The evidence is gone, the error consumed. Only the following written account remains.
We were watching British Baking Show when Michael said he liked mirror glaze cake. He didn’t ask me for one, or say that he would like it for his birthday, but that was coming up, so I decided he would get one made by me. Only his birthday came up too soon.
I was flushed by my recent successes at baking, mainly bread, which I’d taken up because of food TikToks (like most humans, I am highly influenceable). Compelled by the insidious subliminal force of informational videos, I made it my quest to understand the intricacies of the art of bread-making, so as to remain useful after the impending fall of civilization (TikTok says the signs are all around!). I now know about urban foraging, and how to collect wheat and separate the chaff, germ, and flour (none of which I’ve actually done yet). I have perfected a milk bread for sandwiches, and have mastered a no-knead dutch oven loaf.
But I need lots of wind up time and no stakes when trying new things. No longer will I just youthfully leap right into something, only to discover in the middle of the doing how ill-prepared I was to even start. It’s an emotionally draining process: discouragement, depression, abandonment, a mess.
Now older and wiser, I started this cake-glazing project strong. Looked over the ingredients, made a shopping list. Envisioned the unfamiliar steps, particularly the pouring of the glaze. I would make a Swiss roll cake (since that had been the episode of British Baking Show we were watching when I decided to do it). Mentally prepared, with all the components gathered and laid out on the counter, I found that I didn’t have the specific sort of pan required to make a Swiss roll cake.
What are the dimensions of this item? Who has one? Take the Metro to Sur Le Table at Pentagon City, or just drive to Target? That would mean getting dressed, possibly not finding it, then having to drive somewhere else. All after being recently traumatized by a solo outing to Mount Vernon (to buy Michael a birthday present, by the way). George Washington’s Mount Vernon is half an hour down the road and Michael has driven me there at least a dozen times, but my brain won’t hold a map. I navigate by landmark, which I can only learn while driving and being told where to turn.
You’d think: Google Maps to the rescue! That’s what I had thought a few days before, when, flushed from my success at using it to drive my mom around in unfamiliar Missouri territory, I made a solo foray to Mount Vernon to get Michael a birthday present. We didn’t have a mount for my phone, though, and I was already on the road when I realized Bluetooth hadn’t connected for voice directions. An hour later I’d ended up in Mount Vernon, Virginia, which is not George Washington’s Mount Vernon (the Post Apocalypse will eat me alive). In a panic at the thought of repeating that misadventure, I dumped the whole cake-making project. Michael got his slice of mirror glaze at his birthday dinner in Alexandria. The failure ate at me for weeks.
Two-and-a-half of weeks, to be precise, when Ben’s upcoming birthday offered me a chance at redemption. My oldest son has recently moved to Virginia from Colorado. For his birthday he wanted his mother to make him his favorite dish, chicken parm. That’s what we call it, though my version has no tomato sauce. It’s more accurately scampi with breaded chicken. Anyway, I had just gotten over my first case of COVID (after four years, it finally got me), but I was determined to overcome my fatigue and not let anyone down again. Keep in mind, neither of them had asked me to make them a birthday cake.
I scrapped the Swiss roll idea right at the start, and decided to make the cake from a box rather than scratch. I followed the simple glaze recipe precisely. While the white chocolate melted in the microwave in 15 second intervals, the Gelatine “bloomed” in 1/4 cup of water. I think that’s where things went wrong. By the time I got back to it, the gelatin looked like a bowl of jello that got hit by an immersion blender. Gelatinously chunky.
Trust the process! I carried on, splitting the chocolate/gelatin mixture into four bowls, then stirring in the gel food coloring: red, orange, green, blue. “It’s like Easter,” I excitedly called out to Michael. “Come watch the magic!” He helped me pour the four colors simultaneously into one larger bowl, to create a marbling effect that would then be poured over the cake.
Suitably chilled and mortared with lovely whipped Nutella, the two-layer cake was waiting on the cooling rack over a parchment-lined cookie sheet, to catch the excess glaze. Was it shiny like a mirror? Yes. Did it marble? At first. But it was thin. The colors ran off too quickly in four different directions with jagged borders, like on a Grateful Dead skull. Hoping the slide of the glaze would slow in the fridge, I walked away for the night.
The next day I found that the chocolate had indeed thickened, and there was marbling, but it was all underneath on the parchment paper. Problem-solver that I am, I thought to simply lift up the paper and drape it over the cake! Except the chocolate was very heavy and sticking to the parchment, which was very fold-y. A spatula moved it a scoop at a time, but the marbling disappeared and the glaze became a dull, flat purple.
A cruel and mocking gift to give Ben. He’s red-green colorblind and can’t see purple without color-correcting lenses. But he’s a pure soul with proper priorities in life, just grateful that his mother had gone to the trouble of trying. The chocolate developed a nice crust that kept the seepage of the Nutella filling to a minimum. I sliced into it, right there in front of everyone at the table. It was like the scene in The Mummy when they find Imhotep’s body and say it looks… juicy. Everything under the crust oozed thickly and slimily, like a granulating wound.
But here’s how our family measures success:
Did it make us happy? Ben expressed with much laughter (not disdainful and mocking laughter, either) his love of the unique monstrosity.
Will we remember it? It gave me a reverse Proust, reminding me of something from childhood that I still can’t place. It will haunt me forever.Did it feed our souls? Well, it certainly didn’t feed Michael’s body. Too much sugar gives him diarrhea, which he had every day until the cake was gone. And doesn’t choosing days of diarrhea just say it all?