How to Kill a Cake

Little girls are supposed to know how to bake by the time they grow up, right? Well what if one of them happens to be infected with the Anti-Martha Gene? I happen to come from a long line of bad cooks, as evidenced by my scarred fingertips and outrageous insurance rates.

So....I'm supposed to make a cake for a "cake walk" for my youngest to take to school. The first order of business, is to ask "What the hell are you doing walking if you're gonna pound down a cake?". Just give up the day to the Plus-Size-Gods and be done with it.

Soooo...I troddle off (I walk like that now that I'm on the wrong side of 40) to the grocery store to see if I can find a cake mix that doesn't require a separate grocery order or a degree in interpretive language arts to put together. Simple task, right? WRONG! Add the blonde haircolor to the equation and watch the show....

The mix doesn't seem too intimidating...just add milk, eggs, oil, sugar, and flour (what exactly did I get for my $3?) and throw it in the oven for 45 minutes. In my defence.....NOWHERE on the box does it say to add the cake mix to the concoction. Luckily for me the dog I had on a trade knocked it over into the bowl just in time.

So now I have to "grease a 9"9 pan". What the hell is a "9"9 pan"? There's a roasting pan drying in the rack, so I count my lucky stars. Fill the pan up with this gooey, (oddly appealing), bruise-colored caloric bomb, and put it in the oven. Simple, right? WRONG!

The new oven I bought is so shiny and pretty...and matches the countertop so perfectly....and the girl on the commercial looked all happy and competent making a turkey dinner with all the trimmings all without dirtying her apron or mussing her hair. *sigh* But then it did what all applicances do when they smell my DNA...it morphed itself into The Starship Enterprise...and that smart Asian guy is nowhere on the bridge.

But all I need to do is preheat it to 350 degrees. Simple, right? (Fill in the blank here).

Soooo...I start randomly hitting buttons looking for a glimmer of preheatedness.....and voila! A red light comes on, and there's a reassuring hum eminating from the oven's core. In my defense, the button causing it to clean itself SHOULD BE CLEARLY MARKED. But alas, instead of getting warm, it just makes noises and spits at itself. Plus it locked me out of the oven, and I can't figure out how to turn it off.

But luckily for me...someone long ago figured out that shooting stuff full of microwaves changes its atomic matter into something edible. (Yay!). Pouring the goo out of the roasting pan and into a plastic bowl (I'm not completely daft, ya know), I'm congratulating myself on my sudden burst of smarts. And although I recycled the cakemix box...I clearly remember that it said to cook it for 45 minutes. (No flies on me baby!).

Sooo...I load the soon-to-be-masterpiece into the microwave, set it to annihilate the stuff, and walk away. And wonder why the dog is all of a sudden yelping and pawing at the door to get outside.

Ever notice how when you're waiting for something to happen (a pot to boil, perhaps) that it seems to take forever? Well apparently that guy who invented the microwave didn't. Because before the dog could make it to cover, I had one hell of a volcanic eruption right beside the breadbox that would impress any National Geographic subscriber.

Sooo...I troddle off (I walk like that now that I'm on the wrong side of 40 and have burns on the bottom of my feet from the eruption) to the grocery store and look for someone in the bakery I can either bribe or muscle to sell me a cake that looks homemade.

Ahhh...the things we do for our kids. To be continued......