Men Like Women Who Cook

So I've decided to brush up my skills in the kitchen. They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, and I'm looking for love. I'm a modern woman, true, but even the most independent woman needs to know how to make some basic foodstuffs for her hunter.

I decided to start simple: baking a cake. Below is my secret recipe.


How to Make a Dump Cake

Start off making a pound cake.
Read the following ingredient list, but do not check to make sure you have everything you actually need.

Ingredients:

3 C flour
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 C. Sugar
1 C butter
1 ½ C . Sour Cream

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

10 minutes into mixing the ingredients for the pound cake, realize that you do not have enough sour cream. Substitute milk that is two weeks past the expiration date and just beginning to separate. Realize that you do not have enough milk to make up for the sour cream. Substitute two heaping tablespoons of cream fraise that has been waiting patiently in the back of the fridge for moments like these.

Continue mixing. Look at the batter warily and wonder what will happen to this cake. Search for lemon extract. Realize you are out of lemon exract and substitute the juice and zest of one lemon. Look at the batter warily again.

Keep mixing. Realize that you are short actual flour. Substitute cake flour and bread flour, and hope the equivalents are similar. Look at the batter with one eyebrow raised. Add sugar. Realize you are short in white sugar, and substitute powdered sugar. Pray over the batter.

Grease and flour a bundt pan. Pour the batter into the pan. Put the pan into the oven.

Wait.

After 30 minutes, sniff. The cake will smell done. Wonder, “How in the world is this cake done already?” Follow your instincts and check on the cake. Open the door. Look at the cake batter as it rises far above the pan and is dripping onto the burners in the oven. Shrug your shoulders and think “it’ll burn off.”

Go back to reading your book.

After 5 more minutes, follow your instincts again and check the cake. Open the oven door and watch plumes of dark grey smoke lead the angry orange and yellow flames shooting from the bottom of the oven, from the burners where the batter has landed.

Shut the oven door quickly.

Run and ask GOOGLE “Stop fire in oven?!” Thank GOOGLE for its expediency. Call three friends (two won’t answer the phone ) and ask, “Um, how do you stop an oven fire?” as a back up to GOOGLE.

Turn the heat off. Leave the door closed. Let the oven cool for about 6 minutes.

Cautiously open the door again. Take the cake out (by now it should be golden brown at the top). Take a butter knife. Scrape the burned bits off the bottom of the oven. Make sure to get all the bits, to prevent reigniting.

Look at the cake. It will look great. Be sad to have to throw it away. Think, “What the hell?” Put the cake back in the oven, with a baking sheet under the bundt pan to catch for any more batter drips.

Continue baking 20 more minutes.

Take the cake out. Serve it to your greedy vulture friends and co-workers. Smile.

Save the recipe for a romantic dinner at home with your boyfriend.

*This is a true, tested recipe.
Evelyn Parkside