My First Attempt at a Cake

I am not shy in admitting that I am a complete moron when it comes to cooking and baking. Having more than one person’s allowable share of kitchen blunders, it is only by the grace of my wife that I have not been banished from the kitchen for all eternity. Owing to the nightly chore of cleaning dishes, the vicinity near the kitchen sink and dishwasher has been well traversed. But a step toward a pre-heating oven is a walk down a crooked path.

Take for example the time I attempted to make crepes for my wife on the morning of our anniversary. I wanted to treat her to a lovely breakfast. But the anticipation turned frustration when I–in the name of “surprise”–forced her to stay in our bedroom. After about 3-1/2 hours, she was finally released from her captivity, only to find that the crepes were too sweet to eat. That morning she had cereal.

While we were dating, I thought I’d impress my wife with my profound cooking skills and creativity. So, I made spaghetti… well, sort of. Add a little meat from a chicken carcass and lemon juice, and well, you get the picture.

This year is my wife’s 30th birthday. Wanting to really impress her, I determined to venture outside of my comfort zone by baking a cake. “I’ll follow all the instructions and she will be amazed at how well I can bake”, I told myself. Remember that crooked path? It was starting to become uncomfortably familiar.

Scouring through every cookbook in the kitchen and pairing the listed ingredients with the contents of the cupboard, there was only one cake that could be made. The problem was that cake was called, “Grandma’s Lazy Dazy Cake”.  

I wanted a chocolate cake.

I had to make the chocolate cake! So, in addition to the “normal” ingredients went a cup of baking cocoa and about two-thirds more sugar than the recipe called for—which changed the consistency of the mix. To compensate, I poured a few shots of 1% milk, mixed with half and half.  

Almost three years old, my daughter was ecstatic to “help”. She kept whining, “No, I want to do it all by myself!”  Twenty minutes later, I couldn’t pry the mixer out of her hands to break up the unsweetened baking cocoa. But it was good enough for her. The kitchen was a disaster – with cocoa flung about, and chocolate finger prints all over the cabinets.  My daughter gleefully shoveled the mixture into a glass pan and watched with anticipation as I placed “her” masterpiece onto the oven rack.

The recipe called for frosting made of brown sugar, butter, and milk. That didn’t seem to go well with my invention. Grandma’s Lazy Dazy—now Chocolate—Cake needed chocolate frosting! Luckily, I happened upon chocolate frosting ingredients on the can of cocoa. After pouring in a cup of granulated sugar (of course, the ingredients called for powered sugar, but I couldn’t find any), a few glugs of vanilla extract and the remaining cocoa, my daughter was in heaven.

The long awaited cake was now ready. It took two times longer than expected, but it was done.

For some reason, I couldn’t imagine a birthday cake in a glass cake pan. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I attempted to turn the cake upside down onto a plate.  It would have worked wonderfully if the whole thing had come out. Now I had half a cake and half a pile of mush on a plate.

“Nothing a little frosting can’t fix”, I reasoned. So, we piled the mush back into the pan and spread the frosting—real thick in some areas.

My daughter was really excited about the prospect of putting on sprinkles. By now, that wasn’t sounding like a great idea. But, altogether throwing aside any remaining good judgement, I handed her the open jar of sprinkles. “I want to poor it all on”, she exclaimed. And on it went.

Below is a picture of the final product. In my mind, the attempt was an utter failure. In her mind it was a blast. “That was really really fun daddy!”

“I’m glad you had so much fun, sweetie. Now let’s get you ready for a bath to get the chocolate out of your hair.”