My longtime pal Maggie (we've been chums since first grade) gave me an angel food cake mix and an angel food cake pan for my birthday. She knows I love angel food cake, and she knows I am void of anything resembling a cooking skill, so she thought she'd help me out.
"It only requires cold water, and you don't even have to grease the pan," Maggie pointed out. "You can't mess it up!"
Yeah, sure. I was willing to give it a try, though, and when Big Bore offered to stand in for me and bake it himself, I insisted upon doing the job. After all, it'd been 30 years since I last baked myself a birthday cake--bundt with pink frosting--I was overdue for some practice.
So, I made the cake last night but decided not to remove it from the pan until we got to Big Sis's house in Pittsburg today. She didn't trust me to extricate it correctly, so I let her have the honors. Out came my angel food cake--with two big gaps on one side!
"Didn't you get the air bubbles out before you put it in the oven?" she asked.
"Air bubbles? The directions didn't say anything about air bubbles," I answered.
"You run a knife through the mix," she said.
"Or tap the pan on the counter a few times," added Chef Big Bore.
"Well, this is a job for frosting!" I proclaimed. I appointed my 9-year-old great nephew Luke the chief decorator before I went outside to play. He was hesitant to do the assignment, thinking he might make a mess of it, but I told him it couldn't look any worse than it already did so he obliged. He lathered on the white frosting and sprinkled on some red and blue stars and stripes. Voila!
Now, the really hilarious thing about this pathetic masterpiece happened when Maddie (5) and Boomer (3) arrived from day care to join the party. They dashed into the kitchen to see the cake, and you would have thought it came straight from some Food Network cooking contest.
"Oooooooh, it's beautiful!!" Maddie exclaimed. Boomer immediately went for the taste test, fingering the frosting.
Big Sis added six candles, while making a wise-acre comment about how there was a city ordinance against inserting the correct number. She struck up some matches, the gang sang "Happy Birthday," I blew out the candles, and we dug in. For something so totally hideous looking, it was one sweet birthday treat. In fact, it was yummy to the last crumb. Thanks, Maggie!
(Before and after the frosting.)
3 comments:
I bet it tasted great.
Happy Birthday! Enjoy your day!!
in my dim memory....didn't we do some sort of baking project while we were wild single girls in joplin???? i seem to remember trying to teach you how to beat the eggs.....
Think I am gonna opt for the DQ variety but the grandgirls will probably influence that decision. The oven will certainly not be lit.
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