|
As a way for us to say thank you to Dr. Romero and his staff, we decided to bake a cake on Thursday night and deliver it Friday to say final goodbyes. Just about every day after the surgeries were complete, Dr. Romero bought us and his entire nursing and anesthesiology staff lunch or dessert. We thought it would be fitting to return the favor and provide something similar for them.
Rather than simply buying a cake, it seemed like a good idea at the time to make one so they would know we put some time and thought into it. The only problem was that not one of us has any idea how to bake a cake and the final product and the process it took to create it were very indicative of this fact.
Our first failure occurred when we tried to pre-heat the oven: we turned on the gas but failed to spark the ignitor (on the gas stove) so we had to open all the windows and doors in the apartment to air it out and not burn it to the ground. Secondly, the pans we cooked in were far too small and this helped explain the how the bottom of the oven ended up covered in cake batter.
The third layer was removed far too early and ended up being an incoherent puddle of fudge rather than a unified layer of angel food cake. We ran out of icing well before covering the top of the cake and had to wake up Friday morning in a rush to go buy more. Jonathan was assigned this job and accidently bought stark-white vanilla icing instead of the off-white cream cheese icing that covered the rest of the cake. Therefore, the final product looked more like a two-toned, amorphous pile of icing and fudge than a cake that anyone would ever consider eating.
When we finally put the cake on display for the burn center staff, they were incredibly grateful and touched that we went to so much trouble. Mercifully, they chose to ignore the fact that the cake itself weighed no less than 20 pounds and tasted like a huge pile of sugar, choosing instead to eat seconds and thank us profusely for our thoughtfulness. Despite our culinary incompentence, the cake served as a symbol of our respect and love for the staff and helped us show them how much we appreciated and valued their kindness and hospitality.
|
