Your Favorite Cake Recipes.

I grew up a bit differently from most children.  I preferred meat, fruit and even some vegetables to desserts.  I know that the parents reading this are thinking that they wish their children could be more like me.  My preferences might have been tied to the reality that my mother kept me on baby foods until I was about twenty-eight.  As I reconsider it, the folks at Gerber didn’t produce a pureed version of German chocolate cake.

My candy consumption was also limited.  On Halloween, I would come home from trick or treat, and  my mother and I would sit on the floor sorting my take for the evening.  We would sort my collection into three piles.  I didn’t really get to assign anything to a particular pile; I was mostly an observer in the annual ritual.  Into one of those piles would go everything that was made by the generous Mrs. Robertson.  Immediately after sorting, that pile went straight into our garbage can.  My mother was sure that Mrs. Robertson let her eighty four cats walk all over the counters in her kitchen at will.  My mother knew this because Mrs. Robertson’s sister-in-law had told her this (both the number of cats and the freedom that those felines were given.)  The second pile contained a couple of apples and a small box of raisins.  Those were deemed suitable for me.  I can’t say for certain what happened to the third grouping–the one that contained all the candy, the caramel apples and the popcorn balls.  As soon as the sorting was finished, my mom hastily took those into my parent’s bedroom.  They never again appeared.  The only time I ever was allowed to have candy was when I visited one pair of grandparents.  (My other grandparents just read me Bible verses all day, and convince me that God was not particularly enthusiastic about any behavior of a typical child.)

In defense of my mother, I believe that this sort of behavior is taught in the top secret motherhood school.  I know this because my wife exhibited the same behavior with our son on Halloween that my mother employed.  However my wife has never revealed the exact curriculum of this top secret school.

When I became a full fledged adult at the magical age of twenty-nine, I began to learn that applesauce, vegetables and meat in their natrual form do not really have the same texture.  I also discovered the wonders of dessert in the wonderful form of a gourmet cheesecake.  Actually, I now know that the word gourmet is rarely applied to anything that comes from the discount grocery store in an ugly box with a small cellophane peep hold.  The cheesecake turned out to be mostly chemicals–delicious chemicals.  Remember that my taste buds had been accustomed to the miracle recipes of the baby food makers.  To me, the cheesecake was the definition of heaven.

Later in life, as I belatedly went through my experimental wild years, I learned that cheesecake could taste much less like cardboard than my first sample.  (Please don’t ask why I know how cardboard tastes.)  I also discovered that cheesecake can come in a variety of flavors besides blueberry.

Dessert is now my reason for living! My favorite way to complete a nutritious mean of two jars of beef, two jars of mashed peas and a pureed apple with cinnamon is with a slice of turtle cheesecake.  But please don’t tell my mother; she’ll just take it from me.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the foggiest notion of how to go about actually making a cheesecake.  If you have a recipe for one that doesn’t involve using either a mixer or an oven, please let me know.  I do know how to use a blender, though, because I watched my mom prepare the Thanksgiving turkey one year.

Author’s aside:  It’s possible I may have exaggerated just a bit here and there, but don’t mention it to my mom.  She doesn’t have a computer and thinks the Internet is a type of support stocking.  I don’t have to worry about her actually reading this.