SIMPLY BAKING
Actor Sam Lips likes to take his love of baking on the road,
Every office has that beloved coworker who brings in baked treats, be it cookies or scones.
Now imagine working for a musical adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s 1992 cult-classic film Strictly Ballroom (which is based on the 1984 stage play) where the cast sambas, waltzes and flamencos (while singing) eight shows a week. Whoever brings in brownies for a pre- or post-performance sugar boost must get ultimate, well, brownie points.
Sam Lips, the 27-year-old Denver native who stars as lead character Scott Hastings in the stage production of Strictly Ballroom, playing at the Princess of Wales Theatre, has taken his lifelong love of baking on the road, whipping up squares, cookies and cakes for the cast and crew during the show’s U.K. tour before landing here in Toronto.
Now, at his temporary downtown apartment just steps away from the venue, he’s baking a chocolate sheet cake with peanut butter frosting (from his favourite cookbook, Baked Occasions, written by the owners of the New York bakery, Baked). He has aperformance later this evening and, of course, he’ll be bringing his cake.
“I just love the activity of baking, it’s so calming,” he says, in an earlier phone interview. “You can only eat so much by yourself before it starts to go bad so you have to share it with people, and there are always people to share it with.”
He has volunteered to make three cakes for a joint birthday party next week, feting himself and two other cast members. On the menu: a coconut cake with a dark chocolate filling, a lemon cake with an almond glaze and a black cocoa powder cake with a whiskey glaze.
Lips started his run of Strictly Ballroomin the U.K. last fall, around peak pumpkin spice time in the U.S. Since Brits aren’t accustomed to those flavours, Lips whipped up a pumpkin
“I just love the activity of baking, it’s so calming. You can only eat so much by yourself before it starts to go bad so you have to share it with people, and there are always people to share it with.” SAM LIPS ACTOR
cheesecake to give the show’s British company a taste of America.
In doing so, he learned to bake in metric units such as millilitres and grams, and using oven temperature by gas mark, as opposed to teaspoons, cups and Fahrenheit.
Lips began baking in grade school and it started with an unusual homework request.
“My teacher told my parents that I had trouble following directions and was doing my homework wrong,” he says. “So she suggested that I start baking to learn how to follow instructions. We started with the cookie recipe on the back of a bag of Nestlé Toll House chocolate chips.
“I think I can still pull out that recipe out of my head.”
When Lips went to study musical theatre at the University of Michigan, he put baking on the back burner. Then he started working parttime at a café to pay for school and re-embraced his hobby, making scones to sell once a week.
By then he could follow a recipe like his lines in a script.
“When you’re an actor and performer, a lot of it is being told what to do by writers and directors. It’s like that as well with baking when you’re following directions on a recipe,” he says, noting that he’s tweaked recipes here and there, to ensure a better whipped meringue, for example.
“But what makes a good performer is when you take what you’re given and make it your own, and that’s what I did with baking: looking at a recipe and tweaking it rather than just making someone else’s creation.”
It’s kind of like Lips’s character, Scott, the talented dancer who refuses to dance “strictly ballroom” and insists on adding his own flair to his routines.
“Whether it’s me sharing a slice of cake or giving them a performance on stage, it’s giving people an escape, even if it’s for just a brief moment.” Strictly Ballroom runs until June 25 at the Princess of Wales Theatre. karonliu@thestar.ca