"Hey Babycakes!" she shouts, eyes wide open, as I enter. "Come in!" Nestled between the JPD traffic division and Swann's gun repair on Old Canton Road, is a tiny green shop called Obbie's Cakes and Chocolates. Inside, a tall fair-skinned lady, Marsha Rose Davis, has just pulled her chestnut hair into a ponytail and started hand-sculpting a pound of white chocolate into a fruit topiary.
I step through the glass-framed doorway and into the foyer, where I immediately smell the familiar, comforting aroma of sweet white almond cake baking. I am reminded of the holidays and family and cheer. As I look around, the contents of Marsha's display case catch my eye. "Are all of these made of chocolate?" I ask.
"No, the petit-fours are just covered in chocolate. They are made of cake and ganache," she answers, glancing up at me.
On the top shelf sits a tiny, dark-chocolate pool table, complete with cue and colorful, tiny balls. Just beside it is a delightful white chocolate tea set. Each cup, saucer, and pot appears to have been hand-painted in pastel pink, blue and green with all the intricacy of Lennox china. The entire collection tickles me: a high-healed shoe, a Christmas gift, a cradle, an apple, a mounted deer-head, a crown and a blue dragon.
"Tell me about your work, Marsha. How do you create things like this?"
"It's really not that difficult," she explains as she painstakingly kneads a lump of the sweet-smelling, cream-colored medium into what is beginning to look like a pear. "It just takes a long time. Here, give it a try, Babycakes."
Babycakes? I reach for the chocolate play dough, surprised that it feels greasy and try to make a ball but clumsily fumble it to the floor. Uh, maybe I should leave this to the professional.
As I glance around her shop, I can't help but notice a bright hodgepodge on the one red wall in an otherwise white and stainless steel room: M&M and smiley face collectibles, miscellaneous religious items (Jewish and Christian), pictures of her two mixed-breed dogs, Colt and Coco, and a bumper sticker that pictures a can of "Whoop-Ass" and reads "Don't make me open this!"
Marsha will admit to being 40ish and that she moved to Jackson in 1994 from Silver Spring, Md. Her life revolves around her work and her boys—Colt and Coco. Her friends say her house looks like a pimp pad what with all the fake fur furniture to make her boys comfortable.
Continuing to mold pieces of warm, sticky chocolate into grape-sized balls, Marsha goes on, "Well, I'm Jewish ... I am very close to God, spiritually, but I am not sure I believe everything 'by the book.'"
She explained that the circumstances of life have molded her into a hands-on type of person, a talent she put to good use in making Obbie's Cakes and Chocolates, open since 1996, a success; she has expanded into full-service catering, too.
Don't get me wrong, she did attend the Baltimore International Culinary College and the School of Confectionary Art in the early '90s and has attended numerous seminars led by famous chefs across the country. "I just kind of learn as I go. That's how I've made Obbie's," Marsha says as she glues a bunch of creamy chocolate grapes onto a sculpted square base using a melted concoction of sugar, cocoa and milk.
She takes a break from sculpting to wash her hands and pull a cake from the oven, explaining that she loves children and has even thought of adopting, but "I want it to happen the way God intended; I want a husband first." She smiles secretively when asked if she has prospects. She places a large block of fresh white chocolate into the double boiler, and turns on the heat.
As the day wears on, sunlight beams through the windows of the tiny bakery, illuminating a portfolio of her work. I flip through the pages of the large black scrapbook, and try to imagine the amount of work that must have gone into any one of these cakes. The details rival that of the most accomplished sculptors. A castle, with rocks and a moat, windows and grass and everything, down to the finest detail in the mortar. An earthquake of a cake, topsy-turvy, on the verge of collapse in hot-pink, canary yellow, and electric blue with ecru pearls and bright geometric flowers bursting from it like a volcano—truly a party cake. A regal military uniform, complete with shiny gold buttons and medals and ribbons. Each three-dimensional cake focuses on the tiniest details.
"I can't imagine putting this much work into something that is going to be destroyed! Why do you do it, Marsha Rose?"
"I love to cook. I love to paint. I love to create. And I love to entertain. This way, I can do all of my favorite things at once!"
Silence followed by "Wal-la!" as she finishes gluing the final chocolaty piece of fruit onto her latest masterpiece, and takes a step back to get an overall view.
"Not too shabby, is it, Babycakes?" Marsha asks.
"Not too shabby at all."
Jerusha Bosarge is a writer in Jackson.
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