Melting Cake

If you have ever baked in an un-air-conditioned apartment in NYC in JULY, you know what a melting cake looks like. I did not.  I often look for reasons to bake and get into my baking element because it is therapeutic and something I have found to create joy for other people by doing something so simple. I enjoy baking for others and celebrating others. And birthdays should not pass without cake. Birthdays and cake goes together like birthdays and cake.

Being new to the NYC office crew, I have an entirely new team to familiarize myself with their birthdays and taste likes/dislikes/allergies.  Fun times!  I love taking someone's basic preference for cake and/or candy, and turning it into my own adapted creation.  This time it would be my first go 'round with red velvet.  Not just any red velvet.  Bridal-bootcamp-red velvet.  The colleague who's belated birthday I was baking for is getting married this year so she's committed to looking optimally fit for her wedding aka bridal bootcamp, so on top of the new red velvet experience, I also had to cater the recipe so it was low cal.  Her wedding that I pray I get invited to, because if I do recall she said, "Oh yes, there are plenty of eligible single men....." indicating that she should make an exception and invite me to her wedding.  Alrighty then!  I'm in!  Oh, well what I intended to say

But red velvet was actually not something I had experience with to date.  You would think that I would after all, since it seems to be one of the baking rages these days.  I just do not get the whole red velvet craze though, because I used an ENTIRE dye bottle's worth of the red beetle's wing juice for one lifetime.  All it is is a light chocolate cake with a lot, a LOT of red dye.  That's part of why I love baking, you see?  It's not entirely selfless; it's so that I get to experiment and hone my skills.

Sometimes you don't realize that your cake is melting until it becomes what could turn into a disaster, but you turn it into a masterpiece. And such is life.