Piece of Cake

My friend, Pam, reminded me of a story I told her years ago about one of my early culinary efforts and she wants me to relate it to you.  I honestly had forgotten all about it but some people obviously have memories like elephants and I probably need to learn to blab a little less if I want things to stay in the past. If I was crafty I think I would needlepoint a sign: "What Happens in Pat's Kitchen Stays in Pat's Kitchen" but I suppose if I don't tell you someone else will.

Bear in mind that these things happened long ago when I was first learning to cook.  I have been cooking a very lo-o-ong time since then so you are safe to eat here now. Usually. (Some daughters-in-law are the exceptions to the rule)

It was actually a few years after the first meal I cooked for Dennis when I used all the milk in the mashed potatoes and there wasn't enough left to thin the gravy and he put the potatoes on top of the gravy instead of the other way around. And it was a few years before the time I tried a new recipe and when we finally gave up on it and decided to go out for pizza and I put it on the floor for the dog and she only ate the broccoli next to it. Now that I think of it, once we could afford it we did eat out a lot but I thought it was just because Dennis likes to socialize.

I don't remember who was coming to dinner that night but it was someone I wanted to impress so I decided an angel food cake would be good and low calorie too. The recipe called for lots of eggs whites without the yolks, whatever that was about, and after a few futile attempts at that trick I finally figured out that you can break the egg into a little funnel and the white goes through but the yellow stays in the top.  Then you had to beat all those egg whites and "fold" them into the rest of the batter.  Remember that Rachel Ray had not been born yet, so I had never heard of folding in regard to anything but laundry---and maybe money. I decided that it probably meant "gently".  So I gently layered the egg whites and all the other ingredients together, poured them into my wedding gift tube pan and put it into the oven.

I was a little disappointed when I took it out of the oven and it seemed to be about the same height as when it went in but I kept on following the directions. They said you should invert the tube pan onto a large funnel to let the cake cool, but since the only funnel we had was the tiny one I had used to separate the eggs I set it over a Coke bottle, same concept it seemed to me, and went on fixing whatever else we had planned for the meal. The exact menu has mercifully escaped me.

When Dennis came into the kitchen I looked for sympathy. "Look at the cake. It hardly rose at all!" I said.  And he said "You mean this cake wrapped around the Coke bottle?" The 2 inch high cake had fallen from the tube pan and impaled itself on the Coke bottle and there was no sliding it off, no how, no way. I didn't want to cut slices of it before our guest came, presentation being everything in entertaining, you know, but eventually that is what we had to do. And right there were all the ingredients: egg whites here, baking powder there, flour next to that, all in their individual tunnels. For some reason I think we had ice cream for dessert.

I have made lots of cakes since then, I can even separate eggs with only my hands, but rarely do I fold in ingredients of any kind. And here's a household tip: if you want to leave water outside for the dog but he knocks the bowl over as soon as you are out of sight, you can put the water in a tube pan, drive a stick down into the ground through the hole in the middle and the pan will stay in one place. You don't really want it for angel food cake. That comes from the bakery, if it all.  I found out Dennis doesn't like it anyway.

And if I remember anything else about the food that particular evening, I'm not going to tell anybody. Especially Pam.