How To Bake a Cake

Since Mrs. Smoot had her birthday earlier this week (notice that I didn't bother to point out that it was #40!), I took it upon myself to make my first-ever attempt at baking a cake to mark the occasion.  I thought I would pass along some instructions in case any of you in the vast viewing audience wish to attempt this feat in the future.

First, you need to go to the store and buy some stuff.  I made a list at the house so I would know what I needed to purchase, and I made this shopping trip a day ahead of time.  After all, you want to be sure to have this kind of thing organized so you don't need to make multiple trips to the store!

My list looked much like this:  "Cake mix.  Frosting."  So Little Smoot and I headed off to the store.  I chose a chocolate cake mixture that looked like it would be within my baking abilities, and I put Little Smoot in charge of selecting the frosting, which is why we had a chocolate cake with "triple chocolate" frosting.

If you're going to bake a cake with plans on celebrating with it that same evening, I would recommend beginning the process at about 3:00 a.m., or perhaps sometime during the previous week, by the way.

Anyhow, I began the process late after dropping Little Smoot off at school on Mrs. Smoot's birthday (which was her 40th, by the way).  I carefully read the instructions, which said something about greasing the pan.  First, I had to locate a pan that was in the appropriate dimensions (allow two hours for this), and then deal with the grease (add another hour).  I considered WD-40 as an option, but later went with Crisco, or some such thing.

Just a few short hours later, I had my pan all greased and ready to go.  Hooray!  So I started mixing the batter, which included some brown stuff in a bag, supplied by the cake people, eggs, water, and vegetable oil.  It was at this point that I didn't know if the oil I had in front of me was "vegetable" oil, or some other oil, or whether it made a damned bit of difference.  So back to the store I went to buy "vegetable" oil.

Back at home, I added the oil to the mix, and had to figure out where our mixer was, and how a person uses such a thing.  I was apprehensive, but after fiddling with the knob and getting it to work, I successfully had a bowl of brown glop in front of me, so I was happy (allow three hours for figuring out the mixer, and actually mixing stuff).

I carefully poured the brown glop into the pan, and I was pretty excited to see what looked like the beginnings of a cake.  I had pre-heated the oven to 350 degrees, and I popped the pan in.  It was a couple minutes after this that I happened to glance at the box and see that I was supposed to have sprinkled flour into the pan before pouring the glop in.

So, I poured the glop back into a bowl, and of course headed to the store to get flour.

Upon arriving back home, I poured the glop back into the pan (which I had to wash and re-grease), and then back into the oven.  I spent the next half hour or so nervously pacing back and forth, wondering if this would actually turn into cake, or if this was merely a practical joke of glop that the cake people thought they'd have me create.

Oddly enough, it turned into cake.  When Little Smoot arrived home from school, I let her apply the frosting because I knew I'd make a mess of it.

Then I realized that, as tradition, some people like to have candles on the cake.  So back to the store I went.

Well, thankfully everything worked out for the best, and we actually ate the cake with very few fatalities involved.  Even more strange, after a few days we finished the whole thing!  In 40 more years or so, I may even attempt to make another one.