I have mentioned in another thread that today, I am preparing a birthday feast for my nephew’s girlfriend. The poor dear shares her birthday with a much younger sibling and its proximity to Independence Day has meant a lifetime of patriotic cakes. Not that there’s a damn thing wrong with being patriotic, but Callista is more of a black fishnets and Doc Marten’s kinda gal and could definitely use a celebration more centered around herself. She’s a lot like I was at that age. Just the right blend of sweet and bitchy with a lot of black hair dye thrown in. Positively brilliant, with a penchant for tomfoolery and a predilection for Japanese cartoons.
I asked her what she wanted me to make for her birthday. “It doesn’t matter, everything you make is good!” Ah flattery. Deserved, too. It’s one of the few things I am completely immodest about. I’m so good at cooking, I actually have patronage: people will buy me groceries just so I will cook for them, which is nice since it frees up my student fundage for other stuff, like liquor. Oh yes – this tale will involve ethanol.
Where was I going with this? Oh right – the menu. I have skirt steak and chicken now marinating in chimichurri sauce. I will add shrimp when I get a little closer to grill time. Zucchini will be grilled alongside, and I will improvise a starch of some sort. The planned pièce de résistance was supposed to be the cake: I planned to make a Hello Kitty cake. I don’t make cake often – I think it’s on the lower order of dessert items, preferring pie, pots de crème, or freshly baked cookies, like a fine snickerdoodle prepared with leaf lard and excellent Ceylon cinnamon. But I wanted to make a Hello Kitty cake and was sure I could handle it. I mean, it’s just cake. How hard could it be?
I started cooking when I was really young. When I was 4 or 5, it was my job to mix the cornbread batter at my Grandma’s house. Pretty soon I was fixing my own eggs in my Grandma’s ancient cast iron skillet (with supervision). When I was 10 or so, I asked my Mom to teach me how to cook. I started out just helping – browning hamburger, or making the mashed potatoes. I apprenticed myself to my Mom basically. I learned and still do learn a lot by helping my Mom. I may rock at cooking, but she rocks more.
One day, my parents had gone out somewhere with my paternal grandparents, and I used the time alone (I was a very trustworthy child and was a latchkey kid for many years) to make a cake. I looked through a cook book until I found “Chocolate Cake” and went to town. Yep – 11 or 12 and I was baking a cake from scratch. Even then I was secure in my abilities to the point of cockiness…
The frosting, too looked easy enough. Sugar, Crisco and cocoa powder. “Confectioner’s sugar” said the recipe. Hmm. My young brain processed the phrase. Confection = dessert = sweet = sugar. It all seemed a little redundant to me so I shrugged as I grabbed some sugar from the canister on the counter. I put all the ingredients into a bowl and began mixing, but was a little worried about the texture. I guess I figured it would all come together, so I frosted the cake anyways with the grit suspended in fat. When everyone got home a while later it had still not “come together”. I was humiliated. Beaten by my own ego. My grandmother ate some of it anyways and declared it the best cake she had ever eaten. It was perhaps no coincidence however that for Christmas that year I got the best present she had ever given me: a cookbook for kids.
It’s been many years since I made that chocolate cake. Over these years I’ve made a lot of doozies in the kitchen, but I’ve developed a strong skill set in the process of learning. I learn a lot here, too – countless things. So I wasn’t too worried about the cake, which I was in fact not making from scratch. I figured I had enough work to do with butchering a few whole chickens (I’m out of stock so I need the backs and necks, plus I cook the innards as a special treat to the cats) and putting together the sauce. I waited until late last night to bake because I didn’t really want to turn the oven on when it’s been 110F+ every day and I don’t have central air. I thought I could handle a cake mix just dandy, what with my leet skillz and all that, so around 11PM I began consuming martinis. Between martini #1 and martini #2 I baked the cake. I was getting ready to make martini #3 when I turned the rested and mostly cool cake out onto a rack. Where it promptly broke in half.
No problem, said my inner chef through the drunken haze. We can just glue it together with frosting. I made martini #3 (polishing off the bottle of Sapphire that was supposed to last until August – my husband decided to do some gin experiments even though he claims to hate the stuff), took a shower, and slept the unconcerned and deathlike sleep of the dedicated lush.
Dawn broke but I didn’t notice, I was sleeping. I arose with my husband around 9. A hangover – not the headache kind, just a little queasy and unsteady. The remainders of my evening confronted me harshly in the kitchen: an empty bottle of gin, the cap still on the counter, the martini glass covered in grimy fingerprints and smudges of chocolate cake batter. A jar filled with brine but devoid of olives glinted in the morning light. It was already 100 degrees outside, and the temperature inside was rising as well.
Still feeling a little wobbly, I cut the cake out using the template. The edges came out a little jagged but I figured the frosting would fix that, just like the crack down the middle of the cake. I began frosting. Did I mention the weather and the state of my air conditioner? I’m sure I did, and I’m sure you, dear reader, can guess what the frosting was like. I smeared it on a little thickly since it was so runny, still feeling like I haven’t quite got my sealegs. I forgot to buy something to make the bow out of, so I grabbed the little hump of cake I sliced off the top. I made the center out of the Bombay cap, almost forgetting to rinse the remained of the gin off of it (that would have been horrifically nasty). The rest I did freehand, then placed it on top and frosted it into the cake. Or tried to, anyways. I’m not too great at frosting the sides of a cake, let alone a tiny sliver of cake on top of cake.
Oh crap. That was supposed to be pink. I grabbed my dye gel and made a batch of pink frosting to go over the white stuff. Then spent forever trying to make black frosting. Should I have bought pre-made black frosting? Yes I should have, but I was in a hurry at the grocery store and failed to plan ahead. After emptying a crapload of dye into the frosting, I gave up when it got to a dark gray. Her eyes are a little off. The nose – not so perfect. I wobbily scripted “Happy Bday Callista!” onto the foil-covered cutting board the cake was sitting on with the remained of the gray icing. Yeah, that’ll show up well, you moron, said my inner self.
The cake in fact looks like it was put together by a 12 year old, not a 26 year old with a supposed mastery of the culinary arts [photo evidence]. I was quite possibly channeling my 12 year old self, the one that made that horrible cake so long ago. Either that or I just haven’t progressed all that much since the chocolate cake with the gritty frosting. I am, once again, humbled. I give up on cake – all you cake decorating people, my hat’s off to you. From now on though, I’m sticking to pie.