high-bar baking

“Didn’t the twins turn 16 last year?”

“Yes, and they will keep turning 16 until I tell them to stop.”

Classic words from Jane Lynch as the Evil Stepmother in Another Cinderella Story. Also how I feel about this particular cake combination. You will be seeing it again. We will all be seeing it again, until my freezer backlog of cookie butter frosting tells me to stop. My preferred white cake is too sweet to work alongside cookie butter, even with cream cheese in the mix. And I don’t want to do a more interesting base layer; we all know how I feel about less being more. So chocolate it is, and devil’s food cake. 

This was a work cake again, this time for a visiting dignitary, i.e. someone who outranks the general office populace enough to strike fear into our hearts. Not mine, of course, but everyone else’s. People are people, y’all. She’s seeing Taylor Swift in Munich because she wants to live a dream. This is not a dragon we are discussing. 

But I decreed a cake was required, so a cake it would be. Even though the guest of honour would go on to say a phrase I’ve repeated to myself often since, “The demands we place on ourselves are what we can control.” That’s all well and good. Cake for notable occasions is a demand I place on myself. 

I made an ill-fated attempt to cut said cake into 24 slices. It didn’t end well, as you can see in the near-artistic geometry I achieved. Some people scattered; after I scared everyone about having insufficient cake, there was cake left over. Such is the way. 

I wore a dress to work. I never do that. It’s interesting to adopt different personas through wardrobe. Who is dress-me? How does she act? How much spinning in the hallways does she do on her new Fuegos? (The answer is: much.) 

But also, and here’s the comfort disguised as insult — nobody cares. No one cares if you’ve made this cake before, and no one cares if you’re wearing a dress. No one even cares if you’re not sure it looks as good on you as everyone else seems to think it looks. You have cake, and you showed up. 

Adriene always says, showing up is the hard part.