Sir Oinker
At an early age I declared I wanted to be a chef, I think it was while I “helped” my Mom with dinner. When what I was actually doing was stirring a sauce that didn’t need stirring while she put together an entire meal and let me take all the credit.
I do remember attempting to make a cake look like a smoked boar's head when I was in the 6th grade. I got it into my somewhat smoked brain that it would be amazing to make for our class’s renaissance fair. After weeks of learning about the renaissance period I was obsessed with it, I day dreamed of what it would be like sitting at a giant table with knights and lady’s in fancy dresses that had huge sleeves (that I would have used as some sort of snack transportation device). And attending jousting events while eating a giant turkey leg that I smuggled in with my giant sleeve, and of course speaking in a bad British accent… But back to the 90’s, I don’t know what possessed me to put my Mom through this special hell but I do remember coming home and demanding boxed cake and canned frosting and telling her my idea. With a reluctant, slightly scared look in her eye she agreed to let me bake the cake and shape it into a boar’s head.
It started out simple enough; box cake was more forte back then. I baked the cake in one of my Mom’s lasagna pans. Once it was cooled I started hacking into it with a butter knife, cutting it in half and laying both half’s on top of each other than cutting a little off the side and a little off the front. I was really getting into it, cutting away bits of cake imagining the master piece I was going to end up with. Somewhere between the cake becoming smaller and smaller and my mom peeking her head into the kitchen to offer her assistance I had started frosting it. I frosted the whole cake in chocolate frosting, and stood back to admire my “masterpiece”. It was then that I realized it looked like a mangled square with a small rectangle attached to it and I began to lose it.
I could feel the tears welling in my eyes as my family came and looked at with confusion over what exactly it was. Fortunately Mom was to the rescue, grabbing some of the scraps of cake and frosting them with white canned frosting. She cut them into make shift tusks and attached them with toothpicks. Then on the slightly smaller brown rectangular heap of cake she dug out two little nostrils and instructed me to grab the jar of cherries from the fridge. She attached the “eyes” with some more tooth picks and alas there it was a cake molded into a magnificent boars head! To the untrained eye, it was a mess; to me it was shaky version of a piece of art that a Queen would be proud to have adorned her table while serving a feast.
And so I brought it to school and to be honest I have no idea what anyone’s reaction to it was… It was 1996 or 1997 depending on what time of the school year it was and I can’t remember that either. I do remember trying to play down how excited I was about it when it was all frosted and done. My Mom told me how proud of me she was and again let me take all the credit for creating the boars head shaped cake. Although in hind sight she probably just didn’t want people to know she had anything to do with the giant hunk of mess that I kept calling Sir. Oinker.
Date Added: 10.11.13