Cake Is My Weakness: Part Two

     At 2am, I unmolded my second attempt at a giant cupcake for Buttercup’s birthday.  A beautifully formed confection waited for me to decorate it into a pink and white fantasy worthy of the fairiest of fairy princesses.  I was ecstatic that this cake looked like it might hold up, unlike its pitiful, gelatinous, gluey predecessor.  I dropped in the bed, exhausted but ready to give Buttercup a birthday to remember.  I got up the next morning and readied myself for a day of low-key, autism-friendly festivities, the highlight being my pink-sational centerpiece.  I rounded the corner to the kitchen and gasped at what lay before me.

     My naked cake had cracked.

     I don’t mean a hairline fracture or an unfortunate divot.  I mean a full-fledged, “watch your step please”, deep as the Grand Canyon, crackamundo crevice.  I decided right then that the god of crappy baking must be named Squidge-Bucket Jelly-Fart and he hates me.  I tried to apologize for whatever I had done to be so displeasing, but it was too late.  Squidge-Bucket Jelly-Fart had already cursed my cake with his lightning crack of fury.  As I surveyed the damage, The Yankee comes to the kitchen in search of something caffeinated.  “My cake!” I screeched, pointing at the chocolate disaster on the counter, “It’s ruined!”  He yawned, bleary-eyed and grumpy as ever.  “That’s nice.  Where’s the sugar spoon?”  I glared at him, “Don’t tempt me.”

     I stared at my disastrous, cracked cake, looking progressively sadder and more hideous by the minute.  I have no more boxes of cake mix.  I am out of eggs and cocoa powder so scratch baking is out of the question (not that I’m any good at it anyway).  We have to leave for Mom and Dad’s house in an hour.  I am out of options.  I plunk the lid on the cake carrier and grit my teeth.  I’ll think of something ... I have to. 

     We get to Mom and Dad’s, Buttercup blissfully unaware of the crackpot cake in the trunk and the crackpot mother in the front seat.  Dad, Moose and Red, Wolverine and Midge were already present and accounted for.  Mom would arrive later in the afternoon thanks to a no-husbands-allowed vacation she had enjoyed with a friend.  I left unpacking “Krakatoa” for last, and was not surprised to find Squidge-Bucket Jelly-Fart had deepened the Great Divide to the point the cake was now split in half.  Oh joy.  While Dad and The Yankee talked shop with Moose and Wolverine, Red and Midge tried not to laugh at my cursed attempt at baking.  I tried to laugh it off, “We shall overcome!  I have come armed with icing!”

     Why did I think this would work?

     Evidently, some bored person with a shrewd interest in making a fast buck off DIY bakers decided to sell squares of parchment paper as “easy to roll!” pastry bags in a box of 100.  I quickly discovered 100 is a requirement if you intend to be as tenacious as I am.  For almost an hour, I rolled, re-rolled, taped, glued, folded, wrinkled, and subsequently destroyed 95 squares of the slickest, most slippery paper ever marketed.  I would have had more success nailing cotton candy to a gelatin square.  Red waiting until she got outside before she laughed at me for calling parchment square #96 a “snortin sniveling frick turd moo moo head.” 

     I finally found one of Mom’s pastry bags, filled it with icing, and squeezed.  BOOM!!  The coupler gave way as icing and a decorating tip flew across the kitchen like a runaway balloon.

     I think I screamed a little.

     Finally, I managed to get a bit of cooperation from another one of Mom’s pastry bags.  I mixed electric pink and neon green icing to Buttercup’s exacting specifications.  With some creativity birthed from extreme desperation, I managed to turn the crackamundo cake of doom into a rock covered in a neon vine of electric pink flowers with a garden of beautiful flowers flowing from a crack in the “rock”.  I was sweaty, I had a headache, and I hoped I never saw another square of parchment as long as I lived.  Even so, I was thrilled at Buttercup’s smile and nearly wept as she said, “Oh Mama.  My flower so beautiful.”  Maybe it had been worth the effort after all.  I could breathe a sigh of relief. 

     “Hey Bert,” someone called out.  “How’d you get a pudding center in the middle of this cake?”

     Crap.

© Bertha Grizzly 2012.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.

