I think I might have to beg to be a little different. It can’t be a disaster after all. Well at the end, I was able to figure out, how wonderful some things are.
So it started with each ingredient getting added themselves into the bowl, actually missing the target of the kitchen top and by mistake making it into the bowl. Nonetheless, they made it. As they say, alls well that ends well. The only concern was, it was just the beginning.
Figuring out the right movement of the beater was a skill in itself. Clockwise, counter clockwise, ups, downs, tumbles, wobbles, and all the directions that I don’t even know exist in the dictionary. As always, for one mixing two beaters had to sacrifice their existence.
Once the white, pure, soulful and sweet smelling batter was ready, it was time to excite the baker to get red hot. I think I calculated a little wrong; the baker was an electron powered one; which needs not even a single click to be hot and ready to burn.
In goes the batter into the baking pan, and the pan into the baker and the baker into sublime tranquillity.
My mobile has powerful software developed for the purposes exactly opposite to what I use it for. Set the timer to go off when the three quarters of the hour finish themselves.
Well, that was the silence of the hurricane yet to strike the beautiful coast of my homely beach!
My chemistry teacher had once warned me, not to over heat sugar else it burns into charcoal. Not to excite the heat to the extent that the soft spots cannot handle it.
But who cared? I didn’t. Neither then, nor now
Within one quarter of the hour, beautiful fragrance of the burning sugars filled the room. Within another, smoked the very space
At first, it seemed to be a simple fog. Later when the shock of the overhead smoke detector paralysed me, I realised that the power it had to summon the red dressed men and drench the whole place just to find that the culprit was the chemistry teacher who couldn’t imbibe sense into her students.
As expected, instead of the golden, crispy, edgy piece of white cake it was the black, coaly, harsh piece of, I don’t even know what the chef of the recipe would have called it.
Then started the actual war! Steps that need to be taken when we underestimate the prowess of the enemy; when we over estimate our skills of converting the typed words into sweet dumplings; when we don’t even care to estimate the reach of the so called saviours from the Smoke(d) Angel.
All fans, all windows, all exhausts and all newspapers gone into just one purpose, keep the sirens at bay. But alas on it goes. Just at the right moment. Just at the end of the three quarters. Long Live Nokia
Once the initial outrage was dampened, it was turn to look into the contents under the burnt top.
One thing I forgot was that, though sugars burn, they also form a protective layer to save the other things from blackening.
Once the layer was ruthlessly cut and thrown and disposed off the gargling wash basin; the golden, fluffy, edgy, cutie and some other words from the romantic part of the same dictionary evolved out.
So soft, sweet and that 4 lettered word of caution; it was brilliant
It pained to cut it out from the unyielding pan. And the cake that should have been a 9 by 9 piece was nothing more than 2 pieces of the size 8 by 4. The better part though, instead of one cake, I now have two.
I tried to see what could be my best option at this hour. How can I cover up the disaster looking face so that the test subject I had readied would not be able to find out?
Then it dawned about the two cans of spray I had got as a free add-on – the Red and Blue icing machines that can give my disaster a look of Madonna.
No looking back, just pouring on, on to the cake top to make it look as if it was made just out of the glaring recipe printout.
As nothing can be copied or reproduced, the icing wasn’t a victory as well.
But as I always held, who cares! After all, what matters is, it’s a cake, with the icing, with the colours, with the eater, with the test subject and the Universe mute enough to accept it. So, nothing to say when nothing is asked
That reminds me, the baking pan still awaits my hands on its rickety, rugged and rough curves to get it back into its smooth shape.
But the legacy lives on. The legacy of making the black into the white, filled with the speech of the first Black Presidential candidate into the fluffy grounds, added with the colours of the very country and topped with the cover up of the very existence.
A cake is born, that not only baked but also baked its baker and the bake maker!
SHAIKSPHERE