07 June 2020
989
R. Linda:
Imagine, you are a 6-year-old boy, almost 7 and you want to bake a cake for your grandmother. You can barely read, and your only help be a 3-year-old girl (ewww), what to do? I'll tell you what you do, you get your 11-year-old brother to read the recipe, and while he reads you and your 3-year-old assistant get the ingredients out. Brother helps you measure everything and now you are set to bake. Oh yes, you are!
After a rather intense discussion with your 3-year-old assistant (the girl, ewww), over what pan to use to put the batter in, you gently pull the round pans away from her, dump them in the sink and go for the big oblong pan informing HER you are making a shite cake aka sheet cake.
She gets the Pam cooking spray and sprays the hell out of the pan and you, as you are waving your arms for her to stop and coughing at the same time from inhaling the stuff, try to stop her spraying you into a near coma. The 11-year-old comes in and takes the Pam away and informs the GIRL (ewww) she over-sprayed the pan. The father of the two "children" and not the girl whispers they need to sprinkle some flour on the bottom of the sprayed pan and that may do the trick. This is done and the 11-year-old exits the room.
Flour be all over the place as are some other ingredients, but hey baking be a messy business. Ok then, next the blender be heaved out by both bakers and ingredients are thrown in the mixing bowl, the mixer is turned up to high speed which sends flour, sugar and butter bits all over the place, but hey you turn it down to low speed and watch it mix in the cloud of flour you have created for atmospheric theatre.
Then you notice you forgot the eggs, so you stop the mixer and tell your assistant the girl (ewww) to crack the eggs into a bowl and give them to you. She gets one and cracks it all over the floor. You realise you have to take over and so you do a better job only getting some (ok the majority) of the egg whites on the counter. But all be not lost, you scoop the egg whites with the heel of your hand and slop it in the bowl and then lob it into the mixing bowl. Start that mixer up at low speed this time (because you did learn from your mistake) and then speed it up once the 'egg juice' disappears in the batter.
Yeah, you got this far. Now you take the bowl off the mixer, letting the beater drip all over the mixer, and pour it into your prepared pan. But wait the chocolate chips you put in the batter have formed a beehive-like pattern on the bottom of the mixing bowl! What to do? Get a spatula and while the assistant holds the bowl, you scrape those chocolate chips into the cake batter and hope for the best.
The 11-year-old is summoned and into the preheated oven that your father turned on, the cake goes to bake for 45 minutes. Yea, you did it! But cleanup be a bitch. The 11-year-old turns into General Pushyouaround and tells you (doesn't instruct you) how to clean up the mess. This puts the three-year-old in tears and she pretty much sits down on the job and cries while you (still taking orders) clean up HER mess as well as your own, especially the 'egg juice'.
Buzzer goes off, and me (the father) be summoned to get the cake out of the oven. This is done and the cake is put on a cooling rack. The cake looks surprisingly perfect and we all leave to do other things while it cools.
30 minutes later you and your assistant come in to get the cake out of the pan. This you've seen done a dozen times and you think you can do it just as well as your old grandmother. Fetching a butter knife you drop the knife accidentally making a giant slash in the top of the cake! Hoping your assistant didn't see that mishap, you run the blade around the cake edge like you know what you're doing when you really haven't a clue. Then you take the cooling rack and place it on top of the cake and flip it over. And nothing happens. You shake it, you bang on it and finally, it slides out but not in one piece. You take the pan away and look at your disaster of a cake and blame it on your assistant. Why not? What she's good for be scapegoating.
She isn't totally useless she tells you to bake another layer to cover the mess so no one will be the wiser. Now why didn't YOU think of that? So OK another layer coming up. This time you recruit the 11-year-old who knows just a little bit more than you do about cake baking (so you hope). There be no more chocolate chips or cocoa powder (because you used all of that in the first cake) so vanilla it is!
