Week 1, The Idea and The First Cake

The holidays are over and for Christmas my husband bought me a cake recipe book, 1 Mix, 100 Cakes: Take 1 basic recipe and make 100 kinds of cake. I love to bake, if I were not a teacher, I would have my own bakery, aptly named "Just Desserts". Anyway, the recipes are all very simple, so my husband comes up with the idea of each week making one of the cakes. Of course, I think this is a great idea and wonder if he would be assisting me in this process. "100 cakes with one a week is going to take about two years, can you really say that you will remember to keep this up for two years? Or are you just going to be the cake-tester?" I tease. He thinks that it would be a fun thing that we could do together, you know be "romantic." "I'll be just like that girl from Julie and Julia," I muse, "I will write a blog about our progress and everything." "Just don't let our relationship go down the tubes like theirs," he joked.

Yes, my husband watched all of Julie and Julia with me, and he actually liked it. My husband and I met when we were in high school. We sat next to each other in Earth Science our Junior Year. He was the captain of the badmittion team, and his team used the gym right before my Volleyball team did. I remember the volleyball players, including myself, would laugh at the Badmittion players and their "injuries." A birdie to the head! How would they ever survive! Clearly, it was love at first sight. The first words I spoke to him were, "I'm going to kill you." We were at a carnival with mutual friends, neither of us really knew each other, but we ended up riding the zipper together. I hate heights, when he asked me to go with him, I shook my head "no", but he looked at his other option, a somewhat scary misfit friend of a friend, and grabbed my hand and pulled me to the ride. Like I said, love at first sight.

A few months later in our Calculus 2/3 course I felt a tap on my back, "Will you go out with me?" I looked at Ted, said "Yes" and turned back around. It was Halloween and our first real "date" as a couple, was to go out trick-or-treating with our friends. We were sixteen.

Now, ten years later we have successfully maintained a relationship from high school, to college, to marriage, to a dog, to jobs, to grad school, and now to our first child. Both of us ended up going to the same college, for the same profession. We both are teachers, I teach English and he teaches History, and yes we teach at the same high school. This past March we had out first child together, a daughter, Evalyn.

So I guess you can say that our life has become somewhat predictable, on the 14th of January we will be celebrating our 5th year wedding anniversary, and my husband asked me today, "should I make reservations at our regular spot?" Though at times I think we both wonder how our lives would be different if we didn't start our relationship together so young, we also know that we share something special that most couples never get a chance to - we watched each other grow up and grow together and that truly is a wonderful thing being able to see a person for who they are, for who they have been, and to know that you will forever be able to see what they will become.

Anyway, back to the cake! We made our first cake from the book today. When I say "we" I really mean "me" while Ted watched and held the baby. The first cake was a simple "Chocolate Layer Cake". It called for: flour, cocoa, baking powder, butter, sugar, eggs, and milk. The batter was unlike most cakes that I have made before, more fluffy and creamy then thick and syrupy. Unfortunately, when I went to look at the picture again to compare it to my cake, the pages were stuck together with some sort of left-over goop from the baking and as I pulled apart the pages, the picture ripped a bit, which you can see below in the comparison of my cake to the one in the book.

(I will learn to rotate my pictures in the future!)

Tomorrow is Ted's 27th Birthday, and that is when we are going to try the cake - his whole family will be together, so I will update tomorrow with the reception of its taste...but it looks and smells good (even if I did go overboard with the powdered sugar).