A Dessert Desert

Back in the olden days, when the House on the Corner was filled with teenage boys equipped with hollow legs and healthy metabolisms, I baked fairly often. Cookies for church group. Sheetcakes for potluck dinners. Pies when apples or blueberries were in season. And in early spring I was the Queen of the Cupcakes as unfortunate spacing of birthdays meant three different Boys celebrated with their classes during the first six weeks of the year. (So. Many. Cupcakes.)

Today, though, the House on the Corner is occupied by two old folks whose metabolisms have reached absolute peak efficiency, meaning they could probably survive quite well on a single pea pod every six weeks. Baked goods are no longer welcomed here, and I miss buying specialized kitchen gadgets that make their production easier.

That means I bake three times per year--Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. It also means that if you like one of the desserts I bake you'd better remember it fondly because it probably isn't happening again. The internet has way, way too many yummy-looking options to repeat, even if I'll never see the Milk Chocolate Cheesecake from last Christmas again (insert drooling sad face).

Yesterday we sat down to a new carrot cake recipe. Carrot cake is my favorite of all cakes, and when Cook's Illustrated came out with a version that stacks into a smallish square, I knew it would be my choice. With the addition of a bird's nest of Easter eggs, viola! It's a genuine Easter Dessert! And I have a brand-new offset spatula for spackling on the frosting!

The Boys who were home gave it a thumbs-up ("Did you realize that the slice you gave me was almost all icing? That's okay, because I like icing.") and it made a pretty slice on my grandmother's Fostoria dessert dishes.

But I'm bidding it a fond farewell because while it was good-ish, it was not worthy of one my baking slots. I'm already dreaming of next year and imagining what kind of new kitchen gadget I'll need to buy in order to use it once. I'm thinking maybe a butane torch.

Flan, anyone?