The Big Flub

Cake baking consists of many things including cramping hands, a sore back, late nights and early mornings. The latest cake was no exception. You see, my Chief is retiring this week so we are throwing him a surprise retirement luncheon on Monday. Of course I offered to do a cake for the event. A delicious chocolate cake with chocolate mousse and raspberry filling.

On Saturday I started building the cake when one of the layers fell apart. So I rushed back to the store to pick up some eggs so I could remake the third layer. I also needed the supplies to make the raspberry filling. I could have bought seedless raspberry preserves to use as the filling. But did I? NO!! The darn perfectionist side of me came out again. So I start making the filling from scratch... running between the kitchen and bathroom.. stir the filling, curl the hair, stir the filling, curling the hair.. (I was getting ready to go see RENT).

Sunday came along and things were going great with the cake. I packaged everything up and brought it to work. I had a good start on it and knew I would have plenty of time to work on it during my shift.

So there I was in the "kitchen" area in the command center chatting on my phone and piping detailed flames along the sides of this cake. The frosting was on but I was smoothing every tiny piece of it with a paintbrush dipped in water. I went to turn the cake to finish the LAST flame when the unthinkable happened.. it fell of the counter. It was like this slow motion movie moment. I threw out my hand but all I got was a handful of frosting. Then I uttered the most horrific words known to any baker " I just dropped the cake". The person on the phone blurted out "NO way!" as did my co-workers. They thought I was joking. Tears welled up and I just stood there silent looking at this crumbled chocolate cake on the floor. My co-workers walked over and we just stood there. It was like a moment of silence for my belated creation. I squeaked out an "I'll call you back" to the person on the phone then proceeded to scoop up the mound of mushed cake and put it in the trash can. A very very sad moment for this baker. I guess everyone that said they couldn't wait to see it are going to have to wait a lot longer..