“This is the story of how I died.” May be the greatest, gripping, one-liner introduction in the history of cinema. I don’t have any kind of gripping introduction like that today. Mine could just say, “this is the story of how I baked six cakes in one day, on accident.”

My husband likes to think that I am a good baker.  It’s something that I really enjoy doing. At least once a week, barring hot weather and especially in the winter time, I bake. Cookies, rolls, cakes, bread, muffins, brownies, cinnamon rolls, banana bread, biscuits, corn bread, baked oatmeal, cheesecake… I really love to bake. So I was very happy to accept a request from one of the families at Vida Nueva, for a kindergarten graduation cake. My husband told me it should probably be a round cake, as that is what I normally bake for the celebrations at Vida Nueva. Ok, that’s super. I can do that.

Last Sunday, I mixed up a cake and it baked while we listened to Pastor Candelario’s message on FacebookLive. Because I had the dishes all dirty anyway, I decided to mix up a second cake for our family. My mom gave me a Betty Crocker cookbook before Adam and I were married. There is a recipe for a chocolate loaf cake in the book that I had never made before, so because it made a small cake, I decided to try it. I put all three cakes in the oven, set my timers, and waited.

At the end of the first timer, I pulled the round cakes out. They were beautifully spongy. After they had settled a bit, I did everything I knew to do to get them out of the pan complete, to no avail. They both ended in a crumbly mess.

“No problem, I have the bread pan cake in the oven.” Before the time was up, I could smell burnt chocolate. Cake #3, was no good. Though, all three tasted delicious, they could not used for the graduation cake.

At that point, I started being a drama queen. So Adam encouraged me to go to the store and buy cake mixes. While there, I also picked up a small box of vanilla flavored milk, because the Mexican people love what I call “wet cake”. It’s not always a tres leches cake, they just like the cakes very…wait for it…moist. 🙂 I got home, had cakes 4 and 5 in the oven in about six minutes, and they turned out BEAUTIFULLY! I was so excited! After letting them cool for a couple of hours, I mixed icing, tinted it, poured the flavored milk over the cakes, and decorated them. It really turned out well. And then I noticed that it was slipping on one side. I think I poured too much milk over the cakes. It started to fall apart, making a muddy chocolate cake mess.

My Chloe-girl ran over to our pantry area and brought me another cake mix, three eggs, and the milk jug from the fridge. I hurriedly mixed up one more cake: Cake #6, in a 9×13 inch pan. When it came out of the oven, I let it mostly cool, quickly frosted it with dark green frosting, put colorful sprinkles on top, and delivered it to the family just in time. What a fiasco!

We invited Pastor Candelario and his family over for supper and gave the broken, falling apart cake to them. They got a good laugh out of the story as to why almost a quarter of it was gone. Good times! Tomorrow I’ll post about what we did with all that cake. It was a lot of fun!