Cake Fake-Out

Good birthday cake is hard to come by. For my mom's birthday I thought about trying to make one, but I haven't done cake for a long time. I probably would have needed a test run, and it was too short notice by the time I thought of it. On that note, let me know if you need a test cake made. Maybe for a friend whom you don't really like. Or for a dog's birthday. Or a school bake sale. Kids will buy anything with their parents' money.

So instead, my dad and I headed into Portland to check out Two Fat Cats Bakery. It occupies prime real estate, practically sandwiched between the fantastic Italian grocery store Micucci's and the decadent Duckfat restaurant. I had never even noticed Two Fat Cats, set back as it is, but my dad had and was surely a fan.

As we stepped inside, I was smitten: you go down a few steps and straight into a kitchen, basically. This main area is cozy, not too big but open so you can see all that's going on: cakes and cupcakes being frosted, fruit being peeled for pies, many wonderful aspects of baking that might normally be hidden away. I'm a fan of these set-ups where you can observe and admire the process behind the delicious product.

The employees were terribly friendly and obviously enjoying their work. One even humored me with a laugh and a "That's what we aim for!" when I suggested that a cake looked "good enough to eat," which I'm sure she had never heard before. Don't take me out in public.

We took home an 8" chocolate cake with chocolate frosting -- or should I say chocolate frosting with chocolate cake? Seriously, here is a bakery that understands when I ask for a "cake" it's only because polite society considers it rude when I inject frosting directly into my veins. "Cake" is about pushing the laws of structural engineering to their limits in order to find the largest possible ratio of frosting to non-frosting-material. The cake is a lie: frosting is the truth.

That's why frosting is so important. You need thick, rich, gooey buttercream frosting, and lots of it. And this cake has frosting: I promise you there's more frosting than cake involved here. Here's where it all started to go wrong, though: for some reason I thought that, as with most foods, cakes needed to be protected from the detrimental effects of heat. I forgot that cakes are impervious to harm, protected as they are by thick frosting shields (and thick plastic cake covers, just to keep stray cat fur off).

I admit it: I put the cake in the fridge (for its own good, I told it). HUGE mistake.

Never put the cake in the fridge! Even hours after we took it out of the fridge, the frosting was still too hard. You do not want your frosting hardening unless you're making some kind of Ganache or maybe a scale model of Mount Everest. So when I had a piece of cake last night, though the taste was amazing, the texture was off. It was just too hard and slightly waxy. I couldn't understand how it had gone so wrong.

Thankfully the cake is also big enough that my mom was able to rescue it. She left the cake out on the counter overnight (covered, of course...don't need any stray cat fut or deep cat paw prints in it, despite the bakery's name). What a difference. Today the cake was perfect. The frosting had warmed to its optimal temperature and softened to its ideal consistency. Frosting delivery system is a go!

I only wish the Two Fat Cats' website had a picture of their logo, because it is worth seeing. I promise I'll start taking pictures again soon. Until then you'd better head to Two Fat Cats yourself and come by some good birthday cake. Otherwise you're gonna end up with a Callaghan test cake, which belongs in an ACME catalog.