Fear of baking? This very easy، really good cake recipe can help

I WAS MAKING my own birthday cake. Why was this happening?! It was so very clearly wrong. One should never make one’s own birthday cake; it should arrive by the magic that is love، floating through the air with candles glowing، accompanied by a song sung in one’s honor. This was axiomatic. Also، it was hot — my birthday is in August — and the apartment was getting even hotter، despite all the windows thrown wide open، as the ancient Magic Chef electric stove cranked up.

All I wanted to do was go to the lake and fling myself in; this was my clearly stated birthday wish. Not only was this not happening، but the traditional celebratory dessert was clearly not going to materialize، either. Thus، I had begun making my own birthday cake in a spirit that would rightly be called spite-baking. This was a fine way to occupy my time … fine. A part of me wanted more misery، to be sure: Baking a cake is the opposite of jumping in a lake، in August، especially. It was not the best of times in my life.

The cake was two layers، a chocolate situation. I had every confidence that the cake would be great. After a traumatic childhood baking experience with a Mad Hatter’s Tea Cake from an “Alice in Wonderland” cookbook that I’d carried home from the library in a state of blissful innocence — the recipe proved complicated، calling for many eggs، and the cake emerged from the oven as an inedible low-lying sludge، having somehow anti-risen — I had eventually recovered، attaining with the dawn of adulthood a degree of baking competence. I could make my Aunt Edith’s dinner rolls; I could make cakes; I found that I could even make pie crust and had deployed this skill several times in the service of quiche.