As a child it was nigh impossible to keep me away from sugar. That my mom and my grandfather were active bakers certainly didn’t help to curb my sugary desirers. I guess they figured, as I’m not diabetic, ingesting that much sugar probably wouldn’t kill me.
My favorite confection in the whole wide world is cake. Especially cake with a thick butter- or lard-based frosting, the kind that is so dense with sugar that the surface dries into a thin crystallized crust when left exposed to air. Mom and grandpa would pump these things out like they were going out of style and all the while I was there to observe, lick beaters, and occasional stick my whole fist into the cake batter while no one was looking.
It really came as no surprise that I would be the one grandpa would pass the culinary torch to when he made his way to the great big kitchen in the sky. Since then I’ve managed to pick up some pretty sweet piping skills and have made many tremendous cakes for family functions (including a couple for my own wedding). But there is one cake that has always alluded me: the bunny shaped coconut cake for Easter Sunday. My mom rocked this cake.
In my early 20’s, I was already recognized as the baker among my husband’s family, so I jumped at the chance to make this cake for Easter one year for Sean’s entire family. When I get excited about something, I advertise-a lot. I was so excited about this cake that I think I mentioned it every time I was within earshot of one of his relatives for two straight weeks.
Here’s a good tip for all of you aspiring chefs out there: if you’re going to be making something for a large group of people, for, lets say EASTER, and you’ve never made it before-do a test run. I mean it. Don’t be so impressed with yourself that you would give this recommendation to your friend and then not follow it yourself. Let me repeat, no matter how awesome you think you are, make it ahead and use yourself as the guinea pig. Because when you go out shopping at the last minute looking for the recipe-recommended CAKE FLOUR and come back with BREAD FLOUR, man are you going to feel bad when it doesn’t taste like the cake mom used to bake.
And so it was with great enthusiasm and ignorance that I made my mom’s famous coconut cake… with bread flour. For those who are not savvy to the subtle nuances of flour let me explain to you that every type of flour will yield a different result. You use cake flour when you want to make something light and delicate (like when you want to make a cake) and you use bread flour when you want something to be dense and chewy (like when you want to make bread). After all the mixing, baking, and frosting was said and done the cake weight about 15 pounds. Yet somehow, I was still ignorant of what I had done.
The cake looked beautiful though, and sometimes being pretty is all you need to fake your way through an event like this. Unless, of course, you plan on eating that pretty cake then you actually need it to taste good too. But this cake didn’t taste good and that showed upon the face of all in attendance. Family and friends approached the cake the way one would approach the 64 oz ribeye at a Texas steakhouse, the kind of steak that you would get for free if you could finish it in under an hour. Just like one of those steak challenges, no one was able or willing to finish one small piece of coconut cake.
When I bake something for you, it means I like you. A lot. Baking is pretty much my highest form of expression to my friends without actually proposing to one of them. That Easter Sunday was a sad day for me. My failure to make that stupid coconut bunny cake meant more to me than a mere flop. To me, it felt like I tried telling someone I was head over heals for them and instead I told them to fuck off.
Better people use those opportunities to start a new challenge: Make it again, but this time you’ll make it better! This time it’ll be in the shape of… of… the Eiffel Tower! Yeah! And it’ll have little marzipan people on top! AND it’ll be edible!! Me? I’ve never even thought of making that cake again.
Filed under: Ding-Dong Merrily On High, I Remember When..., No one cares what you had for lunch, The Man, Things martha taught me
I feel like such a nut when I think of this instance. It happen last summer when I had our twin granddaughters. It was their last night with us before we were to take them back to Va. I was making spagehitti and meatballs for dinner. I also had my mother, brother, and my other daughter and her husband there too. I was trying to get the girls plates made and they like their spagehitti fix different so as a good Nana would I was trying to make sure that each received their plate made just right. I was trying to get them to tell me how they wanted their spagehitti and trying to cook the spagehitti all at the same time. I reach up and started the timer on the microwave for the spagehitti or so I thought. I left the kitchen to check on something and when I returned to the kitchen my microwave was on fire. It seems that instead of turning the timer on I started the microwave with nothing in it and that doesn’t work. The turn table and plate burn into pieces. I was teased alot about that.
I too have had many diasters in the kitchen. I love to try new recipes so on Christmas I found this recipe for a cake that you put jello in and it was suppose to be this pretty red and green with whip cream icing. Well it may have been pretty in color but taste was a different subject. As I was leaving my parents with the cake I drop it and even the dog walked away from it. Don’t feel bad Darlene.