A comedy of culinary errors!

Well, I did work on the cake – nearly all day. I gathered my ingredients, discovered that an essential one was missing – rum extract, but then decided that it was all right, as Rachael, for whom I was baking the cake, does not like rum flavor anyway. This is the cake that I had always made for my mother’s birthday, as she really liked it, and since Rachael and my mother are little twins with an 80 year age difference, it seemed like the cake to make. As I was about to mix the dry ingredients, the phone rang, and it was my aunt with some interesting gossip (the subsequent events drove the gossip out of my mind, so I can’t tell you what it was), and as I was really on top of things with this cake, I continued to mix the flour, salt and soda as I talked. Well, I confused the amount of sugar and flour, and put in too much flour. What to do???? If I just took out the extra half cup of flour, the salt and soda would not be right. But there seemed no other alternative. So I took out half a cup and put it in my food parings bin. As I creamed the butter and sugar, my Kitchen Aid seemed to be acting a bit odd, but I thought nothing of it. I added the eggs and flavorings – the dough was oh so yummy! Then, time to mix the dry into the wet. I put about a quarter of the flour, turned on the kitchen aid, and shades of “I Love Lucy!” There was flour everywhere! The picture was taken after I had cleaned 98% if it up. Now the soda and salt were really off. Margaret was thrilled, and lapped up what was on the floor. I scraped up most of what was on the counter, and put it into the batter. I examined the flour that I had thrown away, and found that most of it had landed on a banana peel, and was still quite pristine, so I carefully removed it from the banana peel and sifted it into the cake. My secret for getting cakes out of those fancy pans is really greasing with shortening, and flouring the pan with bread crumbs. Well – no bread crumbs! In desperation, I ground up an English muffin. Well again! Whether this cake could possibly turn out was a question! What else could go wrong? My Kitchen Aid could go completely bonkers and fall apart, that’s what. My sainted Aunt, who called again at a more opportune moment this time, as I was in tears about the Kitchen Aid, came rushing to my rescue, and we thought we had fixed it. (However, making bread the next morning proved that we had not.) I am happy to report that despite all the chaos, the cake was generally deemed to be awesome, and was beautiful as well as delicious. A miracle!