Urgent Dessert

When I arrived at Tiffy's to pick up the kids today -- after an afternoon spent wrestling with fishing line, eyehooks, duct tape, and a bunch of artifacts I'm putting up in the historical society window -- Lauren was busy in the kitchen making very promising sounds with an electric mixer.

"Whatcha makin', Lauren?"

"Greg's birthday cake." Greg is the housemate who teaches Josie bass. In fact, the two of them were holed up in his room at that very moment, with the strains of "Plea from a Cat Named Virtue" emanating from under the door.

"Another birthday? Wow, what a week!"

"His birthday was actually last week, but I couldn't make the cake then because of my broken arm."

Her arm is now out of the sling and reasonably functional (hooray!). We watched as she slathered chocolate-tinged whipped cream mixed with whole raspberries on top of the third layer of the cake, which was listing slightly. Then she laid the fourth layer of cake on top, poured warm raspberry sauce on it until it was soaked through, and piled a final layer of chocolate whipped cream on top of that. We stood gazing in awe at her creation, which somehow achieved both supreme culinary artistry and a kind of lumpy, homemade aesthetic.

I asked her if working at the bakery had inspired this new level of dessert production, or if she'd always made such complicated cakes. She said she'd picked up some tips -- like the textural benefits of whipped cream instead of icing between the layers, and the practice of soaking the cake with various aromatic liquids -- but that there are many other bakery secrets she hasn't yet penetrated.

I looked at the cake again, and noticed that it really was listing quite a bit now. It appeared that the slight slope of each layer had inadvertently been aligned, rather than counterbalanced, throughout the stack. This arrangement, combined with the slippery nature of the whipped cream, meant that the entire confection had now exceeded its angle of repose, and was slowly sliding, like a rain-soaked Malibu bluff, off the platter. Efforts to push it back failed; an ill-advised attempt to redistribute the weight by rotating the top half of the cake was quickly abandoned. It was clear that the only viable course of action was to start eating. Fast.

Leaving Lauren and Tiffy to stem the tide as best they could, I raced to Greg's door and knocked. He and Josie looked up from their basses. "Excuse me -- I hate to bother you -- but it turns out there's actually some urgency around your birthday cake. Can you come to the kitchen right away?"

And that is how we all ended up sitting around the table with Tiffy and her charges eating enormous heaps (you couldn't call them pieces, really) of the most extravagantly delectable chocolate cake ever, fifteen minutes before dinner.

And yes, it did ruin our appetites, but we didn't care. We were grateful for the reminder that gravity is the law, momentum is real, and some problems can't be solved once they're underway... but disaster can sometimes be averted if enough people are willing to grab a plate and dig in before the sweet stuff hits the floor.

Happy Birthday, Greg!