Hey Joe

I’ll be in Berlin in clown school when you read this.

On the website, where I found details of how to apply, and bios of the tutors (which I always find funny to read, because we all know that everyone is writing their own bio in 3^rd person, all the time), the title was actually ‘Workshop’ not ‘School’.

I told Jess and Egg that I was going to a clowning workshop in Berlin. A smile smoothed over Egg’s face and Jess goes ‘…what are you gonna do there? Like…will you juggle…?’. ‘Erm, no, not juggle. I don’t think.’ ‘Sounds like my idea of hell’ Egg said. What are you going to do at a clown workshop – I thought this was a great question from Jess, honest.

The more I think about why I wanted to apply to the workshop, which I had to elaborate on in a WhatsApp call interview with shit reception, makes me feel like ‘school’ offers the answer. I’ve been slouching toward my child self recently. Better to go that way with pride.

There’s this passage in Nuar Alsadir’s Animal Joy, a book recommended to me by a friend, which is a good sum up of what I might be working with in Berlin:

The more our concerns surround survival…the more we suppress our primal instincts and try to blend in – or, in the extreme, play dead… The social equivalant of playing dead is to put forward a façade…built around manners and protocols as opposed to spontaneous expression… | The clown is different. The clown gets up before an audience and risks letting whatever is inside them seep out’. Alsadir carries on, ‘these processes are similar to what philosopher Martin Heidegger terms aletheia, or truth as unconcealment. The clearest expression I’ve heard of aletheia came years ago, when I overheard my then three-year-old daughter call someone beautiful. I asked, What does beautiful mean? Still close to her clown self, she replied, Beautiful means most self. pp. 14-15.

I read this passage to mum without all the … one morning. The sun had only just come up and it was too early for either of us to have been affected by the weight of daytime doing. It was, although unplanned, the most perfect time of day I could have read this out loud. I put the book down. ‘That’s lovely’. There was a pause. I’m paraphrasing, but what mum said went something like ‘If we all went about being like a kid… spontaneously expressing whatever our most self wanted to express’, and now I’m not paraphrasing, ‘we would all just be like blobs on the floor’.  The bit hiding in what she said there was, ‘so, what’s the point?’. I thought this was a great question, honest.

Neither living only like the clown or only like a socialised self is the point. But knowing the clown version of yourself is there, and acting on her sometimes, is the point and the answer. As an end in itself, going to clown school, is for joy. Sounds to me like the function of a cake.

Sum up the energy of these thoughts and what you have is this Pumpkin Spice (Clown) Cake (really hoping the energy you got wasn’t boredom and/or irritation haha, if it was, congrats for getting to the end mate!) I made this cake first one day at work, and was so embarrassed by how it turned out that I put the cake in a box and hid it in the fridge. I got a voice note the next day from the generous-hearted owner of the café where I work. Turns out it went down well, so I kept making it. There’s the quick story of the clown cake.

Ingredients

for the cake

• 425g Pumpkin puree, this is one standard can you get in the supermarket
• 220g oil, sunflower or olive oil
• 340g caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 medium eggs
• Scant 1/4 tsp cloves, this is a potent spice, go easy on it. Taste the batter after using to add more if you need
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ginger, heaped
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 400g plain flour
• 4 tsp baking powder

for the buttercream

• 110g unsalted butter, soft at room temp
• 70g cream cheese, at room temp
• 400g icing sugar
• Splash of vanilla
• Pinch of salt

Method

Pre heat the oven to 180 / 165 fan. Grease and line two 9 inch/23cm round tins. This cake is so fast to put together, I would give the oven 15 mins to heat up before starting to make the batter.

In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin, oil, sugar, salt, vanilla, eggs and spices. Add the flour and baking powder to the bowl and mix well to combine. Pour the batter into the prepared tins, making sure there is an equal amount in each. Bake for 20 mins, turn the cakes in the oven, and bake for a further 8 – 11 mins. The cakes should be evenly brown/orange and spring back to the touch.

When the cakes have cooled, make the icing. To avoid any curdling, we’ll mix the icing sugar and cream cheese in two parts. In a large bowl, beat the butter with an electric whisk until just lighter in colour. Add 50g cream cheese, 200g icing sugar, the salt and vanilla and beat to form a thick paste. Now add the rest of the icing sugar (200g) and cream cheese (20g) and beat for about 2 mins, until light and fluffy. If you’re feeling confident you can just throw all the ingredients for the buttercream in a bowl and beat with an electric whisk for about 3 mins.

To put it together, level the dome off one of the cakes, save the bit you cut off, this will be your crumb top. Spread half the buttercream over the cake you just levelled and place the second cake on top. If you want to commit to getting the look of this cake, this is the time to carfeully carve off a very thin layer around the outer edge of the sandwiched cake, revealing the inner crumb, and saving the off cuts as a treat for yourself. Of course, you can skip that part. Top the cake with the rest of the buttercream. Crumble up the dome you saved from the base layer of cake. For the final touch, pile the finished cake with your cake crumbs.

The finished cake will keep in an air tight container in the fridge for up to 5 days (it won’t last that long).

Love from Berlin. Caitlin xx