Armageddon and Cake

Salted Caramel Cake

I made one yesterday from a recipe in a magazine. It called for 8 yolks and 4 eggs, nearly four cups of sugar and 1/2 pound of salted butter for the cake alone. The icing was three cups of brown sugar and two cups of confectioner's sugar and more than a pound of salted butter. It had five layers with more than a cup of icing between each layer. I know -- that's not even sort of gross.  I felt guilty making it, especially given that it was for a crowd of fifty-somethings. I guess there's a case to be made that given the fires just to the south, the crude oil spillage in a nearby neighborhood (where, evidently an above-ground pipe burst and crude oil was knee-deep in some places), the outrageously dry and hot conditions here, the insistence by many that global warming is a liberal hoax, the Clippers fiasco, the rumors of Beyonce and Jay-Z having trouble -- well, why the hell not eat Salted Caramel Cake? And throw some rose petals on top that you've plucked off a wilting rosebush as a final devil-may-care gesture.

Let us eat cake.

The Baker is Back

via Etsy

This morning I was up at 6:30 baking a cake. I've got two cake orders today, orders I took at the last minute because My Other Job has drawn to a close, and I need the work. I have a Blue Velvet Cake with Purple Frosting and a Luau Theme to make today and a Milk Chocolate Chocolate Cake tomorrow. I will, of course, post photos later.

If you know of anyone who needs to hire a baker, please let me know. I can also advocate for children with special healthcare needs, review grants, create caregiver manuals and train caregivers, write grants and pull my legs over my head.

Reader, what are you up to this weekend?

Random Poetry and Cake

Open up a book of poetry and see what you find. Here's mine:

The Cure

Lying around all day
with some strange new deep blue
weekend funk, I'm not really asleep 
when my sister calls
to say she's just hung up
from talking with Aunt Bertha
who is 89 and ill but managing
to take care of Uncle Frank
who is completely bedridden.
Aunt Bert says
it's snowing there in Arkansas,
on Catfish Lane, and she hasn't been
able to walk out to their mailbox.
She's been suffering 
from a bad case of the mulleygrubs.
The cure for the mulleygrubs,
she tells my sister,
is to get up and bake a cake.
If that doesn't do it, put on a red dress.

Ginger Andrews, via Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times

Do it yourself and tell me what you find.

Cake Boys

I drove about 5 miles an hour with the boys in the back seat, keeping a red velvet cake perched on top of a tier. Cupcakes were in the back -- two dozen red velvet and one dozen vanilla with lavender icing. Henry warned me that I could get a ticket from the police if I drove too slowly. I told him to just pay attention to what he was doing and to keep those big fingers out of the icing. At one point, Oliver said This is just like Cake Boss! The cake was safely delivered -- unlike that time which led to this disaster.

I needed a beer afterward, which I drank with some pizza and salad -- a lovely Saturday night.

Weekend Cake Number Three and a Good-looking Elf

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Weekend Cake Number Two

Winter Wonderland Red Velvet Cake

with Vanilla Frosting

Weekend Cake Number One

Yellow Cake with Bittersweet Chocolate Buttercream

(for Angus, a boy dear to my heart for his loving behavior toward Sophie that goes well beyond his age)

Half Century Cake

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Yellow Cake with Dark Chocolate Frosting

... continued

Coconut Cake, 7:05 am

To Radish King

Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Ganache Drizzle and Marshmallow Fluff Ghosts