It's America the radical coming together in wild proximity. A messy Vermeer. Unglossed, unglazed.

It’s the cake that wouldn't be bothered by a walk by finger graze; it knows mischief all too well. The one you fling in your first big spiral then have again at the barn side wedding. She just likes to fight. It eloped with you on a whim; because when you actually look at her, you see that loathing…or in fact anything too much or too little…is just the desperation for love.

Nobody fights in a garden, he said.

It’s the flower girl, not the bride. Your daughter’s forehead kiss. More yeses than nos. A buttercream bandage, smoothing over what hurts, sweet enough to let you go so you can breathe again.

It’s a protest to the recipe. We trade deferred mammon for plein air landscape cake!—a tiny revolt in favor of rewilding earth so you can pick fresh berries on or off the path...because they would be everywhere. The secret to it all is knowing the difference between excess and true abundance. And what is that but eating the whole dirty strawberry, stem on, uncandied, grown from the most nutritious soil that enters your bloodstream.

Leif Hedendal is an artist and chef. As a chef, Leif has cooked at Noma, Chez Panisse, Greens, and Citron, as well as numerous underground restaurants. He has done food-based work with the United Nations, Google, LVMH, Airbnb, Zynga, True Ventures, Levis, JP Morgan, IDEO, Nextworld, Harvard, PCH Intl, Mycoworks, FuseProject, Bottega Veneta, Cassina Hipcamp, Shelter Co., Micki Meng, Tom Steyer, Gavin Newsom, Doug Aitken, Ed Ruscha, Miranda July, SFMOMA, Berkeley Art Museum, De Young Museum, New Museum, Gavin Brown, Fraenkel Gallery, Jessica Silverman, David Horvitz, Fortune Magazine, Triple Canopy, Kinfolk Magazine, Cultured Magazine, The Lab, Kadist Foundation, Ballroom Marfa, NADA, and the JB Blunk Estate.

cake commissions