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I couldn’t tell you whether you said the right thing, or not.... I would be in exactly the same situation of being torn between the two options as you are.  But I think that given the situation and your expectations of the outcome you did the best thing that you could have. 

I really want to read that intro about the Rape of the Palate.  I have noticed that as I make more and more money, the thing that changes is not how much we spend on a car, or the quality or quantity of clothing I buy, but the quality of food I eat.  As I make more money, I buy REAL vanilla instead of imitation, I buy balsamic vinegar instead of Kraft Salad Dressing, and I buy Tillamook Cheddar instead of American.  THESE are the things that make me happy.  Oh yes…

Damn, now I can taste that balsamic vinegar with none in site!

For what it’s worth, I would have responded exactly the same way to a “Nicole-type” situation.

I have had situations where I lovingly baked cookies - interesting, unusual, and I thought, very good, cookies from scratch for some function, and watched as people gobbled up the Chips Ahoy (or the generic version of same) that someone else brought. And died a little inside.

And I totally get what you mean about a “steely” taste. I describe it as a “dusty” taste myself, but I think it’s the same thing.

And I live the “college students who have difficulties with following instructions” thing every day. I could have “ONLY USE DEIONIZED WATER IN EXPERIMENTS” tattooed on my forehead (I have a big forehead), and I’d still find someone merrily trotting off to the tap to fill their beaker with. And yeah, the choice is not good, it’s between being a mother-hen who hovers, or letting them screw up (and then usually having to set the whole dang lab up again so they can redo it), or turning into a screaming banshee who rants about “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST LISTEN?!? WHY CAN’T YOU JUST READ THE LAB?!?!”

I would have done exactly the same thing, and have, many times over. While there are times when I am the food/language/whatever snob, those times seem to be farther and farther apart as I gradually exchange youthful idealism for the realization that most people don’t know they’re wrong/stupid/palateless and what’s more, don’t care.

Some of my dear friends have been with me for many, many years, and I think I have actually influenced their palates and communication skills for the better. But it takes a strong friendship to withstand the number of corrections I used to hand out, and I guess I got tired of irritating people. So more often, now, I keep it to myself UNLESS I am specifically in a situation where I’m SUPPOSED to be teaching something. My poor children....

I would have bolstered Nicole’s confidence. Even if she hadn’t been a nice person, I still would have done it. But I’m not as die-hard as you and am perfectly happy to use a box mix on occasion, so I really might not have noticed.

OTOH, I did tell my grandmother the one time she tried to use a shortcut box mix to make her lemon squares. “What’s wrong with these?” I asked. “They taste funny.” She never used it again.

Being a geek (food, fiber, computer, you name it), I’m driven to learn.  Not everyone is.  My main “motherly advice” to my sometimes socially clueless 10-year-old is that anything she says should pass two tests:  “is it true?” and “will saying it make anything better?” If she can’t answer “yes” to both questions then she should try to keep her mouth shut.  Was Nicole someone who wanted to learn to be a better baker and was seriously asking for feedback, or did she just want a bit of reassurance?  Sounds like you judged her correctly, and did what she wanted, rather than what she asked for.  It’s called tact, and someday I’ll have some....
That said, it would have frosted my buns that she won.

mj is totally correct, as were you, Jen. If she’d said “I want to be a better baker--how can I improve?” you would have been able to impart some wisdom.

As for the general preference for her box pie (did I say that?), one need only remember that there is also a general preference for Britney Spears, ‘reality’ shows and People magazine over say, Morton Feldman, Bill Moyers and Harper’s. Whether such preferences could be ‘improved’ with education/experience is a nature/nurture question and basically unanswerable. But I, too, have wanted to set a bonfire in the middle of the local Kroger while passing out copies of The Taste of America.

I’d have done what you did.

I was once accused of snobbery when I told someone that box mixes just didn’t exist in my world. They didn’t/don’t. My mom made pretty much everything from scratch and that’s how she taught me. It’s very rare for me to want to make something from a box, knowing how much better it could be.

Profound post.  I think you could relate it to pretty much every aspect of contemporary American society.  Also, I really appreciated the perspicacious comments . . . and I, for one, am thoroughly persuaded to read The Taste of America as soon as possible.  (That reads a bit too alliterative; but perspicacious is really just the right word.)

My two cents:  I would have acted in just the way you did—and any other reaction would have smacked of moral superiority and elitism.  And therein lies the problem.

