More Cake

(Continued from last week)

This week, I finally got over a cake-related trauma that I had been suffering from for a while. A few years ago, I baked a birthday cake for my colleagues at work. I spent a whole Sunday afternoon decorating it with very uplifting colorful frosting and icing. It looked pretty great. But a weird thing happened. No one seemed to take seconds and people said with a painful smile “Hmm, this is delicious.” I just knew that something was not all right. The cake wasn’t gluten free so I couldn’t taste it myself to verify what was going on. My heart broke when I discovered slices of my cake in the garbage can. When I got back home that night, I discovered that the oven was busted and that the cake probably hadn’t been baked. I know it’s not the end of the world, but my fragile ego was so discouraged that I decided not to bake anymore. Until last week. My colleague brought her homegrown Granny Smith apples to work and I decided to use them for an apple crumble. I figured I had enough traumas and I should at least try to get over a couple of them. One of my friends invited me to a potluck and tasked me to bring desert.

My apple crumble was an instant success. It was gone in five minutes. And not in the garbage can this time. Much to the chagrin of our hostess’s smart dog Anna Belle who had been patiently trying to get a piece of it. Anna Belle knows the word “cookie,” and our hostess spells it or says it in Mandarin to avoid that AB understands the cookie-related conversation and gets over-informed. My friend may be underestimating her dog though.