Crumbled Cake

Sassafras Mama posted today about her weekend battle with cake and it brought to mind a battle I had with a cake many years ago.

For many years we belonged to a lesbian & gay neighborhood group which held monthly potlucks. Most month's our contribution was cooked at the last minute. Our contribution that month was to be a bittersweet chocolate bundt cake. (We'd clearly planned ahead because the cake takes several ingredients that we don't normally have on hand.) The cake went together smoothly and was soon in the oven. While it was cooking I mixed up the glaze for the cake.

When the cake was cool I loosened the edges and turned it out onto a plate. Or at least I tried to turn it out onto a plate. About a third of the cake stayed in the pan. Since there wasn't much time before we needed to leave for the potluck I didn't have time to wallow in sorrow, though I probably let loose with a few curse words. I quickly had to come up with an alternative contribution for the potluck. I'd been at a party where trifle was served a few weeks before this, and so that was where my mind went when presented with the broken cake.

A quick look in the freezer revealed some raspberries, and there was cream in the fridge. The raspberries were quickly defrosted, and the cream whipped. It was quite cathartic to crumble the cake into a clear bowl, where I layered it with raspberries, the chocolate glaze that was intended to coat the outside of the cake, and the whipped cream. The resulting concoction was a big hit at the potluck.

We have made "Raspberry Oops Cake" many times since, and I've never had a problem getting it out of the pan. I keep swearing that I'm going to make the cake as intended one of these days, but so far it hasn't happened. And it's still somewhat cathartic to crumble up the cake.

Unfortunately, I don't have photographic evidence to share.

Best Laid Plans

Amy and I watch a fair number of home improvement shows on tv. More often than you would expect there are problems caused by poor planning on the part of the homeowner, designer or carpenter. In most cases this is not the point of the show. The exception is one which uses the tagline "why learn from your mistakes when you can learn from theirs". When we approach a project we normally do a lot of planning up front to avoid those sorts of oops moments. This is especially true if Amy is part of the planning. (This is a major component in the delay our renovation.)

My workshop contains a lumber rack I built years ago. I've never been satisfied with the sturdiness, and have been expecting it to disintegrate for years. A couple of months ago one of my woodworking magazines arrived with a supplement full of projects for the shop, one of which was a very sturdy looking lumber rack. I thought it would work well in my shop and so set about acquiring the materials to build it. Because of the clutter in my shop (it desperately needs to be emptied and reorganized) and the size of some of the components (8 ft 2x4s) I took advantage of a couple of warmish, sunny days to do assembly in the driveway (the garage is also suffering from over-clutter).

Much of the early assembly was done with the unit laying on it's side since the shelves are too heavy for me to lift by myself. When it was time to wrap up my work after one of my days in the driveway Amy came down to help me set it upright and move it into the garage. And that was when we discovered problem number 1.

As some of you may remember from the garage door replacement, or from visits to our house, the ceilings in our basement are low. I can touch the ceiling while standing flat footed, and I'm not tall. When I decided to build the shelves I didn't take the height of the ceiling into account. And when we set the unit upright Amy pointed out that it didn't look like it would fit into the garage. So, with the sun setting in the west I pulled out the tape measure and circular saw and shortened the uprights by 6 inches.

I've yet to finish the shelves - mostly because we've been busy and I can't lift the shelves by myself. Meanwhile, we've been entertaining plumbers - each of whom has a slightly different idea of where the tankless water heater we want installed should go. (Stay with me, this is actually related.) The most logical location, given the venting requirements for the water heater, is at one end of my workshop. That end of the workshop is currently home to the about to collapse lumber rack. This has made finishing the lumber rack of higher importance.

Which brings us to problem number 2. The root from the garage to the workshop includes a rather tight squeeze at the corner of the furnace. The new lumber rack is eight feet long and, as my very observant wife pointed out, it will not make it around that turn. We could take the rack via the back yard to the exterior door to the shop, but that is a soggy, weed ridden route. In the post-renovation version of my shop the lumber storage will be in the garage. So we've decided that the new lumber rack will take up residence in the garage a little early.

Now I just need to finish the rack, clean out the garage, and move a whole lot of lumber. Oh, and stop thinking all those people making mistakes on tv are careless.

Don't Bake While Tired

A couple of weeks ago I was up late finishing cupcakes for a party the next day. I'd gotten a late start and I had to have the cupcakes ready to go first thing in the morning so even though I was really tired I was determined to finish. When I added the confectioner's sugar to the mixer for the frosting I realized that I needed to mix it in by hand because the mixer was putting too much of the sugar into the air. I reached for the switch to turn it down. In my sleepiness I did not turn the mixer off as was my intent, no I switched it to high. The result, as you can see, wasn't pretty.


The powdered sugar was everywhere. I was coated, the counter was coated, everything on the counter was coated. So take it from me - if you're tired step away from the mixer.

My New Nickname or Gravity Always Wins

I'm a very careful woodworker and I have all ten fingers to prove it. I get splinters regularly, I have gotten cuts from the edges of chisels, I've even sanded off skin (not recommended), but I have never had a major woodworking injury. I know how to use my tools, I think about how I'm going to accomplish the task at hand, and I stop working when I'm tired.

My workshop is cluttered (like much of my house). One of the home improvement projects on my list is organizing the shop - it'll happen one day soon, really it will. There are parts for numerous projects, bins of cutoffs, tool containers, and of course saw dust covering most surfaces. While this isn't the best way to work, I do make sure I clear off the space where I'm currently working. This frequently means that I make use of a work mate (small folding workbench) in addition to the workbench top. I sit on a counter height stool most of the time while working in my shop.

So Monday night I was working on the latest project - cutting dadoes with a router fitted with the plunge base using a homemade jig. The work piece and the jig were clamped to the work mate, which was sitting perpendicular to the work bench, and when not being used the router was placed on the work bench. After making a pass with the router I decided that the bottom of the dado wasn't even enough. So I turned to the bench picked up the router (plugged in but off) and turned 90 degrees to my left to position it on the jig. That's when gravity took over.

In turning I became unbalanced and tumbled off the stool toward the concrete floor (and the tool bags sitting on it). There wasn't time to catch my balance (my left foot was probably on the rung of the stool rather than on the floor. Because the router was in my left hand I didn't try to catch myself with my hand - which was for the best since that's a quick route to a broken wrist.

Amy heard the noise - the stool crashed to the floor shortly after I did - and came down to investigate, and helped me shut off lights, unplug the router. We left the sweatpants I had been wearing next to the washer. The sawdust they'd picked up while I was working had been supplemented by most of the sawdust from the floor - they looked like we'd dusted with them.

I ended up with a dime sized scrape on my elbow, an impressive bruise just above my elbow, and a very swollen knee which also has a couple of small cuts - I landed on it. The injuries are too gruesome for pictures! The good news is that the swelling is going down thanks to regular icing. The bad news is that the bruises have only just begun the inevitable journey through the spectrum. It's a really good thing that it's winter so I'm not tempted to wear shorts.

Amy overheard a couple of the guys at work talking about calling me Crash from now on (just what I need another nickname). The moral of the story - I need to organize the shop, including adding more rubber pads to the floor (I've got a few and they are very nice to stand on. While I don't plan to take any more dives I expect that they might have cushioned the impact a bit.); I need to pay more attention to my position when moving in the shop and remember _gravity always wins_. In the words of Beakman - "gravity - it's the law".