As I´ve already said, I like to bake. Like, a lot. This natural love of baked goods intensified 10-fold when I moved to Sweden for a year in university. For those of you who don’t know, those Swedes also enjoy foods of the baked variety and I went ape-shit for it all.
Anyway, while there I got in the habit of baking cakes for people’s birthday parties. I would get a yummy looking recipe from the internet and set about collecting all the necessities. There were often times, a few ingredients that I couldn’t get my hands on for one reason or another but I had always made due. Things started off small; substituting vanilla powder for vanilla extract for example; nothing, right? Then things got more complicated; yogurt instead of sour cream, this Swedish vanilla sauce instead of pudding…you get the idea. Sometimes it got a little sketchy but it always worked out so I started to get a little over-confident. And then came Mat’s birthday.
It was my friend Mathieu’s birthday and I promised him a special cake (no, not ‘special’-special). I should state now that he was an avid handball player (a piece of information that will prove useful later).I decided on a banana, nut cake with coconut cream cheese icing. It was an ambitious choice even for me but I was blinded by hubris.
I went out and got all the stuff I would need and set to it. I mixed and beat until the batter was perfect. Or seemingly perfect, it’s so hard to tell with liquid cake…it all looks the same. I admit, in hindsight, that I had gotten a little bit creative with it. But it didn’t look ‘creative’ so, I put it to bake in the oven and went about cleaning.
Fast forward about 30 minutes when I peek in to glimpse my masterpiece. Except it wasn’t looking too masterpiecy. It was still flat (except for a little hill in the centre). I might have thought it was raw if not for the fact that it was hard and dense. I don’t know what exactly had gone wrong but it had. In a big way!
I took it out and poked it…often. It was solid enough that I could turn it out, upside down onto the counter. I poked it a few more times, which accomplished little other than rocking it. It was obvious that the bottom was still fairly raw so like any good-baker, I put it back into the pan, upside down, and baked it longer.
It took another hour to cook it through so I had just enough time before the party to let it cool and ice it. By this time I was feeling super shitty with my incredibly dense, rubbery cake and I was starting to worry about all the people that were going to be witnesses to my extreme failure. So I went to talk to Mat.
I knocked on his door and told him what I had tried to do and that I was ashamed of my pathetic little excuse for a cake and couldn’t we just eat it tomorrow when it’s just us and our friends, instead. He said not to worry, that it was the thought that counted more than anything and he was sure everyone was going to love the cake. I think the bastard just wanted his damn birthday cake.
So fast forward again; we are downstairs, party is in full swing, and I go around telling everyone that I’m going to pop upstairs, grab the cake and they all have to be ready to sing Happy Birthday. Pop upstairs I do, and whilst I am lovingly placing the candles on the cake, another friend of ours pokes his head into the kitchen to inform me (with glee I might add) that Mat’s best friend Johan had gone to a bakery and bought him a handball cake. That’s right, he bought him a beautiful, professionally made cake in the shape of a handball. Even more deflated; I finished placing the candles. I was walking gingerly down stairs when I heard the sound of singing; ‘Happy Birthday’ singing. That’s weird, I thought, they’re a little early. I rush down the steps so that I would make it down before the end of the song. When I reached the landing, I saw, to my horror, Johan making his way across the room to Mat, handball cake outstretched in front. Fucksticks!
The song ended, Johan presented the stupid cake and everyone was clapping. Then, slowly, everyone at the party turns to look at me; the girl at the back holding the sad-looking cake and the crowd parts like the fucking Red Sea. Before me is a gauntlet of people leading straight to Mat. Everyone is looking at me like they don’t quite know what to do. I can honestly say it was the most awkward moment of my life.
And so what does one do in a situation like this? Scurry away, throw a shit-fit, blush meekly?
“Happy birthday…” I began. As quiet as I was, the sound echoed through the room as no one else spoke or even moved. “…to you...”.
To my great relief, everyone started laughing and singing along with me (phew) and I moved through the gauntlet and presented Mat with my cake (not sparing Johan a few glares along the way). In the end, the cake was actually not bad. At least that’s what they told me, I was too busy stuffing my face with a slice-o-handball to bother with my crap-cake.
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