February 12, 2025
Accept All Cookies, But Let Them Eat Cake
Look at me go, writing another blog already! Maybe those New Year’s resolutions are finally kicking in. I approached the 2025 resolutions list with a moderate mindset; after all, I’d like to think I know myself at least a little bit at this point. For example, I knew that making a resolution to stop eating sugary treats was pretty unrealistic, so I had to carve that one back a little. I’m therefore slowly cutting back on cookies. It’s harder to do than you might think, but it got easier once all the Christmas cookies were finally gone. But then, I found two packages of refrigerated cookie dough that had gotten pushed to the back of the shelf and I couldn’t let those go to waist, I mean waste. After those were gone, though, I really buckled down to not eating cookies.
Unfortunately, since then I’ve become enraptured by cake. (Side note: I actually made a from-scratch fruitcake for Christmas. I thought it turned out really well, but I was the only one who ate any of it. I’ll spare you the comments my family made about it. Since they wouldn’t even agree to try it, I don’t give their unenlightened fruitcake attitudes much mind room.)
As I was wondering where all this interest in cake was coming from, I remembered my relationship with the AI Overlord of Information Across the Universe of All Devices. I like to read recipes, especially very old ones, and I was looking online into how cake originated. The trail led from Egyptian bakers 5000 years ago to the current boxed cake mixes. In the course of this research, I was surprised to come across modern recipes on how to “transform” a boxed cake mix into something wondrous.
I didn’t know you could bake outside the lines like that! Where I grew up, if you made a cake from a box you followed the directions on the box, with no deviations or fancy stuff. You evidently got a pass on the icing, because I don’t recall anyone in my family ever using store-bought icing. Everyone made their own; our particular family-special icing was brown sugar and water boiled until it was so stiff it could walk around the kitchen. You got the added bonus of learning how not to end up in the emergency room when working with boiling sugar.
The Overlord took my initial passing interest in cake history to mean that I intended to pursue a culinary career focused on cakes. I was inundated with all sorts of cake baking information and recipes. (You may be thinking, “What’s the problem with that? Just turn off those articles.” Hah, like I’m in control of the Overlord’s output.) The real problem is that I’m compelled to try out some of the more outrageous versions of cake. I hadn’t heard of the dump cake phenomenon before, so I tried that out one time. It was pretty ugly, and not at all as nice as pineapple upside down cake.
I think I have the Overlord outfoxed, though. I can make as many cakes as I like, as long as I give all the cake away. I have a cake resolution to work on, you know.