An illustrative example:  I don’t know how much play this got in the American media, but a couple of years ago, UK chef Jamie Oliver started a campaign to try and improve school food.  School food, almost uniformly, had turned into a limited menu of (mostly) frozen, processed food.  Full of chemicals and preservatives; totally lacking in variety, freshness, and seasonality.  Furthermore, Oliver was concerned that children weren’t eating any better at home . . . and thus, were not even developing the capacity to like (much less recognize) good food.  Of course there was also the issue of good nutrition—with all of the knock-on effects, both short-term and long-term.  (There is great hysteria about childhood obesity in the UK at the moment.  It is widely feared that the upcoming generation will bankrupt the NHS).

Anyway, Jamie took this struggle on with good faith and open heart . . . truly wanting to spread the joy and nutritional benefits of proper, fresh food . . . and he was resisted all of the way.  The media took great delight in showing pictures of moms sneaking junk food into their poor little darlings . . . who were being starved by the evil Mr. Oliver.  There was a whole class war aspect to it, of course; and Jamie was roundly lambasted as a judgmental, needs-to-mind-his-own-effing-business tosser.

My point is: does “instruction” always have the underlying imperative of “improvement”.  And can you really “improve” anyone unless they want to be improved?  Isn’t belief in the need for improvement the first given?  (I for one couldn’t believe that 2000-2004 wasn’t enough evidence that we needed a new president, but many others clearly didn’t agree!  They were loving that box mix with its metallic aftertaste.)

One more thing:  two years ago I was teaching “Reading” at an inner-city middle school.  One of the teachers on my team was ex-military, 50s, really old-school hard-ass.  We used to often talk about how educational philosophy (interrelated with social change) had led to a climate in which “only the positive” could be offered to the student.  We were supposed to temper and balance our criticisms; make allowances; any teacher knows exactly what I mean.  Instead of calling a piece of shit the obvious, we were supposed to protect the feelings of the person (who surely) knew good and well that he/she had produced crap.

I don’t know; but it all seems related to me.

Bakerina, keep fighting the good fight.  I so admire your willingness to pour your considerable intelligence and energy into good food for us to ingest.

I rarely comment here, but this scenario brought out the will to stop lurking and tell you that I would have done exactly the same thing that you did with Nicole. And then I would have spent years questioning it, because that kind of thing drives me nuts. I also equate it with the dumbing down of American society, and I just hate when people make substitutions and try to pass them off as the real thing. I’ve seen it, just as your other readers have, in bake sales and at school functions, where people bring in bought coffee cake and attempt to pass it off as their grandmother’s secret recipe.

What it comes down to, at least in my book, is a combination of laziness, fear, and lying. I think a lot of people don’t realized that baking from scratch is simply following a recipe. It’s basic chemistry and it isn’t remotely difficult to make something from scratch if you can read and follow directions. I believe that so many people grew up with convenience foods that they are afraid to try anything new. Why should they when there are substandard, but even easier box mixes right on the grocery shelves? I also think that lying has become an acceptable part of our society, from the very top down (Can you say Karl Rove, GWB, and the rest of our executive branch) and there isn’t any consequence for fibbing.

Yes, this was just a ‘little white lie’ but she got away with it, and then she continued to do it over and over because she won that damn contest. So yes, I would be just as annoyed as you are because, when it comes down to it, I’m a big believer in honest representation of my work. If I use a mix or a premade spice packed, I tell people. But I also know that I can do better, and it’s downright laziness that leads me to take occasional shortcuts.

Oh, that is a hard one. Honestly though, I don’t think I would have reacted too differently. This is really well-written!

In my state, Oklahoma, without fail, in every single poll on the subject, Olive Garden wins best Italian and Red Lobster wins best Seafood.  With the proliveration of chain resturants, box mixes and in some ways, the divide between “the rich” and the “not rich (and I don’t mean the poor)” the easy way is too easy.  Fine dining seems too fancy even though you can spend a fortune at Red Lobster.  Consequently, people have no taste for quality or classic.  I have friends that would think they had made a masterpiece if the Oreo Pie was the result.  For me and my family, the Flourless Chocolate Cake, along with the occasional souffle, is a regular occurance.  I don’t know anyone else that has ever made either and my friends are well educated and informed.  I blame it all on Casual Friday-- the lack of sophistication or any degree of civilization.  Good luck with law school, Bev-- who went to law school at night while supporting a spouse attending law school during the day!

Well, I’m with you and it sounds like most of your readers on this—I’d have probably done what you did and it would have bothered me for years thinking the better thing to have done would have been to have somehow been sweet and supportive but somehow to have let her know up front that you instantly recognized it as a box mix.

That said, I didn’t see if you mentioned or not if she tried your cake and if she fawned over it and pronounced it the best thing ever—cuz if she did, then that goes a long way to buying her a little bit of redemption in my heart.

