If you will recall, dear reader, last week, almost to the minute, Ted Childs wrote this cake blog and boldly proclaimed that he would never do it again. He was, of course, a big fat liar, because, if you haven’t already guessed from my smarmy tone… I’m back! The course of events that have dictated my writing this blog, and my baking of this week’s cake for that matter, are complicated and could fill volumes of the largest books filled in the smallest of fonts, but to shorten the story, it will suffice to say that it is mid-May, and though a regularly simple and unobtrusive month to most in the free world, in the Casa de la Children it is nothing short of pure bedlam. For as you may know, May is the month where two of high school’s most prestigious events occur: Prom and Graduation; and as it so happens, I am the senior class advisor and therefore in charge of graduation, and Laura is the junior class advisor and therefore possesses the dubious distinction, along with our lovely coworker Jayme Burrows, of planning, coordinating, and executing the Prom. It is on this last fact that the rest of this blog will dwell.
Today is May 13th and the Edgewood’s prom this year is on May 14th at Ripken Stadium, a mere 24 hours from now; and while yours truly is sitting at the computer, staring thoughtfully into the glow of the LCD screen, thinking up rhetorically pleasing ways of describing the last six hours, Laura is off in Bel Air somewhere, with Jayme, attempting desperately to assemble this year’s prom favors. Now, why would Laura Childs, a woman who makes lists in her sleep and can recite the upcoming year’s social calendar in eight languages, wait until the last minute to get and make the favors? Well… she didn’t! Today at school she and Jayme received a call from the favor company that chilled them down to their kidneys… the favors that they ordered weeks ago, silver picture cubes that had the word “Prom” printed on it and could be written on as a personalization by prom-goers, would not be arriving in time. In fact, they would not be arriving ever, because the company, knowing full well when our Prom was occurring, neglected to inform our heroines that the picture cubes were on back order with the warehouse and had zero chance of being shipped in time for Labor Day, much less prom. Laura immediately held back a Shakespearian wordflow of expletive-laced vomit and Jayme immediately smashed her model vagina into the concrete wall on the opposite side of her classroom (don’t worry reader, she’s a health teacher… not a misogynist or a pervert!) Being the calm, cool, but slightly-panicked teachers that they are, as the 2pm end-of-school bell sounded Laura and Jayme immediately bounded to their cars and made a mad dash to the stores of Bel Air in an attempt to quickly replace the favor-snafu while staying within a public education budget.
This would probably be as good a place as any within this blog to pontificate on the wisdom of having prom favors at all; in the past I have seen schools give out wine glasses and beer steins, and then implore the well-dressed heathens to go to the after-prom lock-in where drinking isn’t allowed. Furthermore, as an adult, who even looks back on prom fondly enough to want a keepsake? The sweaty palms, awkward slow dances, spiked punch, innocent fumbling in the rumble-seat of your parents Ford while Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell plays on in the background, and even the lame excuses, like, “honest Dad, I don’t know how I got sand in my cummerbund,” and “when you said my curfew was eleven, you meant PM?”; none of this is exactly hallmark quality memory material. But yet, Laura and Jayme were determined to get their favors, and so off they went in search of the holy grail of high school chotskies, while I preceded home, baby in car and thought in mind. If Laura was going to be running around all night putting together prom stuff, how about I surprise her and bake the cake tonight.
I started to assemble the cake ingredients together while feeding Evie, and by 6pm (around when I expected Laura to return) the Marshmallow Crunch Bars were complete. Calling for All-Purpose Flour, Baking Powder, Butter, Vanilla, Eggs, Sugar, Chopped Mixed Nuts, and Mini-Marshmallows, this was an easy and quick desert to make, with a recipe as clear and understated as to make even me look like a star baker. The only tweak to the recipe was the subtraction of candied cherries… as neither Laura nor I enjoy cherries, it was decided when shopping for tonight’s ingredients that these would be eliminated from the recipe. The final result ended up a great copy of the cake-books precedent:
Our Picture:
The Book’s Picture:
The final results of the great prom favor debacle is still however, as of 9:20 pm, a mystery. At six, as I was pulling the cake out of the oven, the phone rang and it was Laura calling on the end of the line. The decision had been made to get each prom attendee a beach towel and a pair of Old Navy sandals. The price was right, they gift was actually useful and hip, and all that was needed was the car space to haul the loot back to Jayme’s house. You see, I neglected to mention that there are about 350 students attending prom, and therefore the beach towels alone filled every nook and cranny of Laura and Jayme’s car. As I wandered into Old Navy, a pajama-clad Evie ready for bed in her stroller next to me, I immediately understood the gravity of the situation. Do you know how many boxes are needed to move 350 pairs of Old Navy sandals? Eight boxes (think “I’m moving to Florida”-style boxes) and five bags. By the time I finished loading the car, not a free space existed, besides the driver seat and the car seat; and as I pulled out of the Harford Mall parking lot, heading to Jayme’s house to drop off the sandals, I peeked around the boxes to see Laura and Jayme, bleary-eyed and frazzled, disappearing back into the mall to get bags for the favors… I haven’t seen nor heard from them since, but I am confident that prom will go on without a hitch and next week’s blog (the cake this time is Cherry Almond Bars) will be written by my wandering wife. Whether Old Navy will ever carry sandals again or accept anyone wearing Edgewood attire is another matter completely! Until we meet again dear readers… good night!
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