Unfortunate Tales of Cake

Dear Diary,

So, I tried baking again. It has been years, but I’m taking a chance. Who knows, maybe somewhere deep down inside me there is a baker waiting to break free. I know that if I keep trying eventually I can bake something that won’t be reported as a failed experiment that miraculously created a new type of fungus.

This time around, I was pleasantly surprised when I managed to bake a rather flat but still tasty chocolate cake. But as I sit here, wondering if the cake would have been bigger if I hadn’t forgotten to add baking powder, I started to re-live my top 3 baking catastrophes:

1.       

1.       THE CAKE THAT WOULDN’T BAKE

I wanted to be cool in High School. I don’t know why I thought baking was cool. I mean, it certainly made you popular, because who doesn’t love the kid with a Tupperware full of brownies? So in my attempt to be the cool baker I went home one afternoon and pulled up my mum’s trusted recipe book. Now you must know – my mum bakes the yummiest cakes, so naturally her recipe book must contain some decent recipes.

After a quick read through I thought I was ready. I mean cool kids only need to glance at something and then be amazing. I mean, I read The Secret enough times to know that projecting the image that you wish to see yourself as, is what will attract said image. I put the book away, the recipe book that is, and started to “bake”.

Apparently, ingredients need to be at room temperature when you start baking. I did not know this – not that it made much of a difference. I just went about pulling sugar, eggs, milk and flour from all over and plopping them into a large dish. I can’t even remember half the things I thought I read in the recipe – or the quantity.

By the time I was done, the batter was a strange yellowish brown colour. But it didn’t have any lumps so I was pleased. I didn’t know if the batter was supposed to be that colour. I didn’t know its life story or how it felt – I wasn’t going to judge it for being more yellow than brown, for a chocolate cake. So I greased a baking container and put it in the oven to bake.

Bake it did. It baked and baked and baked for more than one and half hours but it refused to stop giggling in the center. Eventually I called a friend and together we pulled out the terrific disaster steaming at us. It was gloomy looking - all shiny and yellowness now had a tinge of grey. It didn’t smell like cake, but in the delusional state of coolness that I was in, I promptly declared that the cake was self-saucing.

Still hopeful, I waited for it to cool before cutting myself a slice. My friend refused, in case of food poisoning. Relentlessly - I would not be discouraged – I dug in. The cooling had turned the liquid spots to a jelly like texture. So I chewed it – and chewed, until it felt like my stomach was trying to kick me in the chin for trying to swallow. I spat it out, brushed my teeth and then went about removing all evidence of that “cake”.

I’ve settled to never try to be cool in that way, ever again.

2.      2. THE MISTAKEN IDENTITY

A few weeks passed since the cake that did not bake. I plucked up my courage, or may be my stupidity and went forth towards my next baking mishap.

This time I thought I would try something simple. After searching through my mother’s faithful recipe book, I finally decided to bake some biscuits. This time I made sure to read the ingredients lists, pick them out and let them get to room temperature. I was determined that this would be it. I was finally on my way to baking something edible.

Unfortunately, my life never goes as I expect it too.

This time I accidentally pulled out gram flour, instead of corn flour. The end result was yellow. Again. It was too salty, and too nutty. Too weird. On the plus side, at least this time I could eat it without gagging.

3.       SAVOURY CAKE

Savoury cakes are awesome! It’s the best of both worlds. The yummy soft texture of a moist cake, combined with the satisfying saltiness of it all. I will, however, tell you want is not so nice – an accidental salty cake.

I suppose this is one of the most clichéd things I’ve ever done. Picking up salt instead of sugar isn’t all that hard to believe – except in my house it really was an astonishing task to complete. You see, Diary, the salt and sugar resided in two completely different containers. Different colours, different sizes and worse still – they lived in two different cupboards, so that this mistake should have never happened.

Should have, would have, could have. In the end, this cake was still not half as bad as the one that would not bake, nor is it the worst of all my endeavours. The reason it makes top 3 is purely on the difficulty level.
 
At the end of all this, I can officially say one thing that I know for sure:
My mother’s recipe book hates me.
 
That’s all I have for this week.

Love

A. Star

Tales of the Spoon Resort

Dear Dairy,

I just realized that I may have lost my teaspoon forever. I made hot chocolate, and for fun: I put some coffee in it. Then I left my poor old teaspoon in the cup when I sent it off for washing. This was my tragic mistake of the day. 

Spoons go missing in that kitchen.

I’m not sure if, in the kitchen, there is a Spoon God and we offer our good spoons to it, so that it may bless us with always having things that need stirring. I suppose that's unlikely because I'm sure that if you give something to a God, said God will give you more of it. That's when I thought, maybe the spoons escape from captivity in the kitchen, during wash time.

Oh dear me, Diary! How will I ever find my spoon if it escaped? At the very least, perhaps it will escape to a better place, like a spoon resort.

I wonder what goes on at the spoon resort. Do the spoons relax in a hot-tea-tub? Perhaps, instead of mud baths, they soak in Nutella jars and when they go for massages, they must get rubbed up with hot cocoa and lie on pillows of mini marshmallows. This spoon resort must be fancy, if they have mini mashmellows – I suppose before bed they have themselves polished and then get tucked into beds of soft velvet. Do you think that the spoons spoon when then they are in their velvet cases?

I wonder if this spoon resort has special facilities, like the soup spoons might want to get involved in the Soup Spoon Synchronized Swimming Squad, you know, for the spoon Olympics. Maybe they need great big bowls of soup to practice in and the spoon resort specializes in such facilities. That must be why the soup spoons escape – but it doesn’t explain why the teaspoons go too.

Do you know, Dairy, I am quite sure that this spoon resort must have some sort of hierarchy system. Maybe the serving spoons act as the royal guard for the tablespoon rulers. Perhaps the Ladles are priests in the spoon religion sector. That’s it! The teaspoons are the peasant slaves! Maybe they escape the kitchen, believing that there is a better life out there for them, in the spoon resort, but its all an elaborate lie to make slaves of them!

This still doesn’t explain sporks. Maybe there was a special programme to genetically modify the spoons so that they could become better in combat situations, so they spliced fork DNA into spoon DNA and thus the sporks were born. They too serve the Monarch, but as a secret spoon service. This explains why you almost never see spoons mingling with sporks.

Dairy! It just occurred to me, that the world is full of plastic spoons. I wonder how the other spoons feel about the plastic variety. They probably feel awkward, I guess. Perhaps plastic spoons were once like normal spoons but they were not happy with their aesthetics so they got plastic spoon surgery done. Now the other spoons judge them for being insecure, but not to their face. Some normal spoons might worship the cheaper plastic spoons. But I am sure that the majority of the spoons look down at them for being non-biodegradable.

And what for the wooden spoons? May be they manage the resort, sort of like a government. They can withstand a lot of heat, but will break under pressure. Once their good reputation is stained, they may never win it back. Wooden spoons are good at making promises of tasty food, but they never tell you that it’s the cook that makes the food tasty. Yes, I am sure that the wooden spoons run the whole scheme. Maybe, they use the slotted spoons to champion their causes. 

Who knows what the real inner workings of the great spoon society looks like?

Life of a spoon is difficult – almost as difficult as it is to be an awkward star.

Well chat soon…

Love

A.Star