Gratuitous Common Sense

Last week I was baking a cake. OK, not really. But it’s a metaphor, so I was. I was baking a cake. I had my recipe laid out in front of me, I had all my ingredients on the table ready to be mixed, and I had gotten permission to use the oven for the next few hours, as my wife doesn’t like me to commandeer the oven for so long without notifying her first. And this is a big important cake, so it takes quite a while to bake.

So I punch a few buttons on the oven to get it preheated to the right temperature. Then I proceed to mix everything together in a huge pan, like the recipe says, and I throw it in the oven. To keep track of how things are going, I watch it closely. But not too closely, because I know that the baking process can be long and arduous, and sometimes ugly. All the heat and the melting of ingredients, fusing together and rising from mere cake batter… it’s bound to get ugly. But I know that it will be nice and pretty when everything is said and done.

Oh, I’m so excited! It’s a blend of chocolate and vanilla, with a few nuts and an ice cream center. I know what you’re thinking, ‘you can’t put ice cream in an oven, it will never work’. But just you watch. It’ll be great.

My significant other, though, doesn’t seem to understand the process. While we’re watching the cake, she keeps pointing out that I must have done something wrong, because the cake batter is sporadically exploding and leaving remnants all over the oven. Sometimes the exploding batter hits the oven window, and obscures our view.

“Do you know what a mess this is going to be to clean up? I’m already having to wipe the batter off the window just so I can see,” she exclaims.

I try to calm her fears, “It’s a long and difficult process for this cake. But there is progress, look how the batter is still rising. This cake will be beautiful when it’s done.”

She keeps bringing it up, every time there is an explosion, no matter how big or small. It begins to get annoying, and I wish she would just leave me alone. Then, she tried to ask me when it was going to be done, but I don’t have time for such trivial matters.

“It’ll be done when it’s done,” I said.

And just as I had predicted, progress continued. The batter continued to rise and eventually plumped up nicely over the edge of the pan. Just enough to where you could tell it was going to be great! The batter had risen, and the doughy center was beginning to form a soft, spongy base. Sure the explosions were becoming more frequent, but I took it as a sign that the cake was succeeding. I mean, the two things were so perfectly correlated, how could anyone deny the connection?

I had the icing out, and I was ready to spread it across the monstrous cake in a celebration of monumental accomplishment.

Then disaster struck… in a manner that no one could have predicted. The center of the cake collapsed, and brought everything else down with it. The chocolate and vanilla separated and you could see the ice cream (now melted ) spreading across the bottom of the pan. I looked over at my significant other, and I could tell she was doing everything she could to refrain from saying ‘I told you so.’

I thought, for a moment, that maybe this was supposed to happen. Maybe it’s just part of the process. I looked at the recipe again. And lo and behold, the recipe didn’t say anything about it not happening, so we must keep going until the cake is finished. I’m an optimist, by nature. And I’m strong, and resolute. I don’t quit! My job is done when it’s done.

My significant other chimes in

“Uh, maybe we should think about other options or perhaps–”

“Stay the course!” I said.

I didn’t have time for her defeatist nonsense. Stupid quitter! Weak and pessimistic are not the qualities we need in our cooks right now. I have the qualities that are needed to see this cake through to the end and she was really starting to get on my nerves.

No doubt she was about to suggest that I pull the cake out and turn the oven off. But I don’t want to hear that.

Where’s her plan for success!? That’s what I want to know. The truth is, she had no plan to fix my cake. And around here, we don’t have any tolerance for people that don’t have a plan for success. I have a plan. I’m not going to tell her what it is, but I have a plan.

“Let’s give it a chance to rise again. We’ll leave the cake in overnight, and check in the morning,” I say, as I wander off to bed.

I get up at my usual time to check the cake and it still looks the same. Nuts swimming around in a soup of chocolate and vanilla, the ice cream has all but evaporated. But I will not lose hope. This cake needs my support. I’m encouraged when I notice that the explosions in the batter are even more frequent than before. As I noted before, this is a good sign.

My wife sneaks up behind me…

“So what’s your strategy now? ‘Stay the course’ doesn’t seem to be working.”

Her comment bristled me.

“I never said my strategy was ’stay the course’,” I proclaimed, hoping my jedi mind trick would make her forget.

I rethink my strategy, perhaps it is time for action. I have an idea, but I need to consult the Internets for suggestions from professional bakers. So I google for some help on my cake baking strategy. I gather all the input from forums and sources that know better than me. Then…

I promptly toss the defeatist suggestions aside. There sure are a lot of bakers that have the peculiar position of wanting to see my cake fail. My wife must have gotten to those guys first, her influence is inexplicably enormous. It baffles the mind.

Anyway, as I was saying. I found a couple of guys that liked my idea. They said it might just work, and now is the perfect time to execute. What is that idea, you ask…

Add more batter to the cake!

Of course, a new surge of batter!! More cake batter will help reinforce the old, melted, and exhausted cake batter. It’s the perfect solution! More batter means a super duper delicious cake. So I mix up some more ingredients and throw it in on top of my wonderfully performing half-baked cake.

Mmmmmmm! Yummy goodness.

“You’re just wasting ingredients and money,” my wife says from the living room. “We could have used those eggs and the money for something else.”

“Nonsense!” I fire back. “Those ingredients have a job to do, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to give them a chance to do their job.”

She tried to reason, “We could’ve used those ingredients to make a different desert that would’ve been cheaper and easier.”

She kept repeating some nonsense about the ultimate goal of making desert for our guests, not just baking a cake. But that’s defeatocrat talk! She had no plan to fix my cake. She just wanted to stop me. I will succeed in baking this cake.

Things came to a head when I realized I needed more ingredients. I asked my wife to go to the store and get them, and to my surprise, she obliged. She came back with a bag of groceries, but then she said that if I wanted to use them, I had to promise that I would finish the cake by the time our guests arrived that evening.

Ooooo time lines! How I despise time lines.

“If you’re going to give me ultimatums, then I’m not going to finish this cake!” I said. “Then our guests will know it’s your fault that the cake was not successful.”

The stunned look on her face told me everything I needed to know… My super-sharp logic had rendered her speechless.

I vetoed that ultimatum… with authority!

Ya! High five!

Her gaze turned cold and harsh.

“The truth is, mister, I don’t think you can bake a cake.” She became combative, “You’ve done nothing but waste valuable resources, and I hate to say it, but this cake is lost. There is nothing more that you can do for this cake with these ingredients.”

How dare she denigrate our ingredients! To suggest that they have sacrificed their usefulness for nothing is appalling! Especially when the surge of batter is making so much progress.

Besides, where’s her plan to fix my cake? I’ll tell you… she had no plan to fix my cake.

I respond in true Peter Hoekstra fashion:

“Well, if you believe this cake is lost, then where’s your plan to bake this cake?”

She’s been against me from the beginning. She’s been hoping that I would fail. And that’s precisely why the cake hasn’t baked, because of her lack of support. That witch! She had no plan to fix my cake, and it’s all her fault.

I just want to get this out there, so everyone knows it’s her fault! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: She had no plan to fix my cake.

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