I Was Struggling With My Next Story

So I baked a cake instead

Now, this might not seem out of the ordinary for some of you, but I’ve never baked a cake before in my life. Not from scratch, anyway. My wife noticed my pondering and pacing, so she stuck a small book under my nose and said, “I think you should make this.” She may have been snackish. It was a recipe for chocolate pound cake.

Accepting the challenge, I set to work. First, I had to gather the ingredients. I set up space on the counter and brought out three mixing bowls, measuring instruments, flour, baking soda, cocoa, vanilla extract, eggs, milk, and…castor sugar?! What the heck is castor sugar? I have brown sugar. Will that work?

Hello google. Can I substitute brown sugar for castor? It seems I can start by making castor sugar. Who knew? Probably everybody except me.

Out came the coffee grinder and away I went. I was amazed by my newfound talent. I felt like Tom Hanks when he made fire in Castaway. I mixed the lovely powdery substance that came out of my grinder and threw it in the bowl with the cocoa and baking soda.

One thing that I did know was, to be a successful baker, one needed to be precise. I have never been accused of having a scientific mind, but now that I had wrangled castor sugar out of plain brown sugar, I was ready for anything. Onto the blending and folding and mixing. In the oven, she went!

Suddenly, I was back where I started. The waiting, the pondering, the pacing. Ah, but now it smelled like chocolate.

I started to realize that baking is a lot like writing. Often, I will lay out specific points of a story in the form of an outline. With my ingredients set out, I can now begin to create. With practice, I can gradually adjust to introduce new flavors. I will also let the story bake for a while and come back to see if it rises. The icing is like my titles which admittedly, have never been my strength. It would appear I have similar difficulties with cake topping.

A little more than an hour later, I had a fully baked caked cooling on my stove. I was very proud. Next, I took a butter knife and slowly separated the cake from the walls of the pan. But, when I went to flip it out of the pan, the damn thing stayed put. This bugger wouldn’t budge. Guess I should have greased the pan, huh?

We’ll just have to eat it right out of the pan. Oh well. Leave it to me to stick the ending.

Eat up, everybody.

Thanks as always for taking the time to read my musings.