Substantial Cake

Ann’s cakes are amazing. She bakes chocolate cake from scratch that stays moist and tasty and light for a long time. We do not know how long because it is eaten up within a few days. It is always good.

So I was excited that she was going to bake our son’s birthday cake again this year. This time she chose to do a yellow bundt cake. That’s fun because she bakes it in a round, donut-shaped pan which leaves interesting grooves in the surface. Even though we were not leaving until Sunday, she baked it on Wednesday and when it was nearly room temperature, she put it in the refrigerator. Freezing it too soon would leave crystals that would spoil the surface when it thawed.

She busily prepared some other dishes that we froze over the next couple days.

On Sunday, there was the bundt cake, still in the fridge. We had put it in a two gallon zip-lock bag so it was not likely to dry out. But the gluten in the flour could firm up pretty much. When we got it out to pack to carry over to Orlando where we were to meet our family, we noticed it was, uh, sort of heavy?

The only way Ann could get it into the packing box was on its edge. Ann is a master packer so you know she was left with a desperate decision. Being a circular cake, and being, uh, sort of heavy? Well, you get the picture. We expected it to sag a little and maybe flatten one edge.

At worst, if the travel took a toll on it, we could break up the cake into pieces, mix them with chocolate pudding, cherry pie filling, and Cool Whip and call it a parfait.

As we put that box into the car, we checked the cake and found it held up on its fluted edge very well so far, no sagging or flattening. It still faced three hours travel time with the occasional bumps in the road.

As we drove, I asked Ann about the texture of the cake. I thought it was supposed to be like a sponge cake, soft and light. She said it was more like a pound cake.

The pound cake one gets at the store is a lot firmer than a sponge cake but still is pretty light.

As I recalled, pound cakes originally were a pound of sugar, a pound of flour, a pound of butter, and some eggs. Three one pound loaves could be made. They were not light, either. But they were pretty soft and soaked up strawberry juice if you used them for short cakes.

As we drove, I began to imagine trying to heft that bundt cake. If it was firmer than a pound cake, I thought about it as a hammer for nails. That was a notion about “pound” cake that ever occurred to me before.

When we got to Orlando and to the site where David found adjacent apartments for all of us, we checked to see how the cake did.

It stood on its edges proud and as round as could be. The fluting was not even dented.

When we got it in to the apartment, we put it into the fridge, keeping it hidden from David. We didn’t know if he’d laugh or cry!

After he and his family were in bed, we snuck out to the kitchen to test it.

It was so, uh, sort of heavy? Still! What else? We set it on the counter which groaned a little as it accommodated to the new weight upon it.

I struggled but finally slid the cake out of the zip-lock bag far enough for Ann to cut a small piece from the bottom of the cake.

It was crispy! And delicious!

We still had two days until we were to take it out and present it with candles and frosting, but we were a little more comfortable with the final result, provided our shoulder muscles held up from handling it.

I began to make comments to David about the cake that withstood riding on its edge all the way over from Port Charlotte. But I left in the air whether or not it would be any good for his birthday.

He didn’t bat an eye or even pursue any lines of questions.

He trusted his mother’s cakes . . . and packing.

By the time we served it on his birthday, he cut it, ate it, and then had another piece. Both were bigger than what I usually eat!

We are all looking forward to eating the rest of this, uh, sort of heavy cake?