ok! Our table has been asked to bring something sweet for Thursday night.
Ashley
It took everything in me not to click delete and pretend like this email never happened.
Whenever I get a request for food service, I have to think about it for like three days and then come up with a reasonable excuse. I would rather go into the kitchen, take everything out of my cabinets, re-organize everything and put it all back. I don't enjoy making desserts/meals/food products for public consumption. You could say that I'm lacking self confidence in the area of cooking, and I have no desire to kick it up a notch. And nothing I make is Yum-O. Let's just say that I've had a failure or two in the past.
What will I make? What will I buy? I didn't have much time so it needed to be quick. And easy. It really needed to be easy. Oh, I also didn't want to go to the store to buy ingredients. So I looked in my organized pantry and found this...
The only difference was my mix was butter recipe fudge. So it was a chocolate cake mix and it was going to have chocolate frosting. How could I go wrong with cake mix from a box. I'll just whip that right up.
So around 4:30 on Thursday I threw my ingredients in my fancy Kitchenaid mixer. Here is my ingredient list:
- cake mix
- 3 eggs
- water
- 1 stick of butter
Pop in a 350 oven for 30 minutes or so. I even had Lawnmower Man listen for the beep while I went to take a shower. No way was I taking a burnt cake. And I didn't want to have to run to Publix and cut up one of those bundt cakes into pieces and place it on my own platter. Not that anyone would do that.
So it was all good. I came into the kitchen at 5:50 and my cake had been cooling for a few minutes. I was taking a nice, fresh, warm, cake to Bible study. The Lil'Nanny helped me frost it and I was good to go.
I arrived at Bible study with my cake in hand. I placed it on the food table and realized that I forgot to cut it. I didn't have a knife but I had brought my mini Pampered Chef spatula thingy and went to cuttin'. Or sawin' was more like it. By the time I was finished it looked like Kids on the Korner Pre-K cooking project. Seriously. And I had gotten frosting all over the white tablecloth and my shirt. It's okay though because I covered up the tablecloth spot with some one's plate of Chex Mix. Talk about taking the easy way out.
Anyhoo, I made my plate which included a piece of my cake and sat down with my table group. I will tell you that I was sitting at a table with Ashley C and Heather. Ashley is a baking snob. She will not eat store bought baked goods and Heather likes to make fancy recipes that are shown on the Food Network. Even Giatta's recipes. I know, I thought Heather had standards too but I guess not. I wasn't worried though because my cake was chocolate and it was fresh. I took a bite or two and I kinda thought it was a little dry, considering the recipe called for a whole stick of butter. I wasn't really into the cake because I was trying all of the other offerings so I didn't give it a second thought.
After Bible study, I went over to the food table and I had trouble finding my cake. Why?
Because my cake pan was empty. (Insert applause here!)
I'm not used to seeing an empty pan when I bake 'n' take. I usually go back to the table and I've got two pieces taken out. One time I went to a New Year's Eve Party and no one even touched my homemade brownies. Not. one. person. Oh, they tried to cover it up with the ol' we had so many chocolate things to choose from. I think Lawnmower Man is ashamed of me when this happens. He was quite surprised when he woke up the next morning and saw my empty cake pan. Wow, they ate all of the cake. Yep, they sure did. (insert smugness here)
And then this happened...
Lawnmower Man opens microwave and says:
Why is there a whole stick of butter in the microwave?
