I’ve never baked a cake from scratch before. I was bored today and thought I’d give it a try. Here are some things you should know about baking cakes:

  • The instructions are spiteful bitches that want to see you fail so they don’t tell you that Martha Stewart is right about the parchment paper. “Grease and flour,” they say. Then they laugh at you behind your back. The instructions are the Mean Girls.
  • If you don’t have wire racks to cool the cakes on after baking, an ungreased, inverted pizza pan is a poor substitute. Though, if the cake will ooze through the pizza pan holes, I’m not sure how a rack would have been better.
  • Good news: If the cake doesn’t come out of the pan, you can indeed scrape the guts out and mush them back into the cake.

  • More good news: If you make scratch cakes the way I make scratch cakes, making frosting is unnecessary. Unless you’re seriously crazy.
  • You’d have to be seriously crazy to try frosting this mess.

  • Take pictures at the beginning of the cake baking process so you have proof that you did at least half of it well. “Look! Gorgeous cakes. Couldn’t you just eat them right out of the pan?!”
  • I recommend eating the cakes right out of the pan. Simpler. Less embarrassing. Also, eating out of the same dish with other people says, “I love you enough to share your germs.” Or, “I love chocolate cake so much, I can overlook the fact you’re going to stick your slobbered-on spoon back into this pan. And then I’m going to do it, too.” It’s a bonding thing.
  • If you’re really bent on presenting your family with a cake you can slice and put on individual plates for them, try a dusting of powdered sugar.
  • If you don’t have a sifting thingie for sifting powdered sugar, a thin cotton towel isn’t a good stand-in. There’s something degrading and hopeless about patting a dusty sack over hot chocolate messes.
  • A tea ball works, though!

Making the best of a bad situation: