thedrifter
02-09-09, 06:59 AM
Join the Navy, see the world - and decorate its cakes
Travel the world. Learn a skill. And, as Navy recruiting slogans promise, "Accelerate Your Life."
But cake decorating?
When 20-year-old Christopher Huggins joined the Navy, he never dreamed he'd be hunched over a fake cake squeezing peach-colored icing from a bag to make rows of dainty rosebuds.
Huggins, who works in the aft galley aboard the George H.W. Bush, was one of 10 culinary specialists from the Navy's newest aircraft carrier who recently took a three-day crash course in cake decorating from AnnaBelle Eversole, owner of Wine & Cake Hobbies in Norfolk.
"She makes it look too easy," Huggins mumbled on his eighth attempt at shaping flowers.
Eight Bush sailors took the class before them, and a dozen more were expected to follow. And there will be more sailors from other ships; there always are. After all, celebrations don't cease because a ship is at sea.
Consider the Bush: seven galleys, 2,600 people aboard. Cooks dish up 6,000 meals a day for the crew, and 15,000 a day when the air wing is on board. All those people have birthdays, re-enlistments, changes of command.
"It's almost an everyday thing," said Bush Culinary Specialist Chief Hosannah Quino, who all-told plans to have 30 of her 74-member staff trained by Eversole. It's some thing of a perk for Quino's crew.
"We need a lot of people who have this skill," she said.
Which, by the second day of training, Huggins definitely didn't. Huggins' hobbies are basketball, dancing, girls. Cake decorating had not entered his universe before.
Clearly frustrated by the rosebuds, he called Eversole over to his table.
"Well, it's a rose of some sort," Eversole said as she examined Huggins' progress. "You need to get this technique down, because later we're going to move on to full roses."
She stood close beside Huggins and adjusted his grip on the decorating bag, giving it a firm twist so icing would ooze only from "the business end." Then she put her hands over his to demonstrate.
"It's all pressure, and just a twist of the wrist," she said, guiding his hands. "Let the icing flow and then cut it off," she said, flicking her wrist. Together, they fashioned a perfect little bud.
Eversole has been teaching cake decorating to military personnel for 36 years. Students come from destroyers, submarines and from the Coast Guard and Marines. The San Jacinto, the Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Kennedy, the America, the Enterprise - Eversole easily names some of the crews she's worked with.
She starts the $250 class with the basics: how to prep an icing bag, how to cut decorating tips from paper funnels, how to keep the icing in the bag. Then her students graduate to icing cakes, with the goal that the surface be as smooth as a well-made bunk. She teaches them to squeeze out shell shapes, stars, sweet peas, rosebuds, roses, rope borders and basket weaves. They make sugar molds of military insignias and work with thick sugar sheets called fondant, fashioning bows and other frippery.
They also learn how to write with icing: Welcome Aboard, Happy Birthday, Happy Retirement and Congratulations. It's hard enough to write in icing, but students also must center the script on the cake.
Midway in the final class, Eversole told the sailors to pick up a No. 7 "nail," a long metal piece with a disk at the top, like a little plate balanced atop a stick. The instructions seemed nearly impossible: Turn the nail counterclockwise with one hand while the other hand squeezes arcs of icing onto the rotating disk.
Just like that, Eversole turned out a perfect rose. Sean Seisay, 20, who sat on a stool next to Huggins, tried, but the result was decidedly unroselike. To his surprise, Huggins was a natural. His first try actually looked like a rose. His second might have pleased an admiral.
"Can you beat this one?" he said, holding his rose-topped nail up for his shipmates to see. "I couldn't make those flowers we made before, but this one here? It's all me!"
"Huggins," Seisay said, "you got perfection."
Buoyed by his success, Huggins was contemplating asking for even more cake-decorating training by the time Eversole handed him a certificate and gave him a decorating kit that included tips, bags, colorings and other essentials.
More immediately, he'd figured a way to combine one of his old hobbies with his new skill.
With a broad grin, he said, "I'm going to make my girl a rose for Valentine's Day."
Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com
Ellie
Travel the world. Learn a skill. And, as Navy recruiting slogans promise, "Accelerate Your Life."
But cake decorating?
When 20-year-old Christopher Huggins joined the Navy, he never dreamed he'd be hunched over a fake cake squeezing peach-colored icing from a bag to make rows of dainty rosebuds.
Huggins, who works in the aft galley aboard the George H.W. Bush, was one of 10 culinary specialists from the Navy's newest aircraft carrier who recently took a three-day crash course in cake decorating from AnnaBelle Eversole, owner of Wine & Cake Hobbies in Norfolk.
"She makes it look too easy," Huggins mumbled on his eighth attempt at shaping flowers.
Eight Bush sailors took the class before them, and a dozen more were expected to follow. And there will be more sailors from other ships; there always are. After all, celebrations don't cease because a ship is at sea.
Consider the Bush: seven galleys, 2,600 people aboard. Cooks dish up 6,000 meals a day for the crew, and 15,000 a day when the air wing is on board. All those people have birthdays, re-enlistments, changes of command.
"It's almost an everyday thing," said Bush Culinary Specialist Chief Hosannah Quino, who all-told plans to have 30 of her 74-member staff trained by Eversole. It's some thing of a perk for Quino's crew.
"We need a lot of people who have this skill," she said.
Which, by the second day of training, Huggins definitely didn't. Huggins' hobbies are basketball, dancing, girls. Cake decorating had not entered his universe before.
Clearly frustrated by the rosebuds, he called Eversole over to his table.
"Well, it's a rose of some sort," Eversole said as she examined Huggins' progress. "You need to get this technique down, because later we're going to move on to full roses."
She stood close beside Huggins and adjusted his grip on the decorating bag, giving it a firm twist so icing would ooze only from "the business end." Then she put her hands over his to demonstrate.
"It's all pressure, and just a twist of the wrist," she said, guiding his hands. "Let the icing flow and then cut it off," she said, flicking her wrist. Together, they fashioned a perfect little bud.
Eversole has been teaching cake decorating to military personnel for 36 years. Students come from destroyers, submarines and from the Coast Guard and Marines. The San Jacinto, the Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Kennedy, the America, the Enterprise - Eversole easily names some of the crews she's worked with.
She starts the $250 class with the basics: how to prep an icing bag, how to cut decorating tips from paper funnels, how to keep the icing in the bag. Then her students graduate to icing cakes, with the goal that the surface be as smooth as a well-made bunk. She teaches them to squeeze out shell shapes, stars, sweet peas, rosebuds, roses, rope borders and basket weaves. They make sugar molds of military insignias and work with thick sugar sheets called fondant, fashioning bows and other frippery.
They also learn how to write with icing: Welcome Aboard, Happy Birthday, Happy Retirement and Congratulations. It's hard enough to write in icing, but students also must center the script on the cake.
Midway in the final class, Eversole told the sailors to pick up a No. 7 "nail," a long metal piece with a disk at the top, like a little plate balanced atop a stick. The instructions seemed nearly impossible: Turn the nail counterclockwise with one hand while the other hand squeezes arcs of icing onto the rotating disk.
Just like that, Eversole turned out a perfect rose. Sean Seisay, 20, who sat on a stool next to Huggins, tried, but the result was decidedly unroselike. To his surprise, Huggins was a natural. His first try actually looked like a rose. His second might have pleased an admiral.
"Can you beat this one?" he said, holding his rose-topped nail up for his shipmates to see. "I couldn't make those flowers we made before, but this one here? It's all me!"
"Huggins," Seisay said, "you got perfection."
Buoyed by his success, Huggins was contemplating asking for even more cake-decorating training by the time Eversole handed him a certificate and gave him a decorating kit that included tips, bags, colorings and other essentials.
More immediately, he'd figured a way to combine one of his old hobbies with his new skill.
With a broad grin, he said, "I'm going to make my girl a rose for Valentine's Day."
Lorraine Eaton, (757) 446-2697, lorraine.eaton@pilotonline.com
Ellie