Adventures of the Cakes

In March earlier this year, a lady at our church started a cooking class for the young ladies. Once a month or so, we go to her house and cook something. We've made pie crust and pork tenderloin once, and last Saturday it was time to learn how to decorate a cake.

Things got off to a bad start on Saturday morning. Due to an oversight, one of the cats devoured a piece of pizza and left the crust all over the kitchen floor, which meant I needed to clean it up. Then it was time to make vanilla buttercream frosting. We only had enough milk for one batch when we needed two, and Mandy and I had to leave and pick up two other girls for the class. So we grabbed our cakes and the bowl of frosting and began driving all over the county to pick up our friends. It was 9:30 in the morning, and it was already in the upper 80's. It didn't help that our suburban has no A/C, and so it made for a very hot ride. We arrived late, and I fretted over the frosting, which did not look very good but turned out to be fine.

We had a good time. First, we iced our cakes (we got some extra frosting, so there was enough for Mandy and I), which was quite a task in and of itself. Then it was time to decorate. The lady had shown us some techniques, like basket weaving and shell borders, and so it was up to us to experiment and have fun. Mandy decided to go complicated and do a basket weave on top of her cake, which she was not happy with, and I did a poor attempt to recreate an ocean with a sun and a palm tree. After a few hours of handling the sticky frosting and admiring each other's culinary creations, it was time to go. However, we four were beginning to worry. By now, it was around 1 PM, which meant it was very hot. The car had no A/C, and the heat could melt our frosting and ruin our hard work. We rolled down the windows and decided to stop halfway home at Chick-fil-A, where we would bring the cakes inside and let them cool down a little bit. By the time we reached the place, two of the cakes were already showing signs of the frosting melting, smudging, or falling off the cake. After lunch, we resumed the ride home, whereby we were all staring at our cakes and ordering the frosting to stay put for just a little longer.

My cake and Mandy's did not really survive. Apparently, hers was dry and the frosting fell off, and I've been afraid to taste mine. Nonetheless, it was an interesting adventure during the hot temperatures down here.