Still what this really comments on is the judges and the average person’s devolving taste.

In that vein, I admit I cried and a little bit of my soul died when I watched the guy in front at the drugstore (drugstore?) buy four little tubs of microwave Kraft mac’n’cheese.  Jesus, he can’t at least boil the noodles from a box for a couple minutes and add milk, cheese-chemical packet and butter to at least get the 100-times-better box version that itself is a crappy imitation of the original item? 

At the same time, let me defend the modern world.  What did your grandparents know of pho?  Of chocolate truffles?  Of mangos?  Of trianon cake?  Of brie? 

Life goes on.  And the changes go both ways.

Jen, I would have done what you did, with one exception: I WOULD NOT still be worried about it 14 years later! First of all, there’s no crime in using a cheap box mix, unless it’s the crime of putting chemicals in your body, and that’s a personal choice each of us makes every day. I happen to make a lovely rum cake using yellow cake mix and instant pudding. (THERE! I’VE SAID IT! And the sword of Damocles didn’t cleave head from neck...) Second, Nicole wasn’t trying to pass her pie off as homemade - she apparently never said it was a secret recipe, or anything of the sort. Just that she’d made it. Which was true. And third, as the Beatles said lo these many years ago, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” You gave Nicole a loving (rather than competitive) response. And I’ll bet, somewhere along the line these past 14 years, someone did you the same favor.

So it’s time to let go of this particular bone you’ve been gnawing on. Why look back and do the “shoulda, coulda, woulda” thing? There’s no way to change what happened. And why worry about the future? You can’t choose your destiny. Live today. Do your best. Go to bed, sleep well, and start again tomorrow, with a clean slate.

That said - c’mon, girl, where’s the recipe?!

I probably would have let on I knew it was a mix - not because I thought it was the right thing to do - but because I’m not as nice a person as you.  I think you did the right thing Jen.

You did exactly what I wish I was good at doing. I would have stumbled and lied badly--or blurted out that I recognized it as not from-scratch, and then felt bad about that.

The factor that strikes me about this situation is that although the baking was the preeminent part of the event for you, it was a workplace team-building situation for everyone else.  You did exactly the right thing in that context.  Although you had started to identify cookery as a vital and growing strength in your own life, this was not the perspective of your colleagues who didn’t expect your level of professionalism.  If the bake-off rules had prohibited box-mixes I might be saying something different, but even then, you would still have had to go to work with these people! 

How would anything have been better for anyone, even you, if you had acted differently?  If you told her quietly before the judging, and she had still won, would she have believed you?  If she told others what you said, in a group that shared her palate, would you have been comfortable?  If you said anything after the judging, then that’s just plain sour grapes, n’est pas?  Above all, you kept the peace in the workplace, and I don’t think this was the place to ‘educate’ the tastes of one or all of your colleagues.

My sister-in-law knits the same damned slippers for everyone for Xmas every year.  I knit cables, fair-isle and lace, but somehow she gets the kudos for being ‘crafty’.  I have quietly offered to help her expand her knitting skills, but have had to recognize that her diagnosed OCD allows her only to do the one thing she knows.  She needs the constancy; in effect she’s not knitting, she’s comforting herself.  So I shut up and count my blessings that she has the sense not to make a pair for me!

I would have let on that I knew it was box cake, but in a nice, non-accusatory/snobby way. Like “did you use a mix for this?” Then, you can give her a chance to be gracious and non-defensive about it. Best scenario? I would encourage her to try making the same oreo pie from scratch, and tell her how easy and rewarding it is! There’s not reason to lie and give her false praise, and she might have been inspired to try something she hadn’t tried before. Instead of having a false sense of pride about her so-so pie, she could have grown and turned it into a really awesome recipe, something truly worth praise.

I run a youth theater program, and we used to do a bake-sale for our intermission goodies. We stopped doing that because I realized that we sold less goodies than when we used stuff from Trader Joe’s or Costco. Now I could just assume that’s because everyone who came to our shows had a dull palate and can’t appreciate home-made stuff, but I don’t think that was actually the case: what it really came down to was the attractiveness and familiarity of the food. A lot of the home-made goodies tended to look more like an ugly stepsister, even if they tasted better. Or, the homemade goodies could also be “scary” and unfamiliar, filled with ingredients that some people haven’t tried or haven’t acquired a taste for (liquors, dried fruits, unique flavorings like lychee, lingonberry, lemon, bitter chocolate). When people have to choose between a familiar, safe looking Costco chocolate chip cookie, and a home-made neon yellow, smushed meringue, they usually go for the cookie.