This layer was taken out by your father and after it cooled HE took it out of the pan. Near perfect perfection, you guessed it. Carefully, you with your assistant's help decided to 'glue' the two cakes together by using cookie butter as a filling and more because it spreads like peanut butter and you can do that with ease. Once you both have the vanilla on top of the chocolate layer with cookie butter filling you start to mix up the buttercream frosting.
After another cloud of white stuff (confectioners sugar this time -- because you forgot to put the mixer on low), you enlist the help of the now-getting annoyed 11-year-old, who would rather play video games, but you get the icing put together with the promise he can lick the bowl much to your assistant's chagrin. You carefully get the buttercream on the cake and find the cake be big, and you don't have enough icing but you spread it thin and hope for the best and it looks like this:
The 11-year-old tries to make it look smooth (and doesn't do a bad job) and has the nerve to ask you where the writing and decoration are. Well, you look at your assistant and she looks wide-eyed at you like what writing and decoration? It's a birthday cake you are both informed by the General and you realise he's right, so back to the buttercream you go. You both whip up another batch going easy on the blue food colouring and there you are -- icing to decorate and write with.
This decorating the 3-year-old nearly has a tantrum over because SHE wants to decorate. After unplugging your ears, you say OK, OK, OK! The 11-year-old Googles how to use a piping bag and sets it up (because he is a genius). He hands the bag filled with blue icing to the 3-year-old and she, as he moves the plate, draws a line around the middle of the cake. This is to hide the gaps where the cookie butter has overlapped. Ok, well and good. You want to take over but she won't let you. She tries her hand at the rosettes on the bottom of the cake and while it takes almost an hour she gets it done. THEN she insists she has to do the top of the cake and you, huffing and puffing as well as sighing in exasperation, let her and she doesn't do a bad job. NOW it's your turn and she nearly squirts you with the icing because she's done and wants you to finish the job with Happy Birthday written on the top of the cake!
You are ready to write when you realise you don't know how to spell happy birthday, plus you don't write well and your spelling sucks. What to do? Call in the 11-year-old but he isn't about to try his hand at a piping bag because he's too macho. He does, however, tell you he will oversee you doing the final step and tell you the letters to write on the cake. Yes, nice of him because HE CAN SPELL!
You being 6, almost 7, have a natural tendency to write BIG. You get the H on and well it's a little choppy and wobbly, but hey this is you and what do you want you are only 6. The A be next and well your Ps are backwards (only you don't know that) and the 11-year-old is not about to scrape the blue icing off so you can do it again because he knows the icings will mix and there will be a royal mess AND he wants back to his video game. He says nothing, notta. You make it to BIRTHDAY and well there be no room for Grandma. But hey, that's ok she's the only one with a birthday so she'll know the cake is for her.
So once finished you wrap the cake in plastic to preserve it. That's what you think you should do, and the 11-year-old be telling you the icing will lift off but you think the cake will be stale so you don't listen to him and encase the cake in cello wrap anyway.
Later, after your own parents admire the cake, you decide to take credit for the whole baking of it. This YOU think will go unnoticed by your 3-year-old assistant.
The cake is brought out, and your grandmother be amazed and thrilled you baked your first cake (no matter that it was too many flavours) it be a work of culinary art and she gives you the biggest hug. Meanwhile, under a hat, wearing a pretty little party dress your assistant be staring daggers at you for taking the credit, like she wouldn't know!
As you get a piece of cake for yourself, she sees you coming with a shite-eating grin on your 6-year-old face and puts out a babyish ankle and down you go, a face full of your own creation dripping off in great globs. It was said it was an accident but you know it wasn't, it was accidentally on purpose. She doesn't want a piece, so there! Instead, while you clean yourself off she sits opposite you like this:
Disclaimer: I was asked if the wee one could bake his gran a cake for her 104th birthday and I agreed under supervision. He didn't want me to supervise but was ok with Guido stepping in to help with me instructions on what to do. I watched this from the other room so there was never any worry of anyone having a mishap except of course when he turned the mixer on high and the flour made a cloud not only in the kitchen but living room as well. Still cleaning that up.
