Another Year Older

Hello, Everybody, nice seeing you again.

WFMU DJ and sex bloggist Miss Amanda celebrated her birthday over the weekend. Yes, boys, she’s legal now, so line up! Over there … behind the girls, the dead-duck rapists, the porn-celebrity blow-up dolls, and the transgendered vegetables. I wish I could have bought her a really, really nice birthday present, but I couldn’t, so I made her a cake instead.

Once I started poking around, looking for my 9-inch round pans, I realized it’s been years since I actually baked a cake. I’m more of a pie and cookie baker, it turns out. But I have an old recipe for a killer devil’s food cake that involves making a separate chocolate custard that has to be folded into the batter, along with some beaten egg whites, and it is so complicated and so time-consuming that I figured no one else would bake it for her, so that’s what I decided to do—with pink peppermint buttercream frosting and 72% cocoa-content dark chocolate pastilles on top, to make it look kind of insane.

Of course, to make a proper cake you do need cake flour. Yes, you do. Cake flour is made from low-protein “soft” wheat, which gives the flour a low gluten content, it says here. It makes the cake more tender, okay? Okay, so just try finding it in your local supermarket—or, more to the point, try finding it in my local supermarket. You won’t. You can go to the next town over, and the next town after that, and clear to the next city, and you won’t find cake flour anywhere. And if you ask the grocery store people about it, they won’t know what the hell you’re talking about. I spent a lot of time wandering up and down supermarket aisles, feeling like Mrs. Brady, Old Lady, pushing my shopping trolley and muttering to myself about when comics cost a penny and they all were made of wood. And don’t even get me started about eggbeaters. You kids today don’t even know what an eggbeater is, do you?

Eventually I found some cake flour, and I got everything else I needed, and I baked the cake and was really happy with how it came out. (Except maybe I could have gone just a little easier on the peppermint extract.) But the whole shopping-for-cake-flour thing made me realize that, although I don’t like to admit it, I really am getting, um, older. It doesn’t seem fair that it’s Miss Amanda’s birthday, but I’m the one who’s aging.

Thanks for reading my blogpost this week,and may God bless.

Comments

[Jerry]

Amanda's of age huh? I thought this was a blog about sex? You're a special person for giving such a gift. I hope the eaters of the cake appreciate the effort and difference in taste from store bought. For several year, while growing up, I asked my mom to bake a cake from some kind of strawberry cake mix, which would turn out pink and have these little fau strawberry flecks of sugar througout. I loved it, but nothing compares to one made from scratch.