Have I got a business proposition for you! My buddy Eve threw a pyramid-scheme themed birthday party. I realize it may sound a little odd that a bunch of 30-somethings re-enacted a 1990s-era business party complete with elevator pitches and paper cups of coffee, but really, this is the image of “Office Work” of our childhoods. Shoulder pads, suits that would make (NBC) Chilton blush, yelling into giant cell phones, those Apple computers we had in computer class in public school, cubicles, the chance to have your ambitions rewarded (or to drown in a pit of existential despair)–until the recession happened just at the moment we all graduated college/grad school. Fun!

Eve described the theme as “high pressure 80’s combined with the desperation of the 90’s,” so for her cake. I spent a lot of my formative years using dot-matrix paper as scrap paper from my dad’s office, so the design I decided on was a dot-matrix printer image of Kate Beaton’s ’80s Businesswoman.

The cake consists of the “Four-Egg Yellow Cake” from The Joy of Cooking (p. 714-5) baked as a sheet cake and frosted with a combination of 1 batch of the “American Buttercream” from Sprinklebakes (white and green) and 1/2 batch of the “Chocolate Buttercream,” both on p. 81. I frosted the cake in pan (for that homemade ’90s touch and portability) with half the white buttercream, then dyed the other half green and piped it on and spread it with a very small silicon spatula. I then traced the businesswoman character in chocolate buttercream with a toothpick. I think I achieved effect of the roughness of the dot matrix printing and that sort of awkward homemade/Cake Wreck piping here. The text reads “Congrats on your 1st sale, Eve.”

Tasted like success, especially after double-fisting some Starbucks from paper cup with a (vegan) Kahlua milkshake.

In case you were wondering, some of our best food-related business pitches were as follows.

-Consulting Detective
-cheese you can touch
–queerbaiting
-hotline for pizza topping suggestions
-modify corn starch
-cat baristas