Schnoogie's Inferno

Holly, as an upstanding Senior member of the Youth group had a big task in front of her: bake a cake that represents a major piece of literature to be sold at the annual Spaghetti Dinner and dessert auction. Deciding to take an edgy approach, Holly chose Dante's Inferno as her inspiration and set out to bake a 7-layer cake, representing the seven levels of hell. Quite the undertaking in both baking and literature.

When I arrived home on Friday evening, the finishing touches on 4-hours of work were being made. I looked at the cake and asked, "Is it leaning a bit?" No answer was needed as the whole thing started to crack, shift and slide onto the counter. Holly was none the too thrilled, David attempted to fix it (with his hands, you can imagine the results there), and I, in my not-so-soft fashion said, "That is a war you aren't going to win."

We ended up just shoving the slumped-over cake onto the platter and Holly went to bed. She thought that I didn't care; I wanted her to get some perspective that this was not the end of the world and she still had all of Saturday to come up with a solution. A night of sleep did the trick, and Holly emerged with a new plan; bake another Devil's food cake (only two levels this time) and put cherries in the middle...which is exactly what she did.

The new cake certainly had a story to it, and it did well at the auction, fetching $310 after a decent bidding war. The victor? Yours truly. Who doesn't love a great chocolate cake with cherries? Besides, it goes to a great cause as the UMCTO Youth raise money to fund their work trips for 2009.

And now the Schnoogs realizes that I really DO care, lessons were learned AND we've got a $310 cake to enjoy. That is the win/win model that we can all get behind.