Cake Is My Weakness: Part One

     Any mother worth her weight in dust bunnies is going to make an effort to see that her child has a very happy birthday.  I don’t mean live zoo animals at lavishly catered affairs costing more than an Ivy League semester.  I mean the small touches that celebrate another year of life with a treasured loved one.  When Buttercup’s birthday rolls around, I look forward to the small ways I can show her I am happy she got to be my little sidekick one more year.  I love all of it: making a “Happy Birthday” sign, picking out pretty napkins I know she will love, wrapping a gift with a sparkly bow … it’s fabulous, every bit of it.  Except the cake.  I can admit it: cake is my weakness.  But not eating it. 

      Hi, my name is Bertha and I can’t bake a cake worth a darn.

      Let me make one thing quite clear before I go any further.  I can cook.  I am an accomplished cook with many a dinner party, wedding, and catered event to my credit.  Aptitude is not the issue here.  It just so happens I am not a cake baker.  And it’s not like I haven’t tried.  Take last year, for instance.

      With Buttercup’s autism, I have to be careful not to hang too many decorations in too many different colors because she finds the busy-ness distracting and says it makes her ears “loud”.  Last year, I decided I would keep the decorations minimal, the guests limited to family, and make the cake the focal point of the table.  After she went to bed the night before the party, I mixed up a box of allegedly idiot-proof cake mix and poured the chocolatey goo into an allegedly easy giant cupcake mold.  My oven thermostat and the thermometer I  had put inside the oven both registered the perfect temperature, so I slid my confection into the oven.  The Yankee sniffed the air, “I don’t even like cake but that smells good for a boxed mix.”  I smiled and dreamed of the flower and candy encrusted masterpiece I would present the next day.  The timer went off to tell me it was time to check the cake’s doneness.  The toothpick came out dripping to I slid the pan back in the oven, after all, the instructions had indicated a 40-50 minute window of time.  At the 50 minute mark, the toothpick (yes, a new clean one) came out dripping.  The Yankee hung over my shoulder.  “That’s weird, Bert.  Are you sure it said 40-50 minutes at 350?”  I huffed, exasperated.  “Yes, I’m sure.  Read for yourself.”  The new, clean toothpicks dripped at 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110, and 125 minutes.  At 130 minutes, the edges were beginning to turn an unattractive molasses hue. 

      I brought the heated pool of lava to the counter and let it cool the requisite hour.  As I warily unmolded my doubtful cake, the center jiggled like a nightmarish gelatin mold of childhood Christmas horror at my other grandma’s house.  I grit my teeth and said the dirtiest words I could muster.  “This frickin fruitin stupid pile of sugar-laden moo moo crud buckets!  You’re a flitter-flicker ninny-noodle chuckle snort!  Curse you oven of doom and double curse you snardin-gobble-dinger cake pile!!!”  The Yankee laughs, “Oh, my ears are burning.”  I flash him the eyes of death as he chuckles a hasty retreat to another part of the house. 

      My gelatinous flop of a cake, and the unfortunate fact that it’s now past midnight, are not going to deter me from making a beautiful dessert for my Buttercup, so I pull out the old cookbook and start mixing.  A few eggs, some flour and cocoa powder later, I had another cake in the oven.  I crossed my fingers and prayed it would work.  At the 50 minute mark, I checked with yet another toothpick and squinted my eyes.  It came out clean.  I did a happy dance and let the cake cool. 

      Tomorrow, I would decorate the cake of Buttercup’s dreams.  Tomorrow, I would present her with a sugared representation of the sheer depths of a mother’s love.  It would be perfection.  It would be an unparalleled culinary achievement.

      It would be a disaster.

© Bertha Grizzly 2012.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.

Hippity-Hop, Your Product's a Flop

Dear Sirs of Acme Good Luck Gifts and Gags:

     Please find enclosed one of your “Hippity-Hop Lucky Rabbit’s Foot” key ring charms, listed on the tag as “Lot 351 Tahitian Purple”.  I recently purchased this item in the sincere hopes of turning around what has come to be a life of misfortune, accidents, and sincere bad luck.  You see, I was born under an unlucky moon, in an unlucky hospital ward, on an unlucky morning.  I am certain you hear that quite often considering the nature of your business, but I must assure you that my particular bad luck is unique:

     It.  Never.  Ends. 