Gabe
Copyright © 2020 All rights reserved
989
R. Linda:
Imagine, you are a 6-year-old boy, almost 7 and you want to bake a cake for your grandmother. You can barely read, and your only help be a 3-year-old girl (ewww), what to do? I'll tell you what you do, you get your 11-year-old brother to read the recipe, and while he reads you and your 3-year-old assistant get the ingredients out. Brother helps you measure everything and now you are set to bake. Oh yes, you are!
After a rather intense discussion with your 3-year-old assistant (the girl, ewww), over what pan to use to put the batter in, you gently pull the round pans away from her, dump them in the sink and go for the big oblong pan informing HER you are making a shite cake aka sheet cake.
She gets the Pam cooking spray and sprays the hell out of the pan and you, as you are waving your arms for her to stop and coughing at the same time from inhaling the stuff, try to stop her spraying you into a near coma. The 11-year-old comes in and takes the Pam away and informs the GIRL (ewww) she over-sprayed the pan. The father of the two "children" and not the girl whispers they need to sprinkle some flour on the bottom of the sprayed pan and that may do the trick. This is done and the 11-year-old exits the room.
Flour be all over the place as are some other ingredients, but hey baking be a messy business. Ok then, next the blender be heaved out by both bakers and ingredients are thrown in the mixing bowl, the mixer is turned up to high speed which sends flour, sugar and butter bits all over the place, but hey you turn it down to low speed and watch it mix in the cloud of flour you have created for atmospheric theatre.
Then you notice you forgot the eggs, so you stop the mixer and tell your assistant the girl (ewww) to crack the eggs into a bowl and give them to you. She gets one and cracks it all over the floor. You realise you have to take over and so you do a better job only getting some (ok the majority) of the egg whites on the counter. But all be not lost, you scoop the egg whites with the heel of your hand and slop it in the bowl and then lob it into the mixing bowl. Start that mixer up at low speed this time (because you did learn from your mistake) and then speed it up once the 'egg juice' disappears in the batter.
Yeah, you got this far. Now you take the bowl off the mixer, letting the beater drip all over the mixer, and pour it into your prepared pan. But wait the chocolate chips you put in the batter have formed a beehive-like pattern on the bottom of the mixing bowl! What to do? Get a spatula and while the assistant holds the bowl, you scrape those chocolate chips into the cake batter and hope for the best.
The 11-year-old is summoned and into the preheated oven that your father turned on, the cake goes to bake for 45 minutes. Yea, you did it! But cleanup be a bitch. The 11-year-old turns into General Pushyouaround and tells you (doesn't instruct you) how to clean up the mess. This puts the three-year-old in tears and she pretty much sits down on the job and cries while you (still taking orders) clean up HER mess as well as your own, especially the 'egg juice'.
Buzzer goes off, and me (the father) be summoned to get the cake out of the oven. This is done and the cake is put on a cooling rack. The cake looks surprisingly perfect and we all leave to do other things while it cools.
30 minutes later you and your assistant come in to get the cake out of the pan. This you've seen done a dozen times and you think you can do it just as well as your old grandmother. Fetching a butter knife you drop the knife accidentally making a giant slash in the top of the cake! Hoping your assistant didn't see that mishap, you run the blade around the cake edge like you know what you're doing when you really haven't a clue. Then you take the cooling rack and place it on top of the cake and flip it over. And nothing happens. You shake it, you bang on it and finally, it slides out but not in one piece. You take the pan away and look at your disaster of a cake and blame it on your assistant. Why not? What she's good for be scapegoating.
 |
| Tsk, tsk look at that middle you think too much Pam and flour? |
She isn't totally useless she tells you to bake another layer to cover the mess so no one will be the wiser. Now why didn't YOU think of that? So OK another layer coming up. This time you recruit the 11-year-old who knows just a little bit more than you do about cake baking (so you hope). There be no more chocolate chips or cocoa powder (because you used all of that in the first cake) so vanilla it is!