The other thing you have to keep in mind is the audience and the occasion. In your case, I bet that in different circumstances, the chocolate cake would have won - after a satisfying steak dinner, a salad sprinkled with walnuts and dried cranberries, a glass or two of a rich red cabernet, I bet that cake would have brought tears to their eyes. But at a causal summer BBQ, I bet people would think that a nostalgic, all-american oreo cake was just right. I imagine that if YOU had made an oreo cake, a “real” one from scratch, it would have won for sure.

The reason I suspect this is because in my theater program, at our bake sales, we ALWAYS sell more of whatever is higher quality, so long as it is something familiar. So if our audience members had to choose between a little, dry, package chocolate chip cookie, and a big, gooey, very attractive chocolate chip cookie, I think you can guess which one they would want.

I am now extremely hungry for cake. You can even up the cognac if you like.

(You probably know what I would do. You also know that I would also feel guilty 14 years later.)

Mostly everything I had wanted to say has already been written by the other commenters. Probably by the time I’m done someone will have made my last remaining points too.  I definitely think you did the right thing. You said Nicole told you she had never baked before - so even if she had asked you to for a critical analysis, I don’t think it would have been wise to be 100% truthful.  Even in school, students’ very first assignments are graded leniently, and after that, they are expected to improve. If the professors told everyone just how awful they were on day one, no one would ever come back.  I bet Nicole DID improve and branch out - and if she did, whether she knows it or not, that is in no small part thanks to your encouragement that day.

I would have been the one who brought the box mix cake.  I also wouldn’t have cared if you’d said you knew

Yes, you did the right thing.

I’d say I’m more closely with Becks on this one.  Although, it all depends on the person and the moment, and, of course, the delivery.  Someone as nice Nicole sounds like she would probably not tear you limb from limb if you delivered it well.  I think, if I could tell that it was a box cake, I would have put it something like “Well, I that’s delicious, what packet cake did you use?” No shame, just a lighthearted question, mixed with a little bit of compliment.

However, for example, there is a young man I work with who is now doing a lot to change his life.  Considering some of his health choices, this an excellent thing.  So, if he went to the trouble of making and eating anything other than take-away, deep fried food and brought it in to have me taste, then I would heap him with unadulterated praise and friendly hugs.

As far as the judges go, it is certainly all about them and their deconstructed palates and clearly nothing about you.  At our work’s irregular morning teas, some people bring mass produced (disgusting) cakes and some bring cakes that are home baked or fresh from local bakers and there are people that always prefer the mass produced bleaugh.  Every time.

Lastly, these words “Riding back to the city in the van, the remaining 2/3 of the cake sitting in my lap” will forever haunt me and I will long mourn the loss of this unloved wonder of a cake.  May the cake rest in peace (or in my stomach).  Heathens!

I got up this morning (I’m on UK time) and checked out what had happened with this debate.  Some of the latter comments have been much more balanced . . . not so “box-users die” . . . and at first I thought, well --okay.  I am a bit of a crank about this sort of thing.

BUT THEN . . . as I was making biscuits from scratch (no more than 10 minutes, and so, so much better than the canned kind), it occurred to me . . . this event was billed as a BAKE-OFF.  Unless they called it an “assemble-off” or the baker was required to use at least two convenience products (only in America), it does imply that the skill of actual BAKING was involved.

Can you imagine a country like Italy or France favoring a similar product?  Even if it is just a workplace team-building event and not a gathering of pastry chefs at the Slow Food annual meeting?

Believe me, I miss American conveniences every day.  Convenience is almost in your genes if you’re an American.  But I can’t help but think that there is something sad and wrong about how “we” (the majority of Americans) privilege it above so many other good things. 

Maybe you should let it go, Bakerina; and a maybe this will help.  But it’s all still “fresh” for me, and I’m pissed off in your behalf.

I baked a similar chocolate cake for a work baking contest and was beaten by an out-of-the-box “turtle” “cheesecake”. 
I think all of your analysis was spot on.

Wow.  When I put out a call for feedback, you folks don’t mess around.  Thank you, each and every one of you, for giving me so much excellent food for thought this weekend.

