Birthday Cake Disaster

When I was a teenager, my friend Eva had a natural talent for cooking and baking, and everyone in my class was jealous of her. Our mothers always had sour expressions on their faces when Eva’s mom bragged about the delicious food Eva cooked, but our moms had nothing to brag about.

Eva’s 14th birthday was coming up, and she relentlessly teased Gabi and me about the stir-fry disaster she had witnessed us cooking when she came over to my house, unannounced. Gabi got angry and hastily promised Eva that we would bake her a birthday cake. Eva had a smirk on her face and said, “You’re on. My birthday party is Saturday. Bake me a cake, you two. I dare you!”

I got mad at Gabi for making such a foolish promise and yelled at her, “Have you lost your mind? She’s gonna laugh and tease us for thirty years if we mess it up, and we will.”

“We can do it, no worries! We’ll show her!” Gabi said, but her voice didn’t sound too confident.

So, Saturday morning, Gabi came over to my house to bake the cake. We didn’t want to ask for help, and my mom was on a business trip, so we had the entire kitchen to ourselves. We read Mom’s recipe at least 10 times, and then we followed it down to the letter. I mixed the yolks with sugar, Gabi beat the egg whites, and then we folded the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder into the batter, and we poured the mixture into the cake pan.

Gabi carefully picked up the pan to put it in the oven, but then she hissed angrily and put the pan back on the counter. “The oven is cold! Why didn’t you turn it on?”

“Oh, no!” I shouted. “I thought you did!” I rushed to the stove and turned the oven on.

“It’s okay, let’s put the cake in,” Gabi said.

“No, we’re supposed to preheat the oven before we put the batter in. Look, it says so on the recipe.”

“Okay, then let’s wait.”

Finally, when the oven reached the right temperature, we put the cake batter in and set the timer. Then we made the frosting. We mixed powdered sugar with butter and cocoa powder, and when it turned creamy, we put it in the fridge to chill.

The timer went off. We put the cake on the cooling rack, both of us feeling proud of how beautiful it looked. We decided to watch a movie while the cake cooled enough and was ready for frosting. After half an hour or so, Gabi went out to the kitchen to check the cake.

“Erikaaaa!” I heard her scream, and I rushed to the kitchen to check on her, thinking that she fell or something. “Look at that!” she cried out, pointing at the cake. “The middle of the cake has totally caved in!”

I stood frozen, staring at the miserable looking cake. “It’s because the mix was sitting there too long. We should have preheated the oven. Mom always turns the oven on before she starts mixing the ingredients. What are we going to do?”

Gabi stared at me for a few seconds and then her eyes wandered over to the kitchen utensils and she said, “I have an idea. You have that large, glass syringe over there that your mom uses to inject juice into the turkey before she bakes it. Why don’t we fill it up with pudding and inject it inside the cake? It will fill up that crater, and we won’t even need to cut the cake to put the frosting inside.”

“Okay, it sounds good to me, let’s do it. But, oh no!” I cried out. “I ate the chocolate pudding, and we only have the cherry pudding that mom made yesterday.”

“That will do,” Gabi decided.

The cake looked beautiful by the time we filled it up with pudding and frosted it. We put it in a cake box and headed over to Eva’s house. She was impressed when she saw the cake and placed it on the table. Gabi and I were proud as peacocks. When all the guests arrived, Gabi lit the candles and put the cake in front of Eva. We sang, then Eva made a wish and blew out the candles.

“Cut the cake,” Gabi said and handed the large cake knife to Eva.

Eva pierced the middle of the cake and started slicing. When the knife sank into the cake, dark red cherry pudding started flowing like lava onto the cake plate.

Gabi and I stared at the plate feeling horrified, but luckily, Eva smiled and said, “I love it! Thank you, guys!”

We gathered around and ate the cake with spoons instead of forks, and Eva didn’t tease us because the unintentional lava cake tasted delicious.

This short story is part of my short story collection:

Rainbows and Clouds