This layer was taken out by your father and after it cooled HE took it out of the pan. Near perfect perfection, you guessed it. Carefully, you with your assistant's help decided to 'glue' the two cakes together by using cookie butter as a filling and more because it spreads like peanut butter and you can do that with ease. Once you both have the vanilla on top of the chocolate layer with cookie butter filling you start to mix up the buttercream frosting.
After another cloud of white stuff (confectioners sugar this time -- because you forgot to put the mixer on low), you enlist the help of the now-getting annoyed 11-year-old, who would rather play video games, but you get the icing put together with the promise he can lick the bowl much to your assistant's chagrin. You carefully get the buttercream on the cake and find the cake be big, and you don't have enough icing but you spread it thin and hope for the best and it looks like this:
 |
| The highest cake I've ever seen! |
This decorating the 3-year-old nearly has a tantrum over because SHE wants to decorate. After unplugging your ears, you say OK, OK, OK! The 11-year-old Googles how to use a piping bag and sets it up (because he is a genius). He hands the bag filled with blue icing to the 3-year-old and she, as he moves the plate, draws a line around the middle of the cake. This is to hide the gaps where the cookie butter has overlapped. Ok, well and good. You want to take over but she won't let you. She tries her hand at the rosettes on the bottom of the cake and while it takes almost an hour she gets it done. THEN she insists she has to do the top of the cake and you, huffing and puffing as well as sighing in exasperation, let her and she doesn't do a bad job. NOW it's your turn and she nearly squirts you with the icing because she's done and wants you to finish the job with Happy Birthday written on the top of the cake!
You are ready to write when you realise you don't know how to spell happy birthday, plus you don't write well and your spelling sucks. What to do? Call in the 11-year-old but he isn't about to try his hand at a piping bag because he's too macho. He does, however, tell you he will oversee you doing the final step and tell you the letters to write on the cake. Yes, nice of him because HE CAN SPELL!
You being 6, almost 7, have a natural tendency to write BIG. You get the H on and well it's a little choppy and wobbly, but hey this is you and what do you want you are only 6. The A be next and well your Ps are backwards (only you don't know that) and the 11-year-old is not about to scrape the blue icing off so you can do it again because he knows the icings will mix and there will be a royal mess AND he wants back to his video game. He says nothing, notta. You make it to BIRTHDAY and well there be no room for Grandma. But hey, that's ok she's the only one with a birthday so she'll know the cake is for her.
So once finished you wrap the cake in plastic to preserve it. That's what you think you should do, and the 11-year-old be telling you the icing will lift off but you think the cake will be stale so you don't listen to him and encase the cake in cello wrap anyway.
 |
| Yeah wrap that in plastic real good and so your letters are backwards, so what! |
Later, after your own parents admire the cake, you decide to take credit for the whole baking of it. This YOU think will go unnoticed by your 3-year-old assistant.
The cake is brought out, and your grandmother be amazed and thrilled you baked your first cake (no matter that it was too many flavours) it be a work of culinary art and she gives you the biggest hug. Meanwhile, under a hat, wearing a pretty little party dress your assistant be staring daggers at you for taking the credit, like she wouldn't know!
As you get a piece of cake for yourself, she sees you coming with a shite-eating grin on your 6-year-old face and puts out a babyish ankle and down you go, a face full of your own creation dripping off in great globs. It was said it was an accident but you know it wasn't, it was accidentally on purpose. She doesn't want a piece, so there! Instead, while you clean yourself off she sits opposite you like this:
 |
| Can you tell she's not happy with you? |
Disclaimer: I was asked if the wee one could bake his gran a cake for her 104th birthday and I agreed under supervision. He didn't want me to supervise but was ok with Guido stepping in to help with me instructions on what to do. I watched this from the other room so there was never any worry of anyone having a mishap except of course when he turned the mixer on high and the flour made a cloud not only in the kitchen but living room as well. Still cleaning that up.
Gabe
Copyright © 2020 All rights reserved
