Happy Birthday Mario Andretti!

Yesterday I decided to make a cake. It had been at least 3 years since I had made such an attempt, but I was confident that it wasn't going to be all that hard. It's from a mix. You add like two things and put it in the oven and you're done. My wife stared on in disbelief as I began to open the batter. She reminded me that we had company coming over in a half hour. I replied with my complete confidence that I would be able to make it, bake it, frost it, and eat it, and clean it with plenty of time to spare before we needed to entertain my guest. Well, my wife being the sweet and kind woman that she is expressed her doubt, but said that if I really thought I could, I should give it a swing. Now there's spousal support! Naively optimistic I pre-heated the oven and began to mix the ingredients...
Reality strikes:
The instructions casually inform me that to mix the cake it would take 2 minutes in a blender. Oh yeah, we don't have a blender. Alternative: 450 strokes by hand. Melanie points out that this is NOT a good time to use a whisk. Ok, so I pull out her Pampered chef mini-whipper. Dumb idea. A spatula, or more acurately, a Mix 'N Scraper. 450 strokes, by hand. 3 strokes a second = 150 seconds. Two and a half minutes. Not bad if your an olympic weight lifter, iron chef, my dad, or not a scrawny pencil neck nerd. After about thirty seconds I'm only 39 strokes through, (it would have taken me seven minutes at that pace) Melanie informs me that my strokes are getting "wimpy". She steps in, beats the batter like it had been bad, and hands it back to me to finish up with a few token strokes. While I'm trying to give the batter the most manly beating I can to redeem myself, Melanie asks if the glass pan would be alright. Still hoping, I reply that I was envisioning a two layer cake with chocolate frosting. 20 minutes to go. I'm not sure why Melanie is rolling her eyes while she shows me that in addition to oiling the 9-inch round pans, I've got to flour them as well. She does it for me as I look on.
Ok, the easy part. Put it in the oven. How long? 35 minutes. Dang. Well, maybe the company will come late. I put it in the oven and begin to clean up. Realizing that I had forgotten when I put it into the oven; Melanie reassures me that it has it has 23 minutes left. My gorgeous wife hints to me that if I want frosting, now would be the time to make it. So how does one make frosting anyways? Apparently you need cream cheese, which we don't have. Principle of cooking #1. Always check that you have the ingredients first. Can I run to the store? Nope, 10 minutes before the company gets here. Panic! It turns out that there is a pretty good recipe online for making frosting with sour cream. Now, I can't imagine that being even remotely edible. Imagining sour cream heaped on top of a cake as if it were a taco salad makes me gag. But just for the record it is fairly passable. It's nothing I would serve a General Authority, but it at least colors the cake. Knowing that frosting can be hard to make, I negotiate with Melanie that if she makes it, I'll do the dishes. She accepts. 5 minutes to go. Melanie whips out the frosting in no time and I'm lagging with the dishes. Fortunately the company arrives late and she is able to remove the finished cake from the oven, cut off the rounded top and let them cool before they knock.
What now?
Now for the tricky part. We've got a half done cake on the counter that needs to get frosted while we're playing a board game at the same time. I'm struck with the idea to play a game they've never played before. That equates to long turns and plenty of time to slip away and finish the cake. It turns out that the Pierces are pretty bright people, and Melanie and I individually are taking more time on our turns than they are together. But this cake needs to get frosted! I manage to sneak away on Melanie's turns to put our chocolate frosting between the cake as an icing and layer them. The next time I sneak away I find my cake resembling the San Francisco earthquake.

The frosting, not being icing, is too thin and slippery. The cakes are rounded in the middle and the top layer keeps sliding off the bottom. This is when I get the best idea I've ever had for cake "building". A civil engineer would be able to tell you that the bottom layer is handling the compressive pressure of the top layer just find. What is happening here is that the coupling between the layers is unable to take the shear load. So if YOU were building a tower that had shear pressure problems what would you do? The same as me. I pull out two bamboo skewers and stick them down into the cake from top to bottom. Shear problem solved! The cake layers stay on top of each other. However, the most labor intensive problem is still in frosting it, and the Pierces are only getting faster at the game. I try to sneak away again to frost the cake. I dump the frosting all over the top of the cake, but am quickly called back to take my turn. Forgetting that a whole bunch of frosting is now oozing all over my cake I run over, take my turn and return to find the cake completely frosted. Principle of cooking #2. Gravity is really really good at frosting a cake. Like a chocolate waterfall, my cake has been frosted in it's entirety by the wall of chocolate oozing from the top down the sides. Where it not for the lake of chocolate frosting that is now drowning the cake along the sides I'd say it were perfect. Here's a look. If you look closely you can see the shear supports. The nose is a left over chocolate from Valentine's Day.



Happy Birthay Mario Andretti!
Somewhat proud of this cake that I supposedly made (except for mixing it, putting it in the oven, taking it out of the oven on time, stacking it, and making the frosting, you know, the easy parts) I decide that we need to celebrate something. I don't know anyone with a birthday on February 28th. This is unsurprising as I know a total of 3 birthdays by heart. My own, my twin brother's and my wife's. December 26th, December 26th, and August 12th. No Februarys. Fortunately Wikipedia DOES know people with Febuary 28th birthdays. After some deliberation we settle on Mario Andretti. Check his webpage out at Wikipedia, or his own personal website. For those of you who are unaware, and that included me, Mario Andretti is one of the best race car drivers in the world and is one of the two drivers to win in NASCAR, Formula One, IndyCar, AND World Sportscar Championship. We sang him Happy Birthday, blew out the candles in his honor, and wished him a happy 68th birthday.


Happy Birthday! I was obviously freaking everyone out by now, so we cut the cake and ate it. It was delicious.