I don’t know if I can begin to do justice to your meticulous, well-organized, well-constructed thoughts, but I’ll see what I can do…

For starters, I just want to clarify a couple of points that I may not have made clear in the original post.  While I’ve pondered that day over the years, it’s not something that has haunted me, or caused me any lingering anger or regret.  It’s been more of a curiosity for me.  I’m not sorry I told Nicole that I liked her Oreo pie; as noted, it’s not like she was asking for advice on becoming a better baker, and to treat her as if she were would have been a churlish thing to do.  (I wasn’t kidding about her bearing a resemblance to Georgette on the Mary Tyler Moore Show.  Seriously, if you ever come across an MTM rerun, just watch Georgette, and then imagine being mean to her.  You really can’t.) Ultimately, this is a story with a happy ending:  had she not received positive reinforcement from the bakeoff, she would not have found something that gave her genuine pleasure and that would have been a shame.

I also don’t believe (although I understand why someone might believe) that Nicole flouted any rules by bringing a pie made from a mix to a bakeoff.  The judges didn’t set any rules saying that the entries had to be baked from scratch, so as far as I’m concerned, mixes are fair game.  Bringing something from a bakery, though, is not.  If you enter a bakeoff and bring something you bought at the bakery on the way into work, well, that’s wrong.  But coming to an office potluck with something you bought at a bakery is not.  It’s all about context.

I guess the reason I’ve been pondering this is that I think it’s good to keep an eye on our assumptions.  I make a lot of noise about the decline in our food supply, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to examine what part I play in that.  Apologies for the imperfect analogy, but to me it’s akin to complaining that kids today have no attention spans, have never learned to sit quietly and demand constant entertainment—and then playing Spongebob dvd’s in your car for your kids’ entertainment on trips to the grocery store.  Of course we can’t be martinets; there are always extenuating circumstances, but it’s still good to keep an eye not only on our deeply-held beliefs, but also on how our behavior supports them—or doesn’t support them.  That’s all I was trying to do.  Whether I was successful is another thing entirely.

I also want to point out that I don’t harbor total antipathy toward mixes, or toward people who use them.  It’s true that in general I’m not a fan, but I also know that there are newer mixes I haven’t tried, formulated and sold by King Arthur Flour and Williams-Sonoma, among others.  I have a friend who swears by Ina Garten’s line of mixes, and another who really loves the slice-and-bake cookie dough made by Maury Rubin, the founder of City Bakery.  Myself, I’ve had good luck with Carbon’s Golden Malted Waffle Mix, which I used to buy at Williams-Sonoma, just to mix things up a little bit (no pun intended) when I wanted a break from my usual waffle recipes.  But in general, given the choice, I’ll go the Way of the Scratch.  I won’t dun anyone who doesn’t, though.  (If they beat me in another bakeoff, though, I might have to go home and whinge to Lloyd about it.

I do like Becks’ point, which I considered long after the fact, about the right dish for the right venue.  At the time I never even considered whether a shmancy French cake was the right thing to bake for a picnic.  It’s entirely possible that if I had gone with, say, my family’s blueberry buckle recipe, the outcome might have been different. 

(curses self for invoking blueberry buckle recipe in the dead of winter, when there’s not a blueberry to be found)

Note: I just tried to post my comment and discovered that I had breached the 5,000-character limit.  Whoops.  Comment will be continued below.

Continuing...

One more moment of questioning assumptions and then I’ll hang it up, I promise: I do remember the Jamie Oliver/school dinners controversy that Beth B. mentions above.  I remember thinking that Jamie was trying to do a good thing, in his typical enthusiastic idiom, and I was more than a little frustrated by the coverage the angry, McDonald’s-bearing mums were getting.  As Beth notes, there is a definite aspect of class war to issues surrounding food; this is a subject we could discuss for months, if not years.  My own personal opinion is that Jamie got a raw deal from the British press for what I thought was a genuinely noble effort.  Then again, I have no patience with Gillian McKeith, who used to star on a show in the U.K. called You Are What You Eat (it has since been cancelled, but is now showing up in reruns on BBC America).  While I like her advice about eating more fruit and veg and taking more exercise, I think that her motivational tactics stink (building coffins out of chocolate ice cream?  really?), her grasp on science is poor at best, and her cookery is, plainly put, just appalling.  When she goes to supermarkets and hectors nice young couples ("stop, please!...what is this?  I’d like to see some pumpkin seeds in here!  Not wine!"), it makes me wish she would try this sort of stunt with me, so I could tell her, in no uncertain terms, what I think of her shopping advice.  So I wonder...why will I accept a movement for change on Jamie Oliver’s terms, but not on Gillian McKeith’s?  Is it because his approach to food is considerably more joyful than hers is, or is it because he is cute and charming and puppy-ish and camera-friendly, whereas she is, well, not?  I’d like to think that it’s the former, but I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t at least consider that the latter might have something to do with it.

Will I be revisiting this at a later date?  Oh, absolutely. 

