Can’t Make Your Cake and Eat It Too

Daily writing prompt

Write about your most epic baking or cooking fail.

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I once tried making a peanut butter and chocolate cake as a teenager. Baking the cake seemed easy as I had helped my grandmother make cakes in the past until I flipped the cake onto the cake plate. A crack about the width of the Grand Canyon split the middle of my cake, somehow separating the middle but keeping the edges intact.

Even so, I refused to be discouraged. If the cake wouldn’t pull itself together, icing and a second layer would.

Preparing the second cake layer, I dumped the proper amount of peanut butter, milk, salt, and butter into a bowl, going for the powdered sugar last. I reached for where I usually hid it, only to come up with a mist of powder left in the bag. In my final moments of decorating, I decided that frosting didn’t need powered sugar to become frosting. I mixed everything, substituting granulated sugar for powdered, and glued the cake back together. I slapped on the top layer and called it a day. That afternoon, I learned messing up is no excuse to throw out a chocolate cake; that powdered sugar is what makes frosting fluffy.