the great cake adventure

so last night i had a cake to bake. and i am housesitting at a friend's this week. turns out that's essential to my story.

i went to the store, bought what i needed and went to their house and started assembling. alright, where does angel keep her mixer?... hmmmm

after ransacking the kitchen not once but twice (i found beaters which gave me hope... false hope) i called mom. there was also no whisky thing, so i resolved to use the blender.

my mom was afraid it would break it down too far. of course i had no idea what that mean, but i tried not to "over mix" it. which i never really knew you could do. i put all the liquids and eggs into the blender, got as much of the eggshell out as i could, and then added the dry stuff, stirring it in first of course. DUH (i'm pretty good at this after all!)

so the only instructions i didn't really follow were beat on low for 30 seconds, then on medium for two minutes. the blender only has high, higher and holy cow that's fast... and i also had a tiny delay getting it into the oven after mixing. the instructions said to put it into the oven IMMEDIATELY... except for i was making tater tots.

of course tots bake at 425. and while i had sychronized cake readiness and tot completion perfectly, i had to let the oven cool down. my mom said just turn it down and leave the door open for a minute (she's very smart).

so instead of "immediately" putting the cake in, it was a minute before i did (i swear it wasn't more than a single minute) but, by then the cake batter was doing funny things and the color was kinda funky... like tie dye and swirls and stuff. i put it in the oven anyway and went to play video games because i do not have video games at my house.

after a bit i thought perhaps i should check on it...

somehow, even though the pan was level when i put the cake in the oven, and the batter was level in the pan, and the pan remained level when i went to look at it...

in one corner of the pan, the batter had gone out... like the tide. i found it between two other corners, where a giant mound had grown. it was like i baked a balloon under there... or a groundhog... but like a baby ground hog because it was big but not THAT big.

here's a terrible picture i drew of it, since i didn't take a photo.


i let it bake some more and the mound shrunk a little, so i let it go a little longer and took it out of the oven and let it sit.

it all fell down.

i cut a tiny piece off one of the sides and tasted it. not bad, seemed moistish... so i let it cool, put it in the freezer after half an hour because the instructions that i love so much say that's what to do to make it easier to frost... so i went back to mario brothers... for 3 hours. (now you know why i don't have video games in my house)

when i took it out of the freezer, it had shrunk away from all the sides about 3/4 of an inch... it also shrunk away from air. so now it's about an inch thick and flopping around in the pan like a dead fish... i didn't know what else to do so i frosted it. (i used extra in the one corner, to make it look even.)

well, now that it's frosted, it weighs like 180 pounds. i dislocated my shoulder getting it to my car... and now the tires on that side look a little flat.

and of course i am going to serve this cake to my friends without a word of warning.

i'll post the list of survivors tomorrow.