy of the brilliant savannah dooley

“We ahr not into ze pumpkin,” said the German exchange students I offered cake to last Thursday at the Wellesbourne bar near UCLA.

“Aw, man. We just spent three hours at Soup Plantation. Wish we weren’t so full,” said the Asian crowd when I moved on to them.

“Are you serious?” asked our barback, after bringing us a knife to cut a cake he couldn’t eat. “I’m allergic. Pumpkin and tomatoes.”

justine and ze pumpkin cake

Cake Rejection: My Salted Caramel Tears. A one woman show starring Audrey Shulman. The Wellsbourne might be a lovely bar, but it super failed us for cakebarring. My sweet and talented actress friend Justine and I had met up here for a visit and some cake distribution only to realize that everyone around us was on a date. The place has a few booths and a handful of high tiny tables, making it very conducive to couples and less conducive to anyone else. I decided to order us some Moscow Mules while we waited things out (maybe lots of young single grad students would appear!) and came back from a mostly losing game of trying to get the bartenders’ attention to live music so all consuming that Justine and I couldn’t hear ourselves scream into each other’s ears. But we persevered, enjoying the deafening music and the cake, a recipe from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook for pumpkin bars that I just didn’t cut up. (We can’t flipping get enough of pumpkin.) The people we did manage to offer cake to in between songs– everyone listed above, and a few other dudes who were not in the middle of dates– were not interested. Justine is such a champ– she even has a boyfriend and was excited to come anyway– so I really owe her a fantastic cakebarring outing, like, where we are literally beating boys off with a stick. (In my mind, bacon cake = beating boys off with a stick.)

girlz at 3rd stop with root beer cake

The Monday before this was cakebarring at 3rd Stop near West Hollywood, leaps and bounds more successful, even if it meant most of the cake went to our handsome, friendly waiters. 3rd Stop is a really lovely restaurant and bar right by Cedars-Sinai, with a nice staff and plenty of outside tables. I had made a root beer cake from the amazing Baked cookbook with my gleaming new bundt pan! My work girlfriends and I had met up with some friends from Vh1, who were excited to join in on our ritualistic cake baiting ploys. When we glanced around to scope out our options, I actually recognized the person sitting in front of us, who was reading a book with a glass of wine. I couldn’t figure out if I had offered him cake before. Then I remembered that he (Adam) actually works at a restaurant in Culver City where he seated me once, and that I had actually told him about the blog. (I’ve become a shameless self-promoter even in my off hours.) He was happy to take some cake.

ben and vince – right before i revealed the ruse

I called the two guys sitting behind us, while Sam took the two guys to our side. My guys, a CAA assistant and a travel writer who have known each other since they were little kids here in LA, were real winners. They were talkative and sweet– so much so that I decided to tell them about the blog, and they wanted to know all about it. They marveled at how easily I had offered them fake leftovers. Oh wait, they said. You’re a seasoned liar. You do this to guys all the time. By the time I made it over to Sam’s table, her guys actually seemed scared. They did not want any cake, and it probably didn’t help that Sam was trying to shame them into eating some. Despite any aforementioned rage I might feel over cake rejection, force feeding is not quite the goal of this project. Sam gets major points for trying.

I’ve probably offered cake to hundreds of Los Angeles residents this year, but I still manage to forget sometimes that this is about finding a boyfriend. It’s become more about going to new places and catching up with friends, approaching guys I would never have been able to muster eye contact with before, and eating boatloads of sugar. It makes being single a real pleasure. My incredible friend Catherine, who I met in a taxi in Prague five years ago, sent me this message last week after reading my latest entry for the Huffington Post:

I love you, Catherine! Come cakebarring in America after you finish your Ph.D!!

justine and me, post wellesbourne time

root beer cake close-up

me, adam, and adam’s book

ROUND 34: 1-2-3-4 CAKE WITH COCONUT FROSTING

anna + me + nikki + cake

Last weekend was the first time I ever cakebarred by myself for a little bit, which felt much braver than it probably was, thanks to two strangers who very quickly became my cohorts in cake lies.

mona lisa friend

I started out at The Woods, a nice surprise tucked in a strip mall behind the El Pollo Loco on Sunset and La Brea. The place looks kind of like the Bigfoot bars, with its elk antler chandeliers and cedar blocks lining the walls. I forgot that I was coming on pre-Halloween weekend, and couldn’t figure out if all the girls wearing light-up devil horns were actually customers or employees. I sat in a back booth while I waited for my friends to meet me, wondering if I could offer people my untouched cake without looking weird and friendless. Then I saw a girl with a Mona Lisa costume– her face poking through a canvas in a giant picture frame– and decided she was a good place to start. “Could I take a picture of you in your costume if I give you a piece of cake?” I asked. “Sure,” she said. “But someone will have to feed it to me.”

I didn’t realize her awesome costume came with restrictive cake eating capabilities. Luckily, her friend was happy to oblige.

(surprise) teammates, dennis and nicole

Once I gave them each a piece, it felt easier to keep giving away the cake. The two friends sitting next to me were thrilled when I offered them some, as they’d been eyeing the cake (and smelling the cake) since I walked in. Dennis and Nicole, who both do noble things with their lives like clinical research, asked lots of thoughtful questions about cakebarring when I filled them in after our 2 minutes of friendship. When a guy walked up in the middle of this and asked if it was someone’s birthday, Nicole said quickly and convincingly, “Yes, it’s my birthday.” She offered him a piece of cake and he plopped down, asking how we all knew each other. “Oh, we’ve been friends for a long time,” Nicole said. WHAT? Nicole, are you in the wrong field? Should you actually be a spy?

