Fischberg Flashback 45: The Cake Is a Lie

Note: this was originally posted to Ben Around the Block on August 9, 2014.  I have made minor edits since. 

(Gratuitous Portal meme reference is gratuitous.)

As I’ve made abundantly clear in the last few blog entries, my summer is winding down.  As such, it’s only natural that I would try to squeeze as much as possible into these final few weeks.  This week, I’ve taken up every possible opportunity to go to court…but I’m saving that for a later entry!  This is all about cake!

Although I’ve already achieved my New Year’s resolution, my newfound love of cooking/baking has encouraged me to keep going and try new things for science.  As such, I felt like making one last proverbial score before moving out.  As an avid Portal fan, I developed an unusual ambition to bake a Black Forest cake (and therefore have an excuse to use the title of this post).  Therefore, I did some research and found a fairly simplistic recipe online (http://www.cooks.com/recipe/1x5oo681/easy-black-forest-cake.html).  There was no end of preparation involved (including a few last-minute shopping trips), but I finally got down to bake it all tonight!  Was it to be a success, or would I need grief counseling afterwards? 

This was a triumph!  Huge success!  The cake was delicious, and the icing that went with it was icing on the…you know.  Not only was it tasty, but it’s large enough to last me for days.  No more Safeway cakes for a while!  It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction with this experiment, but the cleanup was quite the hassle.

With that, my experiments in the kitchen will come to a close for now (so no, no combustible lemons this summer).  In a matter of days, so will my time at work.  By the end of the August, my independent summer will be over and I’ll have a whole new batch of tests to tackle.  I don’t know what the rest of the year has in store for me, but at least one thing’s for certain:

I’m still alive.

Reflections: 

I consider the grey grove cake to by my cooking magnum opus for the summer.  I made this recipe on multiple occasions during my senior year in college, though I haven't made it in a while (something to try in my new place?).  The URL is still good if you want to try it yourself.

How many Portal series references can you count in this blog entry?  I challenged myself to stick in as many as possible.