Onion Icing

Having five older brothers and only two older sisters, I tended to get all of the household chores that were traditionally given to girls. Thus, I helped my mother out in the kitchen as much as I could.

Mom was a crossing guard, so she usually had me do some of the kitchen jobs after I got home from school. She would then come home and put on the finishing touches.

We always seemed to have cake in the house. One of our rituals was to dig into a piece on Sunday nights while watching Ed Sullivan.

If you get to know me, you will discover that I love peanut butter. I grew up with the stuff. Even today, I put it on hot dogs and hamburgers. To me, it is the perfect condiment. Heck, it should have a food group all to itself.

On this particular day, my mom asked me to put some icing on a fresh, white cake. When I asked what kind of icing, her reply was, “Anything you want, but don’t put peanut butter in it.”

What? Not put in my favourite food? I then decided to experiment. A drop of this and a dash of that, taste a bit and I almost had it. I searched the drawer for the magic ingredient. I found it – onion salt!

I added it to the icing, tasted it and, yes, it was good. I pasted this spread on the cake. It looked like it came from heaven. There was one slight problem. After five minutes, all of the other ingredients faded away and the onion taste remained and it tasted like hell.

When my mom came home, she asked me what I put in the icing. My answer was, “Not peanut butter,” which kept her content for the moment.

Later that evening, pieces were cut for various members of the family. They dug into the dessert and enjoyed it. Then, five minutes later, as if on cue, there were more complaints than a department store after Christmas. Yuck, onion!

My mother was not too pleased. She didn’t say much. She just glared at me and thought of the perfect punishment. A wicked smile eventually creased her face. She said, “Since you thought this icing is so good, John, you will eat the rest of the cake.”

It took me several days to accomplish this feat. Future versions of icing were very tame and conventional compared to this one.

In this case, I was made to have my cake and eat it, too.

It’s funny how in life we do the same. There are so many nice things we can slip into the recipe, but once in awhile we slip in some onion salt into our icing, something that definitely doesn’t belong. Like my experience, it may taste great at first, but we often find that its unpleasant taste is what remains. Unfortunately, like my experience, once it is on the cake, we have to eat the result.