How to Make a Surprising Cake
You'll need to get Maya Angelou to shut the fuck up, because bitch wants to narrate everything, and remind her that it's a cake, not a quilt, and I haven't thought about that movie in years but man I mean really? The world spent $23 million to watch that and not to end hunger or homelessness or AIDS?
Anyway. You'll also need to tone down your potty mouth and your sanctimoniousness because you're making this Surprising Cake in honor of Zach's 34th birthday. The cake needs to be delicious, not bitter with the bile of the wrongs committed against the just.
Except you'll spend the first part of the day of the Surprising Cake biking to the library to pick up a copy of American Brutus because you and your friend Barb are planning a trip in August that traces John Wilkes Booth's escape route from Ford's Theatre in D.C. to Richard Garrett's farm near Bowling Green, Virginia.
The trip will be one of the cooler things you've ever done in August, not least because you'll be able to wax on and on about (a) the assassination; (b) its aftermath; and (c) how hot John Wilkes Booth is, without simultaneously alienating and boring your other friends Navin and Sarah, who listened to you and Barb derail the book group's discussion to sigh and squee. "...and John Wilkes Booth has to do with E.L. Doctorow's World's Fair how?"
The Surprising Cake you're making has a long history. The first Surprising Cake you made was back in 1998, for your ex-boyfriend Jeffrey's dad's 50th birthday. His name was Terry and he had a huge penis which he would accentuate by wearing tight jeans and never sitting cross-legged.
You will have spent all day on this first Surprising Cake, partly because during the crucial batter-mixing portion, a kitten that had heretofore gone unnoticed in the kitchen leaped from the floor to the counter to inside the bowl of batter. You will have wept when this happened. You will have then pulled yourself together, smoked two Marlboro Reds in quick succession, and then baked the fuck out of that cake, frosting it to pink perfection.
You will later find yourself open-mouthed in disbelief twice at this birthday. Once, when the Surprising Cake you spent a lot of time and effort creating, is demolished in an incredible food fight. No one present at the party will have had a chance to eat the cake. The other time your mouth will fall open in disbelief is when your boyfriend presents his dad with a cockring. Actually, you're lying -- you'll find yourself open-mouthed three times at this birthday. The third time is when Terry drops trou, puts the cock ring on, and zips everything back up.
The phrase "shelf of cock" would not be an inappropriate way to describe the effect.
The Surprising Cake won't make another appearance until July of 2002, when you attempt to bake a cake in Zach's studio apartment on a stove the size of the keyboard you're currently typing on. It's a triple layer monstrosity that you don't wait long enough to cool before you begin icing it. Which means that each layer has independent movement from any other layer and the cake is less a cake and more a kinetic sculpture of cake and frosting and frustration and despair. When Zach comes home and finds you covered in cake and batter and icing and tears -- you realize that you are in love with this man for the rest of your life because of how much he is in love with your cake.
Plus, he eats it. Plus, he doesn't buy his dad a cock ring, give you crabs on Halloween and then expect you to go to a Halloween party with the originator of the crabs, whom he's been sleeping with behind your back, because he thinks you need "more friends as a couple," or ask you not to come to his birthday party since you can't be an adult about unexpected polyamory. "We're still friends. It's just, you know how you can get."
When you make this Surprising Cake, for Zach's 34th birthday, you only spend 5 minutes thinking of all of this.
This Surprising Cake is a triple layer chocolate cake with Oreo-cream frosting and topped with yellow cake cupcakes frosted with vanilla buttercream and then topped with Dots and Hot Tamales and in the middle of making this Surprising Cake you realize that in some ways you're dating a 9-year-old and not a 34-year-old. And actually, you realize this earlier in the week when you're buying the ingredients and the woman behind you comments that she likes to serve more fruit at her own kid's birthday.
You'll bake the cakes in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. And this time, you'll cool them thoroughly for 2 hours.
However, what you won't realize is that in crushing up the Oreos for the frosting and adding them to the mixing bowl, you alter the creamy consistency of said frosting and it's not as spreadable as it was, say, 5 minutes ago. You think that maybe things'll soften up if you leave the bowl sitting on the counter and you take a nap because all of this baking? Is very tiring.
This doesn't work.
You'll then find that what started in your head as this voluptuously decadent chocolate cake with Oreo-cream frosting topped with cupcakes, artfully iced and perfectly presented, ends up looking like all other cakes you've ever made in your life, because you really only bake once a year, and that look is: a mess. Chunks are missing out of the side of the cake where the paste-like quality of the frosting has gouged out crevices. The cupcakes which are supposed to delightfully ring the top of the cake keep falling off because they're too top-heavy from the frosting and candy. There's no room to write the "Happy Birthday" message that you were planning. Feeling silly for buying tubes of frosting to write with, you use them to make a purple and pink ring around the cake because while you love your boyfriend, you also realize that your boyfriend sometimes has the aesthetic of a pre-pubescent girl.
And when said boyfriend comes home, he will, like he has for the past three birthday cakes, love it. And love you. And you'll feel like it's your very own birthday because of all the joy and warm feelings that wrap you up like a hug, and you can't stop clapping at Zach and his cake and that's the moment you want to live in forever.
