The Saddest Cake

I’ve written before about crafting some new traditions in my own household for Thanksgiving, such as May making orzo as part of the dinner and my own contribution of the famed (and illegal in seven states) rainbow jell-o. But it is worth pointing out that my jell-o is just the first part of the one-two non-traditional dessert combo. The other half is from my brother-in-law, Nyan, bringing a fancy and top-tier chocolate mousse cake from one of those artisanal bakery shops.

It’s definitely a highlight, and once we had finished the main Thanksgiving course and had waited about an hour for the food to digest, we gleefully brought out the desserts.

Gracie worked on cutting the rainbow jell-o into non-euclidean pieces (don’t ask) while I fetched the bakery box from the fridge. I sliced the tape holding the flaps down, popped the sides, and lifted the top to marvel at the beauty within.

…and I looked at it.

…and kept looking at it.

…and continued to look at it, but it wasn’t getting any better.

Part of this was expectations vs. reality: when I lifted the lid I was expecting to see the icing of a dark chocolate ganache form fitted perfectly to the cake, coupled with some artistic chocolate shavings and maybe a few pieces of handmade disc chocolates as an added touch of class.

What I saw instead was a white icing that looked rumpled and even translucent in spots, and the cake as the whole looking almost… deflated? Kinda?

(Also, I am really burning through my ellipsis budget on this post, aren’t I?)

“Hey Nyan?” I asked as casually as I could without sounding like I was trying hard to be casual, “what type of cake did you get, again?”

“Chocolate mousse, of course,” he replied, unsure as to the reason for the question and walking over. “Why do you– oh wow, that’s new.”

And, because this is what modern society does now whenever we see something odd, out came the camera phones.

Rest assured that we had a full cake, and I took this after we already cut out some slices to verify the cake type and its quality.

Further investigation revealed that the icing had pooled behind the cake, along with most of the chocolate shavings. I am surmising that the original cake was supposed to have a nice, solid, opaque white chocolate coating covered with the chocolate shavings, not the compost-leaf-pile motif visualized here.

Having watched a lot of police mystery TV shows, I knew that we needed to thoroughly investigate the cake, and so we each had a slice to verify the taste integrity, and I even had seconds as part of my inquiries.

I am happy to report that we can confirm that the chocolate mousse itself was delicious.

So, with the flavor profile of the cake settled, the family quickly turned to crafting our own theories about what happened to the look of the cake. We compared notes, took more photographic evidence, tasted even more samples (strictly for research purposes), started a new subreddit, and calculated the time-to-non-refrigerated-air ratio to guess as to what happened:

Theory 1: The cake just melted.

Likelihood: Unlikely.

Notes: Nyan and his family picked up the cake that morning, I believe, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t melted when they put it in the box. Once they got here it was put right into our fridge, and unless they had their car internal temperature set to a cozy 350 degrees Fahrenheit, it just wasn’t warm enough. Plus, the mousse itself wasn’t melted; at least, it still had the proper texture, so I don’t think that’s it.

Theory 2: There was something missing in the white chocolate icing that caused it to just collapse.

Likelihood: Probable.

Notes: I have no idea how this would work, but maybe it’s something where the icing part was missing an ingredient, or had the wrong amount of one, so over time the icing just collapsed like my hopes for the Browns football season after the fourth game.

Theory 3: This is actually how the cake is supposed to be presented.

Likelihood: Lower than the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Notes: Look, I know pastry chefs love experimenting with new looks and plating techniques, but like, I just don’t see the “The Saddest Cake” motif really being something that you’d actively shoot for, unless you really want people to stop asking you to make them a birthday cake.

So who knows? Maybe Nyan will be able to ask the bakery about it at some point, but in the end, no harm done, really. Sure, the icing was mostly clumped up in the back of the box like clothes on the top shelf of my closet, but the cake itself did succeed in its most important job: to taste good.

But, you know, I should probably go and have another piece.

Just to be sure.