     When my husband proposed to me, I said, “I need to get this out in the open before we go any further.  You ARE marrying a bad luck charm.  I bring a pox to every household I enter, every project I touch, every person I meet.”  He sweetly patted my arm and said, “I don’t believe in luck.”  I snorted in hysterical laughter and retorted with, “You will.”  After a particularly unlucky stretch, I happened into a gift shop and noticed your “Hippity-Hop Lucky Rabbit’s Foot” display rack.  The sign promised to “offer good fortune and protection to anyone” and “turn bad luck into good fortune”.  With my history of jinxed automobiles, mysteriously exploding appliances and illnesses whose diagnoses can be summated by a doctor scratching his head and pouring over medical books with beads of sweat running down his face, I was skeptical that any rabbit’s foot could turn that kind of luck around, but I decided to give it a try. 

     I got up this morning and was in the bathroom trying to get ready for work.  I flushed the toilet and noticed a really weird gurgling sound and the shower was barely a trickle.  I called out to my husband, The Yankee, "Be careful when you flush the toilet; we have no water."  I could hear him say, "Great".  He goes under the house to find out what's wrong with the well pump, but can't find any problems.  I got my daughter, Buttercup, up, dressed, and on the school bus while The Yankee is getting madder and madder and blaming me for everything.  "I wanted you to call the warranty company MONTHS ago but NOOOOOOOOO you forgot AGAIN."  (Like if I called the home warranty company and said, "Do you cover well pumps?", then our water wouldn't have been acting up today ... whatever.)  So I go in the house and read the fine print on the policy.  No, they don't cover wells, pumps, pressure tanks, bladders, underground or outside plumbing, or anything else that isn't a bathtub elbow pipe.  Period.  Well, this gets him even madder, "We're getting another warranty company!" he bellows.  I tried to calm him, "They all have limits on what they cover."  "NO THEY DON'T!!!" he screams.  I don't argue with children so I went back in the house to call my dad.  I tried not to be angry with The Yankee.  I told myself he's upset about yet ANOTHER thing going wrong (which brings our grand total to about 452,581,898,747,852,541,599,985,264,653,115,022 over the last 10 years.  I could kinda understand his irritation.)  So he's going on and on about, "Now we gotta hire a backhoe to come dig up the well pump."  I said, "You don't need a backhoe.  You can pull it out from the top with a winch."  Well, that got him on his "Me-The-Man-You-The-Woman-What-The-Fricken-Fracken-Mother-Father-Firetruck-Do-You-Know-About-Squat" soapbox again, so I just made my phone call. 

     The Yankee is barking at me in one ear and my dad is asking me these technical questions in the other ear like, "So when you pull the top off the shazzmafrazz and look down the glocken-morley, what color is the tape-orfen-jollynot that is attached to the wire coming from the horlen-fritzy-jay?  And if there isn't a wire coming from the horlen-fritzy-jay, then there's probably a switchboard hossen-feeler that's on the opposite wall of the schmarlen rickta-frazz, so tell me which way the hortzen is pointing." 

     I finally said, "Dad wants to talk to you." 

     Long story short, we finally got water at 12:15.  I took a shower and made myself half-way presentable and left for work.  I get on the Interstate and called my assistant to tell her when I would be there and she says, "I hope you're not taking the Interstate because a tractor-trailer accident has both lanes blocked and traffic is backed up for 12 miles."  So I get off on the very next exit and take the back roads in.  The traffic was nuts but I made it.  I stopped at the hardware store and picked up some spare parts for the well pump and when I was leaving the parking lot, the power steering stopped working on the car.  So, I get some fast food, have to work the crap out of my biceps to turn the steering wheel, and finally get to my office.  Running for the front door, I twist my ankle and my food goes flying across the parking lot, dirty little chicken nuggets bouncing down the hill in a mocking tango that fairly screamed, “Take that.”   

      So, here I am, ankle throbbing, stomach growling, and dreading having to tell The Yankee that the power steering is gone and, thanks to a free diagnosis from the mechanic next door to my office, we need a $4,000 engine block. With my fabulous luck, the house will probably be a smoldering pile of rubble by the time I get home.  I would have thrown the “Hippity-Hop Lucky Rabbit’s Foot” in the trash, but I’m afraid it might come back from beyond the beyond and twist my other ankle.  If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be hobbling my way to the break room in hopes of finding some salt to throw over my shoulder, and hope I don’t slip in it on the way back.

With fingers crossed,

Bertha

© Bertha Grizzly 2011.  All Rights Reserved.  No duplication or distribution.