Anyway. You'll also need to tone down your potty mouth and your sanctimoniousness because you're making this Surprising Cake in honor of Zach's 34th birthday. The cake needs to be delicious, not bitter with the bile of the wrongs committed against the just.
Except you'll spend the first part of the day of the Surprising Cake biking to the library to pick up a copy of American Brutus because you and your friend Barb are planning a trip in August that traces John Wilkes Booth's escape route from Ford's Theatre in D.C. to Richard Garrett's farm near Bowling Green, Virginia.
The trip will be one of the cooler things you've ever done in August, not least because you'll be able to wax on and on about (a) the assassination; (b) its aftermath; and (c) how hot John Wilkes Booth is, without simultaneously alienating and boring your other friends Navin and Sarah, who listened to you and Barb derail the book group's discussion to sigh and squee. "...and John Wilkes Booth has to do with E.L. Doctorow's World's Fair how?"
The Surprising Cake you're making has a long history. The first Surprising Cake you made was back in 1998, for your ex-boyfriend Jeffrey's dad's 50th birthday. His name was Terry and he had a huge penis which he would accentuate by wearing tight jeans and never sitting cross-legged.
You will have spent all day on this first Surprising Cake, partly because during the crucial batter-mixing portion, a kitten that had heretofore gone unnoticed in the kitchen leaped from the floor to the counter to inside the bowl of batter. You will have wept when this happened. You will have then pulled yourself together, smoked two Marlboro Reds in quick succession, and then baked the fuck out of that cake, frosting it to pink perfection.
You will later find yourself open-mouthed in disbelief twice at this birthday. Once, when the Surprising Cake you spent a lot of time and effort creating, is demolished in an incredible food fight. No one present at the party will have had a chance to eat the cake. The other time your mouth will fall open in disbelief is when your boyfriend presents his dad with a cockring. Actually, you're lying -- you'll find yourself open-mouthed three times at this birthday. The third time is when Terry drops trou, puts the cock ring on, and zips everything back up.
The phrase "shelf of cock" would not be an inappropriate way to describe the effect.
The Surprising Cake won't make another appearance until July of 2002, when you attempt to bake a cake in Zach's studio apartment on a stove the size of the keyboard you're currently typing on. It's a triple layer monstrosity that you don't wait long enough to cool before you begin icing it. Which means that each layer has independent movement from any other layer and the cake is less a cake and more a kinetic sculpture of cake and frosting and frustration and despair. When Zach comes home and finds you covered in cake and batter and icing and tears -- you realize that you are in love with this man for the rest of your life because of how much he is in love with your cake.
Plus, he eats it. Plus, he doesn't buy his dad a cock ring, give you crabs on Halloween and then expect you to go to a Halloween party with the originator of the crabs, whom he's been sleeping with behind your back, because he thinks you need "more friends as a couple," or ask you not to come to his birthday party since you can't be an adult about unexpected polyamory. "We're still friends. It's just, you know how you can get."
When you make this Surprising Cake, for Zach's 34th birthday, you only spend 5 minutes thinking of all of this.
This Surprising Cake is a triple layer chocolate cake with Oreo-cream frosting and topped with yellow cake cupcakes frosted with vanilla buttercream and then topped with Dots and Hot Tamales and in the middle of making this Surprising Cake you realize that in some ways you're dating a 9-year-old and not a 34-year-old. And actually, you realize this earlier in the week when you're buying the ingredients and the woman behind you comments that she likes to serve more fruit at her own kid's birthday.
You'll bake the cakes in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. And this time, you'll cool them thoroughly for 2 hours.
However, what you won't realize is that in crushing up the Oreos for the frosting and adding them to the mixing bowl, you alter the creamy consistency of said frosting and it's not as spreadable as it was, say, 5 minutes ago. You think that maybe things'll soften up if you leave the bowl sitting on the counter and you take a nap because all of this baking? Is very tiring.
This doesn't work.
You'll then find that what started in your head as this voluptuously decadent chocolate cake with Oreo-cream frosting topped with cupcakes, artfully iced and perfectly presented, ends up looking like all other cakes you've ever made in your life, because you really only bake once a year, and that look is: a mess. Chunks are missing out of the side of the cake where the paste-like quality of the frosting has gouged out crevices. The cupcakes which are supposed to delightfully ring the top of the cake keep falling off because they're too top-heavy from the frosting and candy. There's no room to write the "Happy Birthday" message that you were planning. Feeling silly for buying tubes of frosting to write with, you use them to make a purple and pink ring around the cake because while you love your boyfriend, you also realize that your boyfriend sometimes has the aesthetic of a pre-pubescent girl.
And when said boyfriend comes home, he will, like he has for the past three birthday cakes, love it. And love you. And you'll feel like it's your very own birthday because of all the joy and warm feelings that wrap you up like a hug, and you can't stop clapping at Zach and his cake and that's the moment you want to live in forever.
posted by Mike at 10:56 AM
2 Comments:
I have never commented but anxiously await each of your posts. This entry, though, truly captured the vulnerability of being in a relationship where love is present. How beautiful.
Thank you so much!
What a great post!
And although I, too, probably would have cried had a kitten jumped into my bowl of batter, and possibly taken up smoking, that visual is adorable!
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