We think we know everything; nothing is impossible to our young minds, at least that’s what my very young brain was telling me the day that I decided to make that cake. How hard could it be? I had seen my mother make them a million times. I knew that I could do it…

          I woke up the morning of April 12th with a definite plan in mind. Somehow I would banish my mother from the kitchen and there concoct a delicious cake-like substance with no help at all. Confident in my abilities, I imagined myself emerging from the kitchen carrying a beautifully frosted, three layer cake with an intricate design made of pink frosting decorating its snowy white surface. How deceived I was that beautiful spring morning.

              Of course my plan started out all wrong. My mother had no errands to run; no shopping she wanted to do; no books to read, not even an extremely long road to hike. Whatever was I to do? I finally decided to break down and just ask her to leave. “Mom, can I use the kitchen…um, without you?” As I look back on it now, I’m sure that my feeble attempts at surprising her were all in vain. It’s almost impossible to ask a mother to leave her kitchen in the hands of a twelve-year-old girl, especially on the morning of her birthday and not have the mother know exactly what is going on.

               However, I was an ignorant child and blissfully believed that my mother was sitting peacefully in her room working on the family bills with no knowledge of the scheme I was concocting at the kitchen counter.

              I piddled away for a few minutes trying to decide what kind of cake to use in my masterpiece. Yellow was nice, but chocolate was my favorite and I logically concluded that since it would be my choice then it should be everyone else’s. Chocolate cake from scratch is much too time consuming so I rifled through the pantry until I had found the ultimate prize – Pillsbury Extra-Moist Chocolate Cake. Victory!

              The smooth brown goo was finally in the greased pans and baking at a very high temperature. I turned to survey the counter and realized for the first time just how messy it was. I noticed too, a slight uncomfortable feeling in my stomach which usually comes about when one has eaten too much sugar. I’m sure there was cake batter on my cheek and the white apron I had on was spattered with chocolate. But why waste time cleaning that mess up when it would just get messy all over again when I made the frosting? I dashed into my room and settled down with my Nancy Drew book, waiting for the timer to go off.

              The cakes were cooling and I stood at the counter puzzling over a cook book. Was I supposed to add the milk and then the sugar or put the sugar in and then add the milk? Oh well, it all got blended together anyway. I dumped in my cups of powdered sugar, carefully scraping off all the excess I could with a butter knife. By the fourth cup I had lost count, so I just tossed a few more in and hoped that it would be sweet enough. The mixer speed went straight from zero to five; sugar flew right into my face; I shook my hands violently in the mixer’s direction, demanding that it stop immediately. My mom called from the bedroom,

              “Are you doing all right?”

              “Umm, yeah…I’m fine!” Not!

             With my frosting finally completed I turned to the cakes, sitting innocently on the cooling rack; my work was almost done. Oh horrors! They had both fallen in the middle! What was I going to do? I stacked and restacked; tried them one way and then the other, but they still didn’t look right. I sighed violently and did the one thing I had vowed to myself that I would not do with the project, “Mom, I need help!”

              My delusions of success were being cut down just as fast as the tops of my cakes were being corrected by Mom’s knife. But with a slightly corrected surface and a bowl of white frosting in hand, I shooed her out of the way again and set to work.

              What is this? The white frosting has little brown specks of cake in it now! The cake was falling apart under my slapping knife. What to do? Oh, what to do! My only help lay in the one whom I have sworn to surprise! Oh despair! Oh failure. Why had I ever taken it upon myself to complete this task?

              That night we feasted on a very lumpy, two layer chocolate cake covered in speckled white frosting and decorated with weak pink border around the edges. The words, scrawled in cursive, were lopsided and barely legible. My cake attempts had ended in disaster and my brain told me that here was one thing I knew nothing about.