Thanks again, everybody, for commenting so freely, so intelligently, and with due respect for differing points of view.  You have totally boosted my faith in the internets at a time when it was in need of a good boost.

Gillian is a Food Nazi who attacks people and makes them feel like gross pigs.  (Also, she is not a chef—and probably not even a cook.)

Jamie is someone who actually LOVES food; a person who understands that there is definitely a time and place for fish and chips and things like bacon “sarnies”.  He understands that food is a wondrous, life-enhancing, meant-to-be-shared thing. 

Have you seen his latest program, Jamie at Home?  It got my kids all fired up to grow our own food.

It is perfectly reasonable to detest (too strong?) Gillian, and to love (or like; or at least honor) Jamie.

As an English prof, people seem to take delight when I don’t use grammatically correct language when I’m in a casual setting. I try to explain to them that I know I am not speaking grammatically correct, but I AM speaking in a way appropriate to the situation. In the same way, if I was an expert baker, I would have let on that I knew that the cake was from a mix. I also would have, very gently, said while it was OK-I might indicate some ways she could improve the recipe. Now since I am not a baker, I might have just been polite-said it was OK and left it at that.

My point is that if you are an expert in a chosen field, your opinion has a different weight and import. Furthermore, people seem to have some kind of hostility towards “experts” and delight in showing up our “failures” even if we were trying to be polite and kind. As a result, our responsibility is not just about protecting the other person’s feelings (he or she DID ask, after all), it’s about upholding our own image as a person whose knowledge should be respected.

Also, it probably helps that I love a ego good smack down (kidding kidding, I swear).

I think I would have admitted, when she mentioned it, that yes, of course I knew it was a box mix, but I would have tried very hard not to curl my lip or convey any strong negativity. It was, after all, her first baking attempt, and she should be encouraged to bake again. But at the same time, she should know that yes, some people *can* tell when things are box mixes.

Good question, Bakie.

I appreciate the opportunity to conduct a review of my own interpersonal relationship “encounters” like your bake-off episode.  Easy for a gal to get so insistent on ‘my way or the highway’ (this,btw, a thing with which I am intimately familiar); much more difficult to navigate that murky middle ground.  So anyway, thanks.

If put in a similar situation I tend not to provide an answer at all until I’ve made an honest attempt at having a slightly longer conversation about it rather than responding to some hasty demand for my ‘yea’ or ‘nay’ on whatever the thing is. 

First, well hmm.  I try to give a person a chance to make whatever earth-shattering revelations they feel they need to make to me about the item/issue—and then I use that confessional secret-telling stuff as valuable information on with to base a)stick with what I initially believed would be my decision, which I then share or II)the opportunity to adjust my response as needed, based on the information provided.

So let’s say the first forkful of Georgette’s pie in my mouth was an experience reminiscent of my 1 yr old days, when I ate my own poop.  And let’s say Georgette was super-excited about what she’d produced.  And let’s also say that I wasn’t able to get any clearer a picture after having asked her a few questions.  In that case I’d probably say something along the lines of “Hmm.  well, I’m not sure that the flavor is my personal cup of tea, but I’m also not the great Oz, and I bet there will others who will really like it!’.  It isn’t dishonest.  It’s a kind, innocuous way to express my personal opinion without simultaneously shitting all over her.

OTOH, if we pretend that if I do privately believe the pie tastes like poo and if we also make-believe that I ask a couple of questions during which she mentions that it was a box mix, I’d probably say something not unkind, but still honest.  I can’t think of exactly what that would be, of course, because I haven’t yet met a pie I didn’t like, but at any rate, I’d adjust my response to include something about the fact that yeah, I guess now that she mentions the box mix part, there is something sorta Betty Crockerish about the taste.  Again, not a terrible unforgivable thing, just a matter of personal preference. 

That said, I’m no relationship princess. I want to be clear about that, and not necess. for you personally Bakiegirl, because I believe you already have a fairly accurate sense of my strengths and my weaknesses both, but rather to put my comments into some context for anyone I don’t yet know here.  I’m noticing more and more how much the collective we shrink from confrontation.  We so often take either the knee-jerk route or the weenie route rather than risk the chance of being considered different.  And some of us (waving madly and blowing kisses to the dedicated and amazing group of people called teachers) get stuck smack in the middle of other people’s stuckness because, well, that’s the way those things tend to happen and no matter if you’re a genius or a letch or loving or spiteful—if you’re standing downhill, gravity will always win.  Net net though, I think most people end up feeling worse for taking the *nice* road.  I don’t have to be a raving foaming at the mouth Bitch On Wheels, but I also don’t have to be the plastered-smile Nice Girl either. 

