When you CAN'T have your cake and eat it, too

I was going to start today by gifting you all with the traditional Monday Meme, but according to Aunt Becky (and I quote),

Meme’s, although a nice tool to get the writing juices flowing, are usually pretty dull to the reader. If you like doing ‘em, then fuck it and do ‘em anyway.

Well, I do like doing 'em, but I'll keep 'em on facebook. ;) (P.S. Aunt Becky's blog post? Brilliant. Go. Read it.) Instead, I'll bore you with a tale of cake.

My parents were visiting Friday night when Chebbar got a call from his uncle. Seems Chebbar's dad was looking after Little G and Baby Bam-Bam while Chebbar's sister was out of town. Uncle was calling to invite us over for a to-make-up-for-babysitting-all-weekend dinner for Father's Day dinner. Cool. Sounds good.

Saturday morning, we had the following exchange.
Him: Oh. We have to bake something.
Me, eyebrow raised: "We?" What's this "we" business? *laughing*
Him: Well, I told Uncle we'd bake something for dessert.
Me, still laughing: "We" will, will "we?"
Him, looking chagrined: Yeah... I told him we'd bring a cake or something...
Me, still laughing (lucky for him): What kind of cake am I baking?

Saturday night I baked a two-layer cake and Sunday I iced it. This was my first attempt at the two-layer cake: I've done coffee cakes, bundt cakes, pound cakes, angel food cakes, and cupcakes, but no two-layer cakes. I knew enough to know I had to wait until it was completely cooled before icing it; however, imagine my surprise when the top layer started sliding around as I tried to ice the outer edge! Ha! Needless to say, it was less than pretty (but passable all the same).

When we got into town, Chebbar tried to call Uncle to see if we could pick anything up. Imagine Chebbar's nervous laughter when, upon explaining that we were picking up ice cream to go with the cake, Uncle exclaimed surprise and told him that HE had already purchased a cake!

Yeah. That sound you heard? My head exploding a tiny bit.

The cake was one of those grocery store confectionery masterpieces with the eleventeen-inch sugar coma-inducing icing. Chebbar's grandmother chastised Chebbar and Uncle for not communicating more clearly, declaring that she would be eating my cake; I also wanted to try a piece of my cake. However, when Chebbar's dad began cutting and plating cake, there were no inquiries made into preference, and everyone was served the bakery cake.

It was gross. The icing was too sweet x 1,000 and the cake itself was really dry and crumby. I was quite disappointed that I'd wasted a cake eating on that icing-covered cardboard, while my Franenkcake sat unscathed. Boo.