Cakes for Kegs (and Dad)

This weekend I was in Baltimore for a few days for a college reunion.  It was fantastic to be back, and I'll have more to say about what I did - and ate - soon.  But for me, visiting Baltimore is about so much more than what actually happens.  There are memories just waiting to be remembered on every street corner: the lazy afternoon spent roasting a whole goat on the grill on the freshman quad; the frigid night the local Chipotle opened, when I waited in line for an hour on the street - in flip flops, as the first snow of the season fell - to get a free burrito with a group of friends; the convivial dinner parties held in a tiny efficiency apartment, with waste baskets flipped upside down to provide additional seating.  There are so many good stories, but the one I want to tell you today is about cake.

It seems to me that everyone has their own chocolate cake recipe that they swear by.  Mine once got me in a cake-off. 

My sophomore year of college, I won the love of the sophomore guys on my swim team by dropping off the excess of my nearly weekly cookie baking sessions at their dorm room suite.  At some point in the spring, my friend JR, one of the lucky, cookie-engorged inhabitants of that suite, told me he made a mean chocolate cake.  Having been baking chocolate cakes for every birthday in my family since about age 14, I countered that I made a damn fine chocolate cake myself.  You might think that, given my evident frequent baking practice, JR would have been intimidated.  But he wasn't going down without a fight - his cake had chocolate pudding in the batter, he told me, and that made it extra moist.  What's a girl to do?  Clearly, we needed a cake-off to decide whose chocolate cake was best, once and for all.

It just so happened that he and five swimmer friends were about to move into brand-newly rented row house that boasted not one but two kitchens, both complete with ovens (after two years of baking in a toaster oven in the dorms, that was the ultimate essence of luxury to me).  And then it just so happened that one of those soon-to-be-roommates, an affable guy who went by the nickname "Kegs" (an abbreviation of his last name, not an inference to his affinity for beer), had a birthday coming up in a few weeks.  So the stage was set: we would break in the kitchens and bake our cakes in honor of Kegs' birthday.  We would make an event of it, inviting our teammates over to eat and judge.  And the event would be called, of course, Cakes for Kegs.

It was kind of a pain cooking in an empty kitchen in a house soon to be occupied by six college boys (though considering the layer of perpetual grime that would cover every surface of that house just a few months later, much better to bake at the beginning than the end).  Every ingredient and tool had to be carefully considered, packed, and carried over before the competition could start.  But nothing would deter us - not even the need to study for the finals coming up in a week or two.  And so it was that on a warm day in early May, I lugged overstuffed bags of bowls, cake pans, a hand mixer, eggs, butter, and mismatched tupperware containers holding carefully measured quantities of flour and brown sugar down the sunny, verdant street to the house.

As I set up shop in the second floor kitchen, JR's sous-chef David kept creeping up the stairs to poke his nose in and "check on how I was doing."  I was too discerning for his veiled attempts at espionage; I let no secrets slip, beating eggs and sugar and melted chocolate together like a spy on a secret culinary mission.  It was pleasant work, and became even pleasanter when those luxurious ovens were filled with five layers-worth of cake, blanketing the house in a thick, rich chocolate aroma.

JR's cake was done sooner than mine was - he used canned frosting, and only had two layers to cover - but when I caught up, we let our teammates know it was time to eat.  They descended upon the cakes like locusts on a field of grain, and it didn't take long before we were scraping the serving platters for the last remaining smudges.  There was no formal voting - actually, I think most of the team thought they were just there to eat, not to judge - but a number of people (including, I might add, JR) came up to me to tell me they preferred my version.  But really, espionage and friendly banter aside, it was less of a competition and more of an excuse to eat cake.  (And anyway, I totally won, but I don't like to brag.)

Kegs' birthday is coming up in a few days, and though I haven't seen him in a couple years now (not since he moved out west to start his PhD at Stanford - what a slacker), I wish him well.  But the cake I made today isn't for Kegs.  Today is my Dad's birthday, and this cake is for him.

Happy birthday, Dad!  Sorry I only baked you one cake.  Maybe next year we'll go to Baltimore for your birthday and have a competition.