Piece of cake

Have you ever wondered where the expression "piece of cake" comes from? Or why it means something really easy? I mean, I love cake, and eating it is definitely easy, but making it... not so much. Especially when you're house-sitting and not in familiar kitchen territory. Or starting a new job and haven't made it to the grocery store yet this week.

I'm going to a vegan dinner tomorrow night, and I wanted to make something from one of these many vegan cookbooks I've been checking out from the public library, skimming periodically, and returning. I picked "Kentucky Velvet Cake" from The Garden of Vegan, by Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer, because it sounded tasty and fairly easy, and I had all the ingredients already. The plan was to then make a mint chocolate icing to frost the cake. And I'm house-sitting for 2 weeks.

So I brought all my cake stuff over with me, and planned the timing carefully... I'll be going straight to the dinner from working my new job tomorrow, so I had to make the cake tonight. After choir rehearsal. The chocolate chips took longer to melt than I expected, and I may have over-stirred a little, but otherwise the batter came together pretty well, I think. I had just enough soy milk left in the carton to make the 1/2 cup required.

I went to put the cake pans in the oven, only to find that setting the oven temperature isn't enough to turn it on - there's another knob that has to be turned from "Off" to "Bake." So the oven wasn't preheated after all. Having no idea what impact this was likely to have on the consistency of the cake, but not having much choice in the matter, I set the oven to start heating, set the timer to be ready once the cake went into the oven, and put away the dishes and utensils. The oven heated pretty quickly, and I put the two cake layers in the oven, and turned to the icing recipe.

Turns out the icing calls for soy milk, too - and I had none left, not even the 1/4 cup listed in the recipe. So I went to work on some email and worship planning.

Approximately 35 minutes later, the lovely chocolatey smell coming from the kitchen was starting to change to something a little less sweet... I went in to check and realized I never started the timer!

So my cake is a little overdone. And unfrosted. So I'll have to make frosting after work tomorrow (at the location of the dinner... fortunately, I'm dating the host, so he probably won't mind!), set it to chill during dinner, and frost it right before we eat it - assuming it turns out to be edible. Sigh. The best laid plans... rarely turn out to be a piece of cake!