Prison Kitchen Cake: Finding a Human Moment Behind Bars

In this essay from inside a prison kitchen, James Berman writes about baking a strawberry-frosted prison kitchen cake for 60 incarcerated men and discovering something close to grace behind bars. In a place defined by scarcity and hostility, a sheet cake becomes a temporary bridge back to humanity.

Strawberry frosted yellow cake is akin to fresh-baked bliss, catnip for busted spirits. The line for this cake show wraps around the Block. The Block, of course, is a 60-resident conglomeration of sinners, miscreants, outlaws and downright bad guys. The population of Housing Unit Two Zooloo’ waited impatiently for their piece of my latest dessert concept. Tough guys, dealers, felons, ail reduced to kids with bated breath waving foam plates to get their fill as square slivers are dealt. How did we get here?

The Illicit Strawberries

The innovation is strategically illicit, but baked only with good intention. Strawberries are not a thing in here, and the cake is usually served as naked as the moment it emerged from the oven. So I turn to ‘Brave,’ one of the older guys with whom I have an affable rapport. He is a warehouse worker; I tell him that I am in search of this rarity. They exist, he assures me, and are obtainable through the conspiratorial shenanigans that are commonplace in these parts. ‘Brave’ tells me that they are 5-oz cups of frozen strawberries and sugary syrup – the former being the treasured rarity that I seek, the latter being prison-house platinum. My co-conspirator also offered me strawberry “drink” mix concentrate. The delight in yelling artificially sweetened BINGO!

A Prison Baker’s Zen

This baking salvation is a temporary state and is my Zen-like serenity. When the festering muck gathers over my head, I am jarred into remembering that this should only be a temporary condition, a hiccup (or gargantuan belch) in my course, even when temporary seems so long. Baking takes me back to my old life on the outside. I daydream fictional menus of future meals, afternoons at quiet coffee shops, and the flurry-like flour covering of my kitchen counter as really damn good bread crackles to umber and sepia in the oven.

“It’s temporary,” I catch myself saying out loud. Sometimes it turns into a song, complete with ridicule of whomever is singeing my feathers in that particular moment.

If you like this essay, check out: Prison Food at the Crossbar Inn: The Infamous State Sandwich

The cake itself is routine in my “Prison Baker Portfolio.” Making 40 sheet cakes for the population is not a daring chore. My mixer comfortably supports a 20-gallon work bowl for the 160 pounds of flour, baking powder, milk powder, eggs, sugar and oil needed – twice. The ovens are the walk-in type that support a rack of 20 cakes at a time. The sweet fog that descends on the kitchen when I open the oven door is proof that love exists and it can be found spread across even the dingiest of gray sheet trays. The cakey perfume lingers on my ‘Department of Correction-issued V-neck long enough to suspend the prison nightmare for a moment. Guys responsible for assembling a portion of the dinner trays always make their way over for “the scraps.” The dishwashing guys poke around for their take as well.

“Good lookin’ out,” as I slide a few hastily cut chunks into foam containers. The strawberry innovation happens tomorrow once the cakes are cooled. But today, though, the scavengers circle.

After more than a year in this dystopian hellscape of processed bologna sandwiches and men’s farts, the motif of crude behavior and callow profanity is a thread sewn into every fiber of each day. The prison kitchen is a “work” environment, but ugliness is a truism brought out in the most insensitive comments. More stirring is the bliss of being removed from productivity, the decay of anti-intellectualism is celebrated. So I bake. The kitchen hustle is not taxing. The context of the work is where the grime happens. Through the crush of cursing, complaining, and just after all the talk of sex, food is the most discussed topic. I am a cake dealer and these guys get excited by and for my merch. I can certainly use the friends. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

Of course philosophically speaking, good food does as much for the spirit as it does fuel a belly. It is why I care – even in here with the abundantly dispensed hostility. If food that I make takes a turn at plucking heartstrings, then my own time in here becomes purposeful. Atonement cooking?

My eagerness to build the cakes is palpable for my own selfish reasons. I want ‘the feels’ for making somebody’s day, even if it is with just a slab of laughable cake. Everybody in here has a story, and most are rooted in sadness and desperation. No pity for us sinners, please; it is just that not everybody is what you first hear or read. Even Ebeneezer Scrooge had his good days. So this Ebeneezer bakes for others. The frosting is 18 pounds of institutionally cheap margarine whipped with 75 pounds of powdered sugar. I add the cups of thawed strawberry, mingling a few at a time to persuade the pinkish fruit to release its flavor. I max out at 40 of the cups and turn to the drink mix to take over. The enchantment of this invention will make my intended impression if the flavor is dynamic. There is no half-way in here. I have been warned to avoid the critics, of which there are many.

“Don’t read the reviews,” my Block neighbor cautioned me at the start of my tenure.

Solid advice, especially with my thin-skinned sensitivity.

I whip the frosting for 20 minutes, adding a splash of unconvincing imitation vanilla-like flavoring, if only to add some dimension to the frosting. Each cake gets dolioped with a pink mound then spread edge to edge, wrapped, and set to cart off throughout the building.

One Human Moment Behind Bars

Supplying energy is food’s elemental role, for better or for worse. Soothing our spirit is a welcomed dividend. A diet of sawdust or our turkey burgers – as if there is a difference -will keep a person alive. The lift, though, from some unexpected kitchen revelation is momentary bliss. In this abyss of undignified funk, an eggy-sweet cake shmeared with unexpected peaks of fruity buttercream can be and is one, just one, silently lucid moment in an otherwise soul-less day on the inside.

“I felt like I was home,” ‘Grumpy’ shouts to me across the Dayroom, gesturing to his now-empty plate.

“I’m glad! That’s what I was trying for,” I yell back.

That Human Moment, one of only a few stumbled uppn during any stretch, makes the hassle and filching worth the effort. Then I come back to this life as the last smear of cakey stickiness is sporked and scraped away. Those many moments of ache that fog my view of my future have dulled for just a little. Somebody will say something cutting or my flash memory will pull up a screenshot of the past. Back into the vortex of wallowing, dark clouds in cliche form hanging heavy and that familiar tugging at the seam between the goodness of sweet cake and dead ends.

It’s temporary, right?

If you liked this essay, check out: Prison Food at the Crossbar Inn: The Infamous State Sandwich

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