As a total aside, I would pay money to see women competing in anything called a Box Off.  I don’t even know what it means, but I’d pay any premium in order to get in on the action.  ; )

Hmmm.  I like this game, if only because it’s getting my mind off my own problems.

But before I say another word, I have to tell your reading public that there were SEVEN cakes at my birthday party for only about 22 people—and the desserts you made, the pistachio nougat cake plus more than an entire Trianon cake got eaten down to the last crumb.  So at least my friends and relations have good taste, despite what I’m about to say about the rest of Amurrrika. 

So here’s the story.  I’ve been in a somewhat similar situation.  I once had a friend who was sort of a cooking buddy (we’d go fooding together, etc.), and who talked of nothing except her *famous wine cake*, and her *famous wine cake* recipe, and how pissed her sister would be if she gave away the *famous wine cake* recipe, etc. etc.  They actually have a relative with a family restaurant downtown in the financial district, and apparently they all make massive amounts of *famous wine cake* for the restaurant.  One night she invited me to have dinner with her there, and at this point, of course, we all know what she ordered us for dessert. 

Well, one bite in, and that steely resonance you so aptly describe hit my palate, and I knew that the secret of *famous wine cake* was either Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines, with a little sherry thrown in.  And for me it raised another question.  Is my palate so much more heightened than everyone else’s that I can taste this immediately and they can’t?  Or are they so accustomed to chemical flavors that they confuse them with the natural? 

I didn’t say a word, because I found the whole thing so unbearable and ridiculous.  And also because my “friend” was a totally alpha-type personality who was certainly not looking for advice or constructive crit. 

The sadness in your story is not about poor little Nicole, as far as I’m concerned.  Because what if you had told her that you could taste the boxed flavor of it all, given her suggestions for improvement—and then the engineers and the rest of those taste-bud-numbed yahoos who were judging this so-called bake-off went ahead singing her praises (which is what was going to happen anyway)?

That would have been even worse, in my opinion.  She would have looked at you and thought to herself, well, I could use REAL whipping cream in my chiffon pie, like Bakerina says—but people LIKE it THIS way!  And it won the competition!  So why would I bother?

The real tragedy is the benumbed palates of everyone else concerned.  As many of the readers above have already intimated, it’s simply of a piece with the semi-literacy, TV watching habits and other preferences of the American public who seem to have an insatiable taste for sh*t.

I now have to go have a good cry into my cup of home-brewed, fair-trade organic coffee…

You did the exact right thing with Nicole.

Given that you were between a rock and a hard place, you made the choice of sparing someone’s feelings.  It was the right thing to do, even though it may have contributed to the further deadening of several people’s palates...because Nicole will bake that Shit-Cake forever.  But the people she bakes it for won’t ever know the difference, more’s the pity, because the metallic taste of chemical leaveners is all they know.  They grew up eating box mixes, so they think: That’s what a cake is supposed to taste like.

You know what good is - even if Nicole (and the lametongue jackasses judging the contest) do not.  But to trumpet your knowledge and superior skill in that particular forum is to be thought of as a Food Snob forever.  Not necessarily a bad thing to be, but it won’t win you friends amongst the Great Mob of Those Who Consume Chef Boy-Ar-Dee And Call It “Pasta.”

But you can bake a cake for me anytime...and jam as much cognac in there as you might care to.

I may not have said much at all.  Maybe “yum”.  But then again, I am far from being anything resembling a baker.

Sorry I missed the first round here! But FWIW, my poll response:

Yep, I woulda fibbed. Absolute Truth vs. Charitable Speech minus Genuine Harm from Untruth = Charitable Fib in my moral universe, esp. for a Georgette. (Then, of course, I leave my moral universe and come home in squirrely wrath and curse like a rap video until Spouse rubs my neck.)

But I will put forward a factor in the bake-off episode that no one has brought up yet, a hypothesis of mine based on long observation at potlucks, picnics, bake sales, etc.: the power of the Pieness of Pie. Let me explain. It would seem, based on consistent anecdotal evidence, that pie, in order to reduce Americans to blithering heaps of culinary worshippers, does not have to be great, or even good. In fact, it can be utter crap. It can be Entenmann’s. It can be the hideous no-name stuff sold near the deli counter whose chief ingredient is hydrogenated whale oil. It can be somebody’s old family recipe that looks like cat vomit and is allegedly Grandma’s Special Mince. Or it can be (ahem, pointing to own wicker pie-safe used for transfer) it can be an artisanal apple pie made from greenmarket Fujis drenched in butter and faintly perfumed with orange flower water, in a shatteringly crisp crust (3/4 butter, 1/4 Crisco) lightly dusted with cinnamon sugar with an apple excised from the top for steam release. Don’t matter...it will be vaccuumed down the collective gullet and the pie-baker carried aloft like a conquering hero...apparently because...IT WAS PIE.

