It was October 1986, and I had only been married a
few months. It was my husband’s birthday. In his family of six children,
birthdays had always been a big deal, and since his favorite cake is
angel food, I decided to invite his whole family over to our small
apartment and have homemade angel food cake. This needed to be good. I
was going to impress them with my baking.
The
recipe called for 18 egg whites, so I carefully separated each of the
18 eggs, being careful not to get any of the yolk into the whites. I
baked the cake in a tube pan, and, as the recipe calls for, I put it
upside down on a bottle after baking, to cool in the pan. As it was
cooling, I glanced into the kitchen to admire my handiwork, when
suddenly, without warning, the bottle fell on its side, hurtling my
angelic dessert to the kitchen floor. An explosion of white splattered
the kitchen as I watched in horror. All I could do was sit on the
floor, mourn the death of my masterpiece, and of course, eat what was
left in the pan. It was heartbreakingly delicious.
I
now had a decision to make. Do I make another one from scratch, as
expected by all my in-laws (and therefore have 36 egg yolks in my
refrigerator), or make one from a mix? I decided on the mix. Surely,
his family would understand…
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Cindy Brookshire, Write by the Rails guru and a wonderful writer who works in all sorts of genres wrote this recently: We all have a cake story. Lianne Best wrote about her chocolate pound cake gone lopsided in a “Mom on the Run” column. Now there’s a “Bake Off” challenge on the Write by the Rails website to see how many cake stories we can raise.
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