10,000 Steps in the Kitchen

What a disaster yesterday was. I made a double batch of batter in the morning and then baked two cakes. I had them on a board and I was carrying them when I had a sudden onset seizure that had me about to fall, so I dropped the cakes when I caught myself from falling by grabbing the handle on the fridge. Both cakes were toast.

I had to start over. I decided to use baking pans and not the cookie sheets for the second round; it was a good decision as it led to cakes of two layers instead of three, so I needed less frosting. Brent, the other party host with Dana, wanted frosting that I had never made before. It’s made with evaporated milk and so I don’t like it. I can smell it in the frosting and I don’t like the smell. I’ve never used evaporated milk before, and now I’m glad I haven’t.

I was so frantically busy, I had no lunch. But I did feed the pets all their meals at the right time, and I took Her Highness for two short walks. On the first one, she found some poop to eat. Luckily, I caught her and she only had a small nugget. And to think I love this girl and love having her on my bed at night!

I didn’t get the second cake into the oven until 16:15, so I was baking all day (except for quickly going into the village for more sugar and eggs). I was totally exhausted as I began the herculean task of cleaning up. And today I get to go through this again, hopefully and most certainly without having another seizure.

The second cake came out of the oven at 17:00. The first cake was still too warm to frost, so my baking was going to extend into the evening. I wanted to get both cakes stacked, filled and topped with frosting, but I ran out of evaporated milk and couldn’t make enough frosting to finish. The frosting is lumpy because of the shaved coconut, and it’s caramel coloured; it lacks visual appeal, hence my desire to add the chocolate leaves.

When I finally quit to have dinner and watch a movie, it felt so, so good to finally stop moving. I was exhausted, hungry and worried about how much more work was ahead of me. I must make more of the awful filling for the second cake, wash, dry and de-stem the strawberries, and make two more cakes and the cream filling, so last night, while I watched TV, I was working on the strawberries. 

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It’s Saturday morning and I wish it was Sunday morning and all the baking was behind me. I’ve another busy, busy day ahead of me and what I want to do is nothing. I wish I’d never taken on this baking task, but now I must see it through. Sigh.

We’re back to eternal sunshine, but temperatures are predicted to stay in the high teens or low twenties, so that’s a plus. However, the weather is irrelevant today because I’ll be indoors all day baking. The oven calls….