the cake

The cake from Hell. The cake that would not die. Satan's cake. Pick one. Any moniker will work for me. See, my son had to prepare a Peruvian food for Social Studies. Cool! Cooking for class.

"Can we do a cake?"
"Sure cake is easy enough. "

That was my answer. Cake. Is. Easy. Enough. And it looked easy too- butter, eggs, flour, milk, vanilla and a pinch of baking powder. I mean, I can make this Peruvian cake in my sleep, my friend, thought I.

See, whenever you think that. Whenever you get cocky. The Universe, she is there to...(wait for it)...KICK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU.

I needed a half a stick of butter and though an avid baker, for some god awful disastrous reason had in my head that was two sticks of butter. Two is wrong. It is not a half a cup. It is A CUP. I realized this (thank god!) when we had dumped two cups of sugar, five eggs and one and a half cups of milk in. My frazzled, ran four miles, stressed out, chapter of my book under my belt etc brain said: "Self. Two sticks is one stick too much."

So...we doubled the recipe! It was all we could do . We could not REMOVE already beaten in butter. We added two more cups of sugar, one and a half more cups of milk, more this and more that and in the end, we needed to add ten cups of flour. Ten.

Hmmm. We had already dumped it from my big red mixing bowl into my bigger green mixing bowl. When we only added three measly cups of flour, and the level was already dangerously close to the lip of the bowl. So...fuck! We dumped it into the only thing big enough to contain that blob that used to be a Peruvian cake. My stock pot.

"Ma, what am I gonna stir this with?"boy child asked waving his suddenly diminutive spoon.
Um...think, Sommer, improvise..."This!" I yelled semi incoherently.

I handed him the pizza paddle. So there is my long, very lean son stirring a veritable vat of goo with our pizza paddle. My daughter is laughing so hard I think she might pass out. And him, super smart and flush with smart assery starts quoting the witches made famous by one William Shakespeare.

He says, "Wow, I thought I wasn't going to have enough to talk about but now..."
"Now?" I take a turn stirring. It's what I imagine stirring cement would be like.
"Now, I think I'll run long!"

Then we hit a roadblock (shocking). How to get it out of humongous pot. It is so sticky. So fucking sticky I cannot describe it. After a very messy Bundt pan full of goo, I greased up my biggest spoon (this sounds like one of my porn stories) and I scooped the rest into the only other thing we had big enough. A huge deep dish pizza pan.

"Hey, Ma, you have to write a story about this!"
(dont' worry)

Son and daughter eagerly relay all of this drama to the man. "Whew," I say to him. "That was interesting. It's in the oven now. Though, I do not know how that big ass cake is going to bake in 25 minutes at 250."

"What?" (((he is laughing. why is he laughing???????????????)))
"I said, I do not know how that big ass cake is going to bake at 250 in only 25 minutes."
Now he is really laughing (that fuck!). "Babe, I got that recipe for him off of an actual Peruvian site. That's Celcius."
"But...that's..."
"Never going to bake. "

The cake is still baking as we speak. It is on 450 degrees. I hate that cake and I will eat a piece when HELL FREEZES OVER.

And yes. I have some wine. I fucking deserve it.

Cheers!
XOXO
Sommer