TheBanyanTree: Beastie Baking

[auntie sash]

Alexander the Great - my first ferret waaay back in college - was very fond
of raisins.  Like VERY fond of raisins.

I had made an enormous carrot cake for a feast.  It was so big we had to put
down the back seat of the boyfriend's car so the cake would fit in the
seat/hatchback area.  This was back in my SCA/medieval recreation phase.  I
was into making subtleties - luscious desserts either in fancy shapes or
with complex decorations.  This cake looked like a huge piece of parchment
with the crests of all the baronies in the kingdom of Ansteorra.  (OK -
picture about 9 shields with fancy pictures on them) surrounding the text of
the Ansteorran anthem (a scroll with calligraphed words) all in frosting,
marzipan, and meringue.  It was pretty impressive.

When we arrive at the feast, the first order of business is changing from
our mundane clothes into our garb.  I wanted to put my hair up, so I
unwrapped Alex for a minute.  You see, mostly I wore Alex around my neck,
where he happily slept and licked my ears and accepted adoring pets from
everyone, but he was a little too interested in the whole braiding process,
so I asked the boyfriend to hold him.  I fussed with my hair in the side
mirror, and boyfriend put Alex in his little travel case.  It was a little
backpack kinda thing with chainmail decorations and his heraldic device
painted on the side.  I didn't think we would need it, but I had stuffed it
in the back, under the folded-down seat just in case Alex wanted to sleep on
the ride home.  Then boyfriend grabbed some stuff to take into the feast
hall.  I finished my hair and grabbed my stuff and headed in behind him.

We bustled around a bit setting things up, talking to friends, etc.  When
the feast was about to start and everyone was seated, it was time to sneak
the cake into the kitchen.  Tons of folks helped with setup and food and
were in and out of the kitchen, so we always brought the subtlety in at the
last minute so no one would see it before the big presentation moment.

Did I mention that Alex was fond of raisins?  And did you catch the part
where boyfriend stuffed Alex in his travel case?  Yeah.  So I'm thinking my
ferret is safely around the neck of the boyfriend or some other adult (he
was a big favorite and was always getting passed around).  I did not think
my precious furkid was locked in the car.  All alone.  With the cake.  The
carrot cake.  Full of raisins.

Ferrets are pretty clever beasties.  The travel case was not a cage.  It was
a nice safe snuggly place.  It closes with velcro, for crying out loud.
Velcro!!  You think velcro is going to restrain a ferret???

The damage was limited in area, but only because Alex hadn't been able to
get purchase on the wax-paper-covered-slippery-with-icing board.  If he had,
the cake would have looked like a Family Circle cartoon, with little
pawprints mapping his raisin hunt.  As it was, Alex had been limited to the
edge of the cake that could be reach by standing on his hind legs on that
little bump between the two seats.  He began his burrowing there.

Alex looked rabid.  From the eyebrows back to beyond his shoulders, he was
covered in parchment colored cream cheese frosting.  When he pulled his head
out of the 4" deep hole he had excavated, his muzzle was smeared with cake
and there was a raisin gripped in his teeth.  Time froze for a
moment.  Me: standing in the open car door looking at the ferret, and at
the cake, and at the ferret.  The boyfriend: looking at the cake, and at me,
and at the cake.  Alex: staring up at me, head and body perfectly still,
front paws still digging like the legs of a cartoon character who has just
run off a cliff and hasn't yet realized it's time to fall.

Then Alex sneezed.

I reached out and picked up Alex by the scruff.  The idiot boyfriend started
to stammer - trying, I think, to explain why this wasn't his fault.  I
silenced him with my right eyebrow and said, "I'm not going to kill you.
You may still be useful.  Go get me a towel, a kitchen knife, a cookie
sheet, and some butter.  And if you say one word or let anyone come out that
door, I will kill you."

I sent the boyfriend, the ferret, and the towel to find a spigot for some
beastie bathing.

I excised and discarded an area all around Alex' excavation site (thank
heavens for that slippery wax paper).  I began my surgery.  Amazingly, none
of the crests had been damaged, but there was a pretty sizable hunk of cake
missing from the one side.  I careful removing the frosted edge from the
undamaged side, and 6 of the crests.  Then I eased the top, decorated layers
of those crests from the bottom layer.  I used to bottom layers to replace
the missing cake and to create a regular pattern of raised and lowered
areas.  Then I gently grafted the decorations back onto the reconstructed
spaces.  I mixed the frosting taken from the side pieces with the stick of
butter (for volume and texture) and a couple of roses (sacrificed for flavor
and color) to make a lightly tinted frosting to cover the 2 sides and sides
of the newly designed crenelations.

When I was through, the cake was actually much more impressive -
with multiple levels and shading.  I was feeling pretty pleased with myself
by then, and in a mood to forgive my little furkid (the boyfriend was still
in deep yogurt for leaving my ferret in the car - which could have been much
more serious than a damaged dessert).  Once safely in the kitchen, I found
some food coloring and wrote across the bottom "Sir Alex' Ansteorran Ferret
Cake" and drew some little paw prints beside it.  Everyone thought it was a
cute little jest, a little carrot/ferret pun in honor of our favorite
weasel.  Everyone except the idiot boyfriend, who turned quite pale and eyed
me nervously when the cake was presented.

As for Alexander, he was happy to sleep around my neck all evening so I
could rescue him from his fans.  They couldn't understand why he
wasn't excited when they offered him nibbles of raisins from their cake.
- sash
-- 
I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man
if he spent less time proving he can outwit nature
and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
- EB White