Even though I would have liked to see Nicole and Dennis continue to lie to other people on my behalf, I left to go meet my friends closer to their house at bar #2: the Brickyard. While stuck in traffic, I saw Batman eating frozen yogurt all alone on the side of the road.  (I know. I should have asked him to join me. That would have been a surefire recipe for fun and romance.)

anna and nikki, swarmed

The Brickyard is a huge bar in North Hollywood, half bar and benches and half pool tables. I walked in to find my friends Anna and Nikki swarmed by a number of highly interested parties, who didn’t even need cake to get drawn in– just Anna’s Zooey Deschanel bangs. One of these guys, an insurance rep visiting from Dallas, offered to buy me a drink (which should be noted never EVER happens, in all my hundreds of cake offerings), but I gratefully declined, and ended up circling the bar to seek out more friendly looking cake takers. I ran into a couple of editors from my office playing pool, who probably didn’t recognize me wearing less than a sweater and ill-fitting corduroy pants, but were nonetheless very happy to eat some cake.

What occasionally happens is that I get so distracted catching up with my sweet friends that I forget my mission until I’m about to fall asleep. I looked up from visiting with Anna around 1 in the morning and realized I had better give out the rest of the cake. Anna and I decided on two guys standing off to the side of their friend group. When I asked if they wanted any cake, the one in glasses said, “Always.” Boy in glasses turned out to be great, a Texan performer who asked lots of nice questions, even though he didn’t ask for my number. I handed him and his friend a business card on my way out, deciding it was better to finish the night off with some intrigue– “Wait, are we on camera right now?” they asked– than trying to force something that wasn’t supposed to happen.

This recipe comes from defamed southern superstar Paula Deen; the numbers just refer to the ratio of ingredients: 1 cup milk, 2 cups sugar, 3 cups flour, and 4 eggs, (and Miss Deen absolutely adds butter). I used homemade coconut frosting leftover from a birthday cake. I must say– having tested out this recipe earlier in the week, (shocker!), using whole wheat flour and brown sugar is actually better on this one, making the cake taste more like pancakes. You could substitute it for breakfast, no problem.

editor friends partaking

boys’ eyes: literally glowing when they hear “cake”

 

ROUND 33 – MINT CHOCOLATE CHOCOLATE CAKE

cake excitement

Okay. So I BOUGHT a cake under the duress of time constraints for last week’s cakebarring. And even though yes, I feel like a total poser, I would feel more embarrassed about it if the cake hadn’t been so gosh darn good, giving me not 1 but 2 nights of cake eating success.

This is what happened.

andra last day / liz has something to say

It was my dear friend Andra’s last day of work on Friday, so we celebrated her tenure by taking her to the Surly Goat, making it my third time there with a cake this year. Despite the fact that I usually have zero success taking cakes to places I’ve already been before, (a self-imposed cakebarring curse, if you will), between our friends and neighboring strangers, I managed to get rid of half of it. A guy who doesn’t even like cake and didn’t want any asked for my number. (What? That’s never happened before.) We’ll go get dessert at Ramekin some time, he said. He’s more of a pie person. It doesn’t even matter that he hasn’t called. I just still can’t believe he didn’t eat any of the cake and still wanted to hang out.

People who don’t like cake liked this cake. It was like a fake ice cream cake, with whipped mint chocolate chip frosting on top and in between the layers. The actual cake could have been a little more moist, but the Andes mints on top more than made up for it. And why yes– it was from the grocery store bakery section.

“you girls are all beautiful, but that CAKE!”

Come Saturday night, we still had the other half of the cake, so Chrissy, Katy, and I took our visiting friend Neily to The Phoenix, a newly reopened bar on La Cienega we’d never been to. Neily, who is recently married and absolutely unavailable, was determined to try out cakebarring. Maybe it was the magic of bringing her along, or her agreeing to pretend it was her birthday, but never in all our cakebarring days have we been offered so many drinks.

The Phoenix has ascended to #1 on my favorite LA bars list. Valet is only $5, and they were still having happy hour when we arrived– our 3 drinks combined were only $9. (Highway robbery!) They have games and books for actual use, and pretty inside and outside seating areas. Both the seating hostess and waitress made a big effort to help us find a place to sit with our cake when we walked in, which I super appreciated. They must be southerners.

aerospace steve & co

But of course, the best part of our Phoenix night were the guys we met. There was the friendly entertainment writer who sought out our birthday cake and bought us a round of drinks. There were the recent college grads next to us, the friendliest of whom told Chrissy she was “still pretty bangin'” when she told him how old she was. And then there were the 3 friends who work in aerospace that we talked to for several hours, becoming our bff comrades to the point of my revealing the whole cakebarring scheme to them. I have to tell you guys… I actually do this every week. Luckily, they thought this was all very funny, and were happy to be in on the scheming. They asked lots of questions, gave lots of good advice, and we parted ways with dinner party plans and recipe exchanges. To Steve & Co.– I’m sorry I lied to you about making the cake myself. I hope we can still be friends.

#cakebarring champs

The night was only topped by my running into my sweet friends who are recently engaged, and then accidentally cutting the host of Catfish in the valet line. “I’m so sorry, that was so rude,” I said when I realized what I had done, reaching out to apologetically touch the arm that belonged to Nev Schulman. And then I realized it belonged to Nev Schulman. “It’s really not that rude,” his friend assured me, and I ran from the scene.

I really have to stop touching strangers.