D
uring his three years in the Army,
Meridian’s Jake Pearson served as a
cook.
And yet he didn’t truly learn to bake
until years later, when he was working in
Chicago.
“I saw a recipe for a cake on a calendar,” he
recalled. “I thought it sounded good so I got a
clerk to make a copy of it. I took it home and
gave it a try.”
Pearson said that although he was generally
comfortable in the kitchen, he made a few mis-
takes before he finally got the art of cake baking
right.
“The thing with baking is that you do actu-
ally have to follow the recipe in the beginning,”
Pearson said with a chuckle. “You can’t go
in and start changing things until you get an
understanding of what you are working with
and how it all goes together. In the beginning,
it’s about the recipe and what it says.”
Pearson said that initially, his cakes often fell
flat.
“I was mixing it too much,” he said. “Once
you get the flour in there you really need to
make sure that you don’t mix it too much or it
will go flat.”
Once Pearson got the basics of the recipe
down, he said he was able to start tweaking it
a bit. He says he uses one more egg than the
recipe originally called for, and he also adds a
little more shortening. He also has added an
additional flavor to the cake, which he calls his
Six-Flavor Pound cake.
The sixth flavor – which is his creation – is
almond. The other flavors in the cake include
coconut, rum, vanilla, lemon and butter, he said.
Over time, he also has come to have a favor-
ite flour – White Lily All Purpose Flour.
“The flour makes a difference,” he said. “I
stick with what works there.”
The cake is widely known among his friends
and family members. Visitors to his house know
that they can expect there to be a cake sitting on
the counter when they swing by to see him.
“Sometimes I kind of see them cutting their
eyes over at that cake,” he said. “I guess that’s
how they let me know they would like a piece.
They come to visit, but I think they feel like the
cake is a nice extra.”
When he was working for a transit company
in Chicago years ago, the cake became wildly
popular among his co-workers. He started out
taking extra cake to share because he, his wife
and son couldn’t eat it all at home.
People started asking him to make cakes
for home, holidays and special events. It
quickly became a side hustle for him. Once at
Christmas, he made 12 cakes in a day, he said.
“I don’t want to bake quite that much any-
more,” he said. “That was a lot.”
www.meridianstar.com
“The thing with baking is that
you do actually have to follow the
recipe in the beginning. You can’t
go in and start changing things
until you get an understanding of
what you are working with and
how it all goes together. In the
beginning, it’s about the recipe
and what it says.”
Jake Pearson, cake baker
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