To Bake A Cake

In Baking, Family, Miscellany on 26 October 2009 with no comments

I love to bake. The pri­mary rea­son I made Gracey Daylittle a pie baker is because it gave me an excuse to make lots of pie in the name of research.

But I, myself, am pri­mar­ily a bread and cake baker.

Today is my husband’s 35th birth­day, and I am mak­ing him an Italian cream cake. When I asked him what kind of cake he wanted, he replied, “Anything with cream cheese frosting.”

His wish. My command.

While I watch I Am Legend, the cake is in the oven. It smells like heaven. Butter, toasted sugar, coconut.

We are a house­hold of fall birth­days. In mid September, my hus­band came home from work, walked into the pantry and said, “Is there any­thing you want to tell me?”

I looked up from my book, con­fused. “I“m sorry?”

“There are four boxes of cake flour in here,” he said. “What do you need four boxes of cake flour for?”

I smiled, shook my head. It was like he didn’t even know me. We’ve spent the past 14 years of our lives together, and he can ask a ques­tion like that in all seri­ous­ness? “Birthday sea­son,” was all I said.

But bak­ing cake in this house isn’t the eas­i­est thing on the planet. Although I was very clear about my kitchen and counter space require­ments when we built this house, some­times you have to com­pro­mise. I exchanged more bed­rooms upstairs (where the chil­dren live) for a smaller kitchen with­out as much space as I would have liked. And that I could live with.

Unfortunately, four out of the six out­lets in my kitchen don’t work. Or rather, I’m sure they work just fine, but some GFI switch or some breaker or some­thing is tripped and I in all my elec­tri­cal use­less­ness can­not fig­ure out how to get the out­lets to pump juice. Four out of six. And when you con­sider I need cof­fee grinder, KitchenAid mixer, lap­top (for view­ing recipes) and who knows what else, you real­ize a girl needs out­lets that work.

Add to that the fact that I have only one oven (for shame) and that almost none of my cake pans match (tragedy!) and you get less than ideal bak­ing conditions.

It’s okay, though. I’m always up for a challenge.

Two min­utes left on the timer. My house never smelled so good.

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