Cakes with whom I have philosophized

Have you ever arrived home after a long day at school, or work, or even an hour at the gym, and despaired at having all of the ingredients to make food, but no actual, palatable food?

Cans of condensed soup? Shelf-stable cheese? Better go find a Pinterest recipe. source

I imagine you have. Takeout to the rescue, y’all.

First take

It was about a year ago—a year ago this coming week, in fact—that I made my first cake. Solo. No mix. I don’t believe I had ever made a cake on my own, box or not, yet I was determined to do so despite my total reliance on my mother to even cream butter and sugar in the KitchenAid up to that point in time.

Oh, all the sweat and toil I could have been spared...source

The occasion: mom’s birthday. In exchange for providing my brother, myself, and my poor, pasta-making dad with sustenance day in and day out, I would make a single cake to celebrate the anniversary of when my mother busted out of her own mother’s nether regions. A suitably grand occasion for cake-making.