Half-Baked
by Wanda Detroit
Here's a bit of light-hearted fluff. I wrote it as a ficlet for Theatrical_Muse. I kind of liked how it turned out, so I thought I'd share. Enjoy!
* * * * *
Dear Metropolis Fire Department,
Today I am baking a cake. This is just a heads-up, in advance.
Thanks,
Lois Lane
* * * * *
Lois arranged all of the ingredients in a row on her countertop. There were fifteen of them. *Fifteen!* She stared at them, bewildered. Why had she chosen such a difficult cake to try and bake?
'I don't know if I can handle this,' she thought. She looked at them with a defiant look in her eyes and took a deep breath. 'I could always go to the bakery...' But it was Clark's birthday, and she wanted to make it special. 'What kind of a wife am I, anyhow? I can do this. For Clark, I can bake a cake.'
One of the ingredients was chocolate cake mix. 'Cake mix. I can do this!'
She read the recipe aloud. "Coat nuts and chocolate chips with 1 tablespoon of cake mix; set aside." She got out a small bowl and measured the chocolate chips carefully. Then, to her dismay, she realized the nuts were supposed to be *chopped.* With a cutting board and a sizable knife in hand, she attacked the walnuts, launching them in all directions. So much for keeping the kitchen clean.
With a satisfied smile, Lois completed the first task. She examined her hands. Yes, all ten fingers were intact.
She peered at the recipe again. The next step was combining cake mix with eggs, oil, water, vanilla, pudding mix and sour cream. Well, that step eliminated lots of ingredients. Lois set about measuring and dumping the ingredients into her mixing bowl. It came time for eggs, and she opened her refrigerator. her hands must have been slick from the oil because one dozen eggs slipped from her hands and more than half of them cracked at her feet.
Lois groaned as she scooped up the slimy mess, and managed to find a few eggs that hadn't broken. Of course, when she cracked them into the bowl with the other ingredients, pieces of the eggshell fell in. Frowning, she fished them out, a job that took longer than she expected.
"I can do this," she reminded herself weakly. Somehow she wasn't quite convinced. Still, she combined her two mixtures together and added fresh raspberries. Successfully she greased a bundt pan and poured the batter in. 'Hooray! That step was easy!'
She slid the pan carefully into the oven and waited a few minutes. Nothing was on fire. There was no smell of smoke at all! After a while, the kitchen was filled with the delightful aroma of chocolate. "I could be the next Betty Crocker," she proclaimed proudly.
Lois read over the recipe again. She still had to make the glaze. It required adding several ingredients together on the stovetop and stirring. How hard could it be?
It didn't prove to be too difficult, until a nearby potholder caught fire on the stovetop. Lois seized a pair of tongs and threw it into the sink, dousing it with water. By the time she had the situation under control, her glaze was very nearly boiling over.
"This cooking thing isn't all that it's cracked up to be," she grumbled, turning the heat off. Her timer beeped, signaling that the cake was ready. She peered in the oven. She was shocked. it looked good! Grabbing a nearby dishtowel, she started to lift the pan from the oven. She nearly dropped it when her hand accidentally brushed the white-hot shelf. She yelled an obscenity, flailing her injured hand, but still managed to remove the cake from the oven.
Lois ran her hand under ice water. The grate had singed three parallel lines on the side of her hand. "That better be a good cake, after all of this," she sighed. She cleaned up her kitchen as best she could. After an hour passed, she inverted the cake onto a glass platter and drizzled the glaze over the top. She garnished the cake with a few more raspberries. Then, she stood back to admire her handiwork.
It was beautiful.
She very nearly broke down in tears and cried.
* * * * *
After dinner, when Lois set her masterpiece before Clark, his eyes widened. "You *made* this, Lois? How...?"
She shrugged, smiling. "It was nothing."
* * * * *
Here\'s the recipe, if you still want to try this at home! *g*
