Friday, February 15, 2013

Forget You Ugly Cake

Here's a little funny story of mom frustration I'd like to call "Forget You Ugly Cake".  

the ugliest cake you will ever lay eyes on
You know as mothers we would do anything for our kids.  Go above and beyond anything they would ask of us.  Whether it's cutting the crusts off a favorite sandwich, staying up late sewing a costume for a school play, holding them all night while they are sick, serving everyone first and always eating last, whatever it is, kids come first. It would feel more right if we were allowed to wear super capes or something.  How we are able to keep a smile on our face and kindness in our hearts is most likely an undocumented medical mystery.

Picture by David Cox - This tells it like it really is, right?

This story starts out as a happy request by two of my children.  They want to learn how to make a cake.  Not just a 9x13 pan cake, but a heart-shaped layered cake.  They have been helping me cook in the kitchen since they could stand on a chair and hold a measuring cup, so this means great excitement for me!  I think we are going to do this right!  Put a layer of jam in the middle, really make it beautiful.  Here's what my head envisions:

Such a far cry from what actually happened....


So we carefully mix all the ingredients, pour the batter into the two cake pans, and they bake up perfectly.  I let them cool a bit and then turn the two cakes out on the counter to finish cooling. I then decide to help my oldest child with her science fair tri-fold in the other room, which turned out to be a big mistake.  The younger two, unbeknownst to me had been sneaking into the kitchen and eating chunks out of the finished cakes.  Like not little picks here and there, full on handfuls of cake so that by the time I came around the corner, it looked like Swiss cheese.  No, it looked like a pack of varmints had scampered up and had nibbled their way in and out through the whole thing.  


Ug.  I was so upset I didn't even document it with a picture (now THAT is saying something - since I take pictures of everything). Just imagine crumbs and holes and sad tears. There was no way the cake would stand up to being layered.  I tell the girls dramatically we won't be able to make a fancy cake now, but they don't even seem to care.  They go off upstairs to play and leave me with shattered cake dreams.

Boo. Now what do I do?  We should probably still eat the cake, but it's highly unstable.  I fish the pans out of the sink and put each cake back in their original pan.  I'm still pretty ticked off so I think, okay girls, if you want ugly cake... I'm going to GIVE you UGLY cake!  So instead of making new frosting I go to the back of the fridge and pull out old left over canned frosting from who knows how long ago.  I slather multiple colors with big giant sweeps of the knife with little to no care.

blue, pink, and white frosting any which ol' way

By this time hubby has come over, observed my semi-rage, and finds the whole thing quite hilarious.  I don't find him very funny at the time, but he starts taking pictures of my frustration cake art.  Ironically the girls do not think this frosting is ugly at all.  They think it looks like cotton candy.

Hey, what's better than one ugly cake???  How about two ugly cakes.
I was so lackadaisical in my frosting attempt that a huge blob flew off the knife onto the counter.  Hubby found this just as funny as the ugly frosting so he took a picture of it.

Oh yes.  He thinks he is so funny.
 
Well then what should go on top of an ugly cake?  How about sprinkles that don't match.  I did a bit of searching until I found the perfect shade of ugly sprinkles to un-compliment the cake.  For hubby's benefit I decided to spell out a few letters.  One was an "F" for "forget" and the other was a "U" for you.

He was completely doubled over in laughter by this time
 
Then I figured I really don't want to explain what those two letters meant to the girls when they come back downstairs, so I should probably cover them up with more mismatched sprinkels.

 
On the second cake, I poured on some sprinkles, when I realized that I didn't have enough to justify keeping the almost empty container, so I just rage-dumped the rest on the middle of the cake.  Mr. D was laughing so hard at this point he could barely take pictures.  Matter of fact if you bring up the topic of the forget you ugly cake now one week later, he still can't stop laughing about it.

There. Take that ugly cake (notice the sprinkle pile in the middle)
 
So of course, the above monstrosity was no where near the awesome double layer cake I had dreamed about.  It was so ugly I wasn't even going to blog about it.  Mr. D insisted the story needed to be told.  The next day we took one of the Forget You Ugly cakes over to my folk's house and told them the quaint little story of rage that went along with it.  They were quite amused.  Matter of fact my dad decided to gussy up his slice of ugly cake with a few spiced gum drops.

Perfect
 
About as near to ugly perfection as you can get.  So remember, when your mom goes out of her busy way and gets all excited to teach you something fun in the kitchen, and you sneak around and destroy that very thing we worked so hard to create without a shred of remorse... just prepare yourself, she might make you an ugly cake.

 

2 comments:

Christephi said...

That is the funniest kitchen story I have ever read! I'm *SO* sorry your beautiful heart cake didn't turn out and I *fully* understand those sort of circumstances. But what a great memory it turned into. Thanks for taking hubby's advice and sharing it with us. :-)

Unknown said...

Jenn, that is hilarious. I love that you came "undone" at the girls' misguided snacking and made the cake as unappealing as possible. Love it.

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