Friday, July 3 –

This is the story of a birthday cake that shouldn’t have been edible, but somehow survived a very unusual baking process.

It begins with a broken stove. My stove went out and we decided not to try and repair it because I didn’t like it that much anyway. I’ve only been using it a short time because the one I really like has been out of commission for a while.

This is the stove I really like. I paid it out little by little until I had paid the full amount to a man with a little antique/salvage business on FM 1585 in Lubbock. That was about 15 years ago or more.

It’s an O’keefe & Merritt gas stove from the 40’s or 50’s. You can see there’s a lot of history here.

Anyway, until I can repair this big stove, we bought this little apartment stove that has a charm all its own.

So, back to the cake.  Now that I had a stove again, it was time to bake Carolina a birthday cake. Unfortunately, after only about 15 or 20 minutes into the baking, my propane ran out! I called Nathan to see if propane could be delivered, but being Friday, July 3rd before a holiday weekend, they were already out of the office. So I hurriedly kindled a fire in the wood cook stove and hoped it would get hot before the other one cooled down too much. Once it was hot enough, I carefully moved the jiggling half-baked cake to the woodstove and continued the baking.

Here I am with the nicely cooked cake and the hot, hot stove in the background.

Well, there you have the miracle cake. I wouldn’t recommend this method, but I’m glad it worked out this time.

So was Carolina.