The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I tell my kids that one of the benefits of getting older is that I don't care near as much what people think about me as I did when I was younger. But I had an acute attack of insecurity last week and may not be totally over it.

When invited to a birthday dinner recently, I offered to bring something. Since we would bring 10 people to the party I wanted to contribute to the meal.

I was assigned dessert. Aack!!!  Double aack!  I don't make good desserts. I can make bread in my sleep. My salads aren't too shabby. I'm a whiz with white sauce and Mexican food is my middle name, but desserts are hit and miss for me.

Procrastination didn't help matters. Who knew that waiting until the last minute was a bad idea?

My daughter-in-law Rachel suggested her tasty caramel brownie dessert recipe. My taste buds smiled in memory. Oh yes, quite tasty. Surely the ticket to impress people and be a suitable birthday dessert.

Trouble is I didn't have the necessary ingredients and procrastinating had used up the time margin so there wasn't time for a trip to a store.

I'm not sure where things went wrong.

Perhaps it was substituting the ingredients for a homemade german chocolate cake for a store bought german chocolate cake mix.

Perhaps it was trusting Google for a suitable replacement for evaporated milk.

Perhaps it was not wanting to spend $7.00 for two bags of caramels and deciding to use one bag and  leftover caramel ice cream topping.

Perhaps it was substituting ingredients, doubling the recipe, and using two different size pans so the cooking times weren't the same. 

Perhaps it was wanting to dribble white chocolate artistically in thin graceful stripes across the brownies, and then when the white chocolate held tenanciously to the spoon and refused to drip, electing to just spread the white glop like frosting. Only it didn't look like frosting. The dessert got uglier by the minute.

Perhaps it was when I had a panic attack, knowing we were already late and would be showing up with the world's ugliest birthday dessert I tried one last ditch effort and sprinkled red and green Christmas sprinkles on top. So just in case you ever need to know, Christmas sprinkles won't disguise ugly. For sure it didn't have eye appeal.

Perhaps it was the sleeve of Keith's jacket that dragged through the ugly mess on the ride over. 

Perhaps I didn't pray hard enough for the dessert to set up right.

I wish I could show you a picture of just how ugly it was, but I was too traumatized to take a picture.

I begