Today is Lynette’s birthday! We had a leisurely morning; we went to our neighborhood coffee shop ordered our choice beverages with accompanying pastries. Went back home to setup the little shelf unit I got for her birthday – pretty romantic don’t ya think? Wait it gets better.
So she heads off to her school. I decide to bake a birthday cake for her. Here’s where my problems began.
I don’t bake. I cook, I clean… but baking is not my realm. So knowing this I set the bar low. I decided to make a simple white bundt cake – what can go wrong with that, I foolishly thought to myself.
It started off pretty well. I had all the ingredients. I separated the eggs like a pro. I poured the batter into my bundt pan. Got the thing in and out of the oven without burning it and yet baking it all the way through. “Pretty good,” I thought to myself, “I really should bake more often.”
Now, when my mom used to bake angel food cakes or bundt cakes – cake pans with a hole in the middle – I remembered her cooling them upside-down. That seemed to make sense. After all, I had to get the cake out of the pan some how.
So I turned it upside-down and let the cake cool for a while. When I came back to check on its condition, it was much cooler but still very much logged in the pan. “How the hell I am going to get this thing outta here?” It was time to get creative.
I picked up the bunt pan and shook it. Nothing. I shook it more. Nothing. I took a knife and run it down the sides to loosen the cake from the pan walls, I turned it over and shook it again. Still nothing.
Being the wise man that I am I decided to tap – or lightly-slam might be a better description – the bunt pan on the counter. This, I discovered, was not prudent. For now, my good intentions were ripped in two. Half of the cake celebrating my partner’s life was lying uncomfortably on my kitchen counter, while the other half was still securely attached to the pan.
By the time I pried the cake free, feebly piecing it together and hoping that enough icing might hide my shame I began to realize that no amount of icing would put this cake together again, a humpty-dumpty-bundty cake. It’s a disaster. It reminds me of an iceberg in Alaska, with great slabs of cake breaking off, and plunging into the ocean.
I kid you not, I sat down on my kitchen floor weeping. All I wanted to was celebrate Lynette and this, pitiful cake the best I could do. She deserves so much more. So here I sit with the ugliest cake in the history of the culinary arts, and I’m now half laughing and half crying.
Happy birthday Lynette. I love you, sorry my love looks so much like that cake.
Peace, dwight
