The Cake-Baking Contest

Men can be so competitive. Some thrive on it. Even I can be drawn into a good competition, especially if it is fun.

A church I attended in Ottawa was looking for ideas for fellowship. I suggested a cake-baking contest among the men. The women would be the judges. I was surprised how quickly all the men leapt into the challenge.

Everything had to be made from scratch. No cake mixes were allowed. There were two categories, presentation and taste. I wasn’t too concerned about the presentation, but I wanted the bragging rights that went along with the best-tasting cake.

Marie was having a shower at our house a few weeks before the judging, so I thought I would do a trial run on my masterpiece. The name of my cake was The Poor Man’s Black Forest.

Since I knew women would be the judges, and since I know women love chocolate, I made sure there was lots of the decadent substance in it.

One of the secrets of the recipe is black cherry jell-o. You make it, but don’t let it set. When the cake comes out of the oven, you prick the cake all over with a fork and put the jell-o mixture in it to be soaked up. The end result is a very moist, very heavy, but very rich and tasty dessert.

The women at this shower gobbled it up. Sounds of satisfaction emanated from the dining room. It was in the bag. I’m sure I would be the winner. All I had to do was duplicate the recipe.

Oops! I had forgotten to write down what I had done. I figured that this would be no problem. I had done everything by taste, so all I had to do was add the ingredients until it tasted the same.

The Sunday of the competition came. Since I wanted my cake to be fresh, I waited until the morning to bake it. I rushed around the kitchen and created what I thought was the same recipe and plunked it in the oven. When it came out and I placed it on the plate for icing, it looked perfect. The only problem was that I hadn’t calculated into my preparation the time needed for letting the cake cool.

I started applying the icing – chocolate, of course. I had to keep the women judges happy. The cake started crumbling like a building being demolished. Large chunks my masterpiece were being consumed by the icing, forming large gobs of a gooey mess. My cake was ruined.

Like a true sport, I entered it anyway. It didn’t come last. Last place went to a joker who had made a phoney cake out of concrete. One of the competitors left his cake outside and a couple of dogs ate half of it, so it came in second last. My cake was next.

There is no doubt that my cake tasted fine, it just didn’t look like a cake. It resembled a pudding.

I did learn something though. In order to prepare a cake, you have to give it time. You may have put all the right ingredients in it, but it has to take time to bake and cool before you can put icing on it. If you try to hurry it, it just won’t work.

This applies to many things in life. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing right, and that often means having patience for the process to take place. Many, myself included, have to work at learning to wait and have the faith that the reward at the end will be well worth it.

Now, anyone for a piece of my cake?