The Day My Pound Cake Threw Up

"Wouldn't it be wonderful," I thought, "if instead of making a complicated fancy-schmancy-my-name-is-Nancy dessert I made something really simple like a pound cake? And used really good butter? And fresh farmer's market eggs? And served it with raspberries and whipped cream? And used Martha Stewart's recipe?"

That was the plan. I bought Plugra style butter which looked impressive and European. I got those farmer's market eggs. And I whipped everything up in a jiffy: it's normally a pound of butter, a pound of sugar and a pound of flour (that's how pound cake got its name) but this one had better proportions. It looked promising. Into the oven it went and I sat there patiently watching the minutes tick by, filing my nails, dreaming of a better life, when the 50 minutes were up and it was time to insert the tester. I used a dry spaghetti strand as I normally do. It came out clean. (Was that my mistake? Diana said I should've used something with more surface area.) On a cooling rack it sat in the pan for 10 minutes. And then it was time to turn it out and that's when disaster struck...

My pound cake threw up. You can see it in the picture: as I flipped it over, the top cracked open and hot batter oozed out. I felt the way a new parent might feel when the doctor says, "Don't touch the baby's head, it's soft" and you do anyway. Ha. Ok, that was a bad example. But look how beautiful that cake looks on the outside and how sad it is that it decided to not be cooked on the inside. Diana tried to comfort me by saying that it was like a molten chocolate cake except without the chocolate. "Mmmm," she said, dipping a pieced of cooked cake into the uncooked batter and eating. "I actually like it."

Ignoring Diana's good cheer, I cut the ends off and tried to assemble a semi-decent looking dessert:

And, surprisingly, it worked. I guess that only proves the adage: when life throws you a vomiting pound cake, cut the ends off, and top it with whipped cream and raspberries. Truer words have never been spoken.