My Ace of Cakes Episode

This past year our school stopped sponsoring seasonal sports banquets, and instead each team was responsible for organizing their own. At the very end of the year (we procrastinate), Adam was finally able to schedule and hold the basketball team banquet. I will gladly take full credit for the banquet: I called the caterer, reserved the school's courtyard, and...made the cake.

Let me pause and digress here: I'm addicted to watching the Food Network, and one of my favorite shows to catch in the evening is Ace of Cakes. I love to watch the cast members of the show push the envelope in terms of creativity with food. When watching Food Network, I often want to jump up and start cooking whatever is currently on the screen. Perhaps that was the origin of my recent...shall we say, delusions of grandeur?

Here's what happened:

As I said, I made the cake for the banquet and knew going in that it would have to be a fairly big cake (in total I made 4 9x13 sheet cakes and smooshed (technical term) them together). Now, since this needed to be done quickly, I caved and used cake mixes to save time, as well as store bought icing. Still, I began baking the day before the banquet at 3:30pm and was about finished at 8pm. As I pulled the last sheet cake from the oven, the glass Pyrex dish slipped from my hands. Despite my best efforts to save the pan (which was a toasty 350 degrees at the time of the incident), the pan fell from my hands, bounced off the door of my oven, and crashed to the floor (naturally, all of this seemed to happen in slow motion). Even today, nearly two months later, I can't remember exactly what I did in the moment of silence that followed the shattering of the pan. I do remember that in the process of cleaning up the mess I employed an omelet spatula given to us as a wedding present (thanks, Aunt Kathy!). As I flipped broken glass-embedded cake into the trash, I noticed my husband bent over a particularly large piece of cake. As I watched in horror, he scooped up some cake and ATE IT!! That was it! It was getting late, I was going to have to go back to the store, not just for another cake mix, but also to find another PAN to bake in, and the cake wasn't going to get iced until the next day. Irritably I told my husband (whom I love more than life itself), "So help me, if you swallow glass and cut your own throat, I will not be the one to drive you to the hospital!" After that melodramatic rant, I flung myself crying into my car and drove to Walmart for cake mix and a pan.

Needless to say, things weren't as bad as they seemed. I came home and finished baking, apologized for yelling at the hubby (who was quite understanding about the whole incident, really), and even got a couple hours of sleep.

The next day I approached the cake with a new caffeine-spiked optimism. As I said, I was inspired by Ace of Cakes. With that in mind, and sipping from the largest cup of coffee Starbucks would sell me, I cut into the cake, shaping it into a basketball jersey. And it didn't look too shabby, if I do say so myself. Next I iced the cake with white icing and then, since nothing bad had happened yet, took a stab at dying icing. With the recently dyed-red icing, I added trim to the jersey, as well as a number. Finally, just as Adam was trying to load the car and head to the banquet, I added the final detail: a tiny Nike Swoosh in the lower righthand corner. Barring minor decrepancies, I had recreated in cake one of my husband's team's home game jerseys.

It looked great and the cake was delicious. People asked me, "Will you make this again next year?" Ummm....no. I don't think I would survive another incident like this. But like I said, the cake looked pretty good in the end (in spite of all the bumps -- and crashes -- along the way).