So...if it is not the kind of pie, or the quality and flavor of pie, or the filling (canned vs homemade) or the crust (cardboard vs pastry genius), it must be...something elemental to the ur-thing, the Platonic pie idea, itself. It must be, the Pieness of Pie. Raising the awful possibility that, if you had put the ethereal chocolate creation with its hint of cognac into a Pet-Ritz crust and baked it until blackened, you would have presented serious competition for the Mixmistress. Let’s not go there. I, for one, am going to go and get the recipe for the David flourless chocolate cake...and I am going to make it for a networking potluck dinner tm’w night. And I am going to call it a pie.
[wink]

You did exactly the right thing.  Saying that you didn’t like it or that you knew it was a box mix would have made her feel terrible and would not have accomplished anything.  It pains me to think of that wonderful cake being so unappreciated, but a) cast not your pearls before swine, and b) more for you and the hubby, right?

I was once asked to be the head judge for a cooking competition at a church potluck, and my experience could not have been more different.  I guess the Unitarian Universalists are not big on the box mixes.  Each of the judges was assigned to one course and brought back several finalists for all of the judges to sample and vote on.  There was only one finalist that wasn’t wonderful.  It was a chocolate pudding, and when I tasted it and looked at the judge who’d selected the dessert finalists, she said, “Oh, that was by the senior high class, and I wanted to encourage them, but can’t you just taste the cornstarch? Ugh.” The winner was a chocolate nut torte that was to die for.  Also, the UUs would not have objected to any amount of alcohol.

Years ago, I brought brownies to the office where I was then working, and people ate them, and one of my co-workers came up to me and said, “These are the best brownies I’ve ever had!  What brand of mix did you use?” I told her that I’d made them from scratch, but I’m afraid that I didn’t wipe the how-dare-you-insult-my-mother look off my face quickly enough.  Live and learn.

I would have done the exact same thing Jen.  Your cake sounds wonderful!

I don’t think I’ve ever left a comment here before, but I want to say that I truly think you did the right thing.  And in my hopeful mind, I would like to imagine that bolstered by her success with the box cake recipe and the continued compliments she got for it, that at some point Nicole felt bold enough to follow the lead of her really nice former co-worker who baked from scratch.  In my mind she took the plunge into scratch baking and she has you to thank for it. 

On the other hand...I have a friend whose husband was raised on Ragu tomato sauce, and try as she might to convert him to the taste of her fantastic homemade sauce, in his mind it didn’t compare to Ragu, which his overworked and frazzled mother fed him - lovingly - for years.  She finally gave up and started buying Ragu. 

On the other hand...I remember when I began baking in earnest, and made an amazingly good chocolate buttermilk layer cake for a family party.  My sister-in-law took one bite, looked at me and said “Oh, my god, this is homemade, isn’t it?  From Scratch?  What the hell have you done? I’ll never be able to eat a cake made from a cake mix AGAIN!!!” And she meant it - we started exchanging cake recipes and began a friendly competition at every family get-together to top each other’s home made cakes.

And now I’ve got two youngsters who sometimes prefer the taste of store bought cookies to my homemade ones, and I’ve yet to get my son to convert to my homemade pancakes (he’ll opt for an English muffin on pancake mornings - it breaks my heart).  I’ll win him over eventually, but it’ll probably be when he’s ready.

That’s my long-winded way of saying you did the right thing, and it isn’t always easy.

Oh honey, you did the right thing in that situation. I think the poster who previously pointed out that there is the difference between asking for tips and needing reassurance was spot on. In fact, given the situation (employee picnic) coupled with her need for reassurance, really it was the only thing to do.

In a teaching situation, my job is to teach and then reassure. That balance is difficult to come by with the little snowflakes (that term still makes me laugh, but I’m a bitter ol’ prof). Too little reassurance and they fall to pieces (and sadly often become belligerent), not enough encouragement (hard to find for a lot of the “writing” and yes the ironic quotes are deliberate) and they stop trying altogether, but to instruct? Where to begin! We are in the middle of selecting new texts for next year; my suggestion was to take the text marketed as the “developmental” track (remedial in less PC terms) and use it for all of the frosh classes. Even then, I’m afraid it will prove too challenging. But now I’m totally off track and just wallowing on in my own dilemmas.