Newton’s Fourth Law: If Betsy is Baking, Something Will Go Wrong

When combing through Diane’s recipes for my last post, I came across the most brilliant image.

A heavenly light shone upon my computer. My eyes widened in delight. A choir of angels sang. I had discovered:

Z-Cake. You can see that ethereal light, can’t you? Or maybe it’s just a 100W bulb.

Sensei keeps giving me zucchinis, right? And he loves chocolate. This was perfect. But it got even better. I was told Coral would be in town for her birthday weekend and intended to come to class.

I text Mrs. Sensei.

The reason I asked about her favorite animal, is that for years I have forced enlisted my artistic children to make birthday cards and save me $3.49 for various people’s birthdays. Usually it’s for Joe’s classmates, so dragons have been drawn for many little boys. And girls. And grown men. And women. Because… dragons.

But Coral was also eager to spend time with her ailing, elderly dog, Pepper.

Here is precious Pepper. Shaping a cake into a dog was an intriguing challenge… for me to foist upon my children. We discussed sculpting techniques, making frosting in several shades of brown, and which piping bag tips would best resemble fur.

The next day, it was up to me to bake. The earth trembled a bit. As did I. This recipe, which Diane labeled, “Difficulty: Easy,” because she doesn’t understand what baking is like for mortals, required three separate mixtures.

Dry ingredients in one bowl: fine.

Wet ingredients in another included “1/2 cup sour milk.” Ummm? But she helpfully supplied: “Sour milk can be made by adding 1-1/2 tsp of either vinegar or lemon juice to a 1/2 cup of regular milk and letting it sit for 15 minutes.” And after those 15 minutes were up, the milk did indeed look sour, so I poured it in the bowl with some trepidation.

Then came the third mixture, which required pureed zucchini. No problem. Chop, chop, toss it in, turn on the blender. “Whiiiiiirrrrrrrr” and about three pieces chopped finer, but were nowhere near “liquified.” The motor ran, but nothing was spinning. I chopped smaller, took some out, tried again. Still noise but no spinny-spin, choppy-chop.

Text to Hubby. Time stamp shows this was an hour and 50 minutes into this process.

And when I began, I had turned on classical music, you know, to CALM me. It was at this point that I was picturing Chopin at a piano in the corner picking up the pace, making “Nocturne” sound more like “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

Possible solution? Turn to the neighbors.

But guess what? The back-up blender was just as useless. I needed to soften this zuke fast, so I semi-cooked smalls piles at a time in the microwave before blending it into a steamy mass of what looked like baby food, whether pre-or-post regurgitation could be up for debate.

Batch One. Uuuum… yum? Diane’s came out green. Why was mine a sickly yellow?!

I mixed my three bowls separately, almost as instructed.

“I was supposed to cream the butter, oil and sugar and THEN add the eggs, milk and vanilla?” Whoops. I threw it all in at once and stirred with gusto. Then gradually added the dry stuff, after having mixed it thoroughly, of course.

The dry ingredients looked sort of pretty, so I paused for a pic.

Next came the zucchini and “baking cocoa,” which I didn’t find at the store that morning, so I had improvised by blending chocolate chips into a powder prior to the zucchini fiasco.

Yes, yes, I got that excess flour off, don’t worry.

But was it any good?

Salmonella be darned. Yes, thankfully, it was good.

I got the pan in the oven while Chopin’s “Grande Polonaise Brillante” slowed to a normal tempo.

Then I paced, cleaned up a little, stared at the timer on the stove, and paced some more. I needed to pick up my kids at school. I would have to leave just as the timer went off on the lowest end of the bake time range. Would it be done in time for me to leave?

Of course it wasn’t.

When the timer went off, 3/4 of the inside jiggled when I shook the pan. Forget the toothpick test. That batter would reach out and suck that splinter of wood in whole if I even tried. I swear the toothpick in my hand looked and me and said in a tiny voice, “Please don’t make me.”

I was left with a difficult to decision: Keep the oven on and leave the house? (Obviously no.) Turn the oven off and leave the cake inside? (Would it then over cook in the waning heat?) Leave it in the oven but keep the door open? I liked this option, but it meant the oven light left on, wasting electricity. I opted to take it out and leave it on the stove, hoping I could bake it longer when I returned.

Once home again, I tapped Youngest Daughter to complete newly formed Plan B. Somewhere around Hour 2 of this adventure, I knew frosting the cake was out, as there was no way it would cool in time. So, as she set her books down and changed clothes, I gave the cake a few more minutes of bake time, pulled up the Pepper picture, and prepared a paint palette.

Three types of chocolate chips, plus the rest of the blended chocolate chip powder, butterscotch chips, and white chocolate chips.

She went to work.

She started with the eyes. As you can plainly see, the cake still didn’t finish baking, but there was nothing to be done at this point.

When an older sister wandered into the kitchen for a sample, Youngest Daughter admonished, “Quit eating my paint!”

You can see why Blog Buddy Mike Allegra once said of this daughter, “She is a national treasure. This is an intrinsic fact.”

And Coral’s reaction?

“Ohhhhhh myyyyy gossssshhhh…”

“I’m gonna cry.” (Pictured with Mrs. Sensei.)

Mission accomplished. 🙂

Fortunately, the cake tasted nearly as good as it looked, gooey center and all. It didn’t actually taste like chocolate cake with imperceptible zucchini flavor, the way Diane’s does. It tasted more like zucchini bread in cake form, but that’s okay.

And when class was over, and I returned to my car, guess what I found waiting for me.

Another zucchini. And so it begins again.

What do you think, y’all? Is my daughter an artist, or what? (I hope you read that as are-teest. If not, go back and read it again.) BTW, Coral’s please-help-me-save-dying-children-in-Africa medical school fund could use some love, if you felt so moved.