Piece Of Cake

Yesterday evening Bison Daughter decided that I wasn't spending enough time with her. She announced this just before I left for my soccer game so, burdened with a small amount of parental guilt, I figured I needed to do the attentive dad thing today. The trouble with the weekend, as I pointed out last week, is that it's apparently impossible to find anything worthwhile to do here that doesn't involve a) shopping, b) eating, or c) pointless walks. I tried to come up with something during the morning, while Bison Daughter was at dance class and I was lifting weights, but by lunch time I still had no idea. Consequently when she suggested we make a cake I agreed, in spite of the fact that it necessarily involves both shopping and eating.

Now, when I say "make a cake" I mean a real cake, with flour and eggs and fat, not a "remove contents of packet and add water" cake. Those are for wankers. I can't cook worth a shit - men who like to cook are most assuredly either homosexual or at least bi-curious - but cakes are just about following instructions. You add the bits, mix them up, put the result in a tin and shove it in the oven - it's not rocket science. Bison Daughter picked a recipe from this kids' cake book that mother-in-law had sent her as a gift and we assembled the ingredients. These included flour, sugar and eggs, plus a disturbingly large quantity of fat, in the form of sticks of margarine. There was another full stick of butter mixed with half a pound of melted chocolate, just for the icing.

That's one thing about making a cake, as opposed to buying one - you know exactly how much sugar and fat you're consuming, and it gets your attention. I could practically feel my arteries hardening as I mixed in the margarine; the last step in the instructions for this cake should have been "Experience numbness in left arm and shortness of breath. Clasp chest in sudden pain and sink to knees as sound of screaming relatives fades away."

The other thing this cake required was ground rice. Don't ask me why - I can't cook, remember? But the recipe said to add it, and I don't own any. I wasn't about to ponce around the supermarket looking for it so I just ground up some normal rice and put it in. It would have worked just fine, had I ground it up a bit more, but as it was it gave the resulting cake a somewhat gritty texture that left me wishing I'd just left it the fuck out.

This aside, however, the cake was a success. It must be about two thousand calories a slice, with eight times your daily recommended fat intake, but Bison Daughter enjoyed making and decorating it, and I got to put a tick in the "attentive dad" box. I also got to put a tick in the "fat wanker, one step closer to death" box, which wasn't such a good move. Couldn't mother-in-law have sent anything more healthy than this saturated fat death-book? Maybe after I keel over they can throw the cake cookbook on the top of my coffin - it would be fitting.

Of course I may well outlive Mrs Bison, in spite of my lard intake. In fact I'd say there's a finite risk that she'll die of shock today, just as soon as she sees the fucking mess we made in the kitchen. There were no instructions about that in the recipe, you see...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison