high-bar baking

In college we used the expression “classic prank” for things that were neither classic nor pranks. For example, if your date was 30 minutes late to dinner, we’d say, “Classic prank!” It was a phrase in our shared friendship language.

And the only thing I could think when I found my spatula last week. It had been missing for a couple of weeks at this point. I hadn’t thought anything of it. I knew no one had walked away with it; it had to be somewhere in the apartment. But when people come over for pizza and do the dishes, dishes don’t always end up back where I expect them to be. Sometimes they’re put in better places than before — my wooden pizza peel now decorates the backsplash next to the stove, resting behind my utensil colander. I like it there.

Usually the misplacement isn’t a big deal. I have to put myself in someone else’s head and ask, “Where would someone who isn’t me put this tool?” After a couple tries, I can find it. But the spatula eluded me. It was never urgent. I have backups. But it was started to nag me. I’d opened every drawer at that point, spun every utensil colander all the way around to triple check it wasn’t hiding behind something. The spatula was nowhere to be found. 

I was grating cheese for the next pizza night when I found it. I buy the cheese in bulk, cut it into narrow blocks that my cheese grating KitchenAid attachment can handle (a lifesaver, by the way. Totally worth it for me. Calibrate this recommendation according to your cheese needs), and then  freeze those blocks solid before bagging them until needed. I pulled some randomness out of my freezer to make space, and lo and behold. There’s my spatula.

Classic prank. 

This white cake is Grandma’s Snow Almond Cake from Two Chicks from the Sticks, and is the white cake I swear by. I topped it with chocolate frosting from my freezer. No idea what recipe that was. Pulling frostings out of my freezer sometimes makes me feel like the guy from the Progressive commercial, the series about people turning into their parents. “What’s this?” the therapist/trainer asks a homeowner who’s turned into his father, as he holds up a bag of mysterious spheres pulled from the deep freeze. “… Meatballs?” the fanny-packed homeowner replies. “Scotch eggs!” 

My freezer is a grab bag of maybe-Scotch-eggs. The frosting equivalent.