Having your cake

Z and I went to our first cake tasting on Saturday. The cake maker was someone that one of my stepmum's patients had recommended and we were pretty excited because the cake was actually affordable. Plus, free cake! I mean, really, what could be bad about free cake?

Well, it turns out that lots can be bad about free cake. We arrived right on time, astonishing considering that we had to budget for the vagaries of bridge and 101 traffic. And we didn't even have to do a single u-turn. Things were looking good.

We were shown past the ceramic cherubs on the front porch into the baker's commercial-grade kitchen at her house. She asked us all sorts of questions about the kind of cake we want - flavors, design, how many tiers, what kind of frosting, flowers or not, etc.. To all of these questions we provided answers laden with uh's, er's, um's and we think's. Yeah, we had no clue.

Then she brought out the cake - four different kinds plus two small tubs of frosting. There was carrot, lemon, white and chocolate, plus chocolate chip and custard frostings. All of the cakes had different fillings. They all tasted like ass. And let me tell you, there's only one thing worse than eating bad cake: eating bad cake while seated two feet from the person who made the cake, a person who is intently watching your every move. In a valiant attempt to be nice, Z asked me which cake I liked best. For the record, this tactic was only nice to the cake maker and incredibly un-nice to me. I stuttered something about the lemon because it actually had flavor. My all-time favorite kind of cake is chocolate and raspberry. Knowing this, Z had asked the cake maker to bake us such a sampling. I have never tasted such raspberryless raspberry frosting. Blech! While we sampled and muttered, "Mmm's" the cake maker talked about how much she loved baking - she's been making cakes for 29 years. Her husband recently began to talk about retirement but, she explained, she can't imagine not making cakes. It's really what she loves to do. It's a pity that her cakes suck.

To be fair, I'm sure that there's someone out there who probably loves that kind of cake. We are not those someones. As we left, we agreed that were we to be given a slice of such a cake at a wedding, we would take one bite and put it down.

As we finished nibles, she asked us if we would like to take the remainder of the cake with us. Zack shot me a look and said yes - we couldn't really say, "No, ma'am, because we think your cake sucks.". Later that night, we brought the cake out for Z's sister and brother-in-law. Everyone agreed that equivalent cake can be found in your local Safeway deli section. I guess you pay for what you get - meaning that we're going to be paying a lot more for cake.

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On an entirely different note, I overheard the following while walking across campus today:

There's a difference between starting a war and starting a holocaust.

Adding the word, "Discuss" to the end of this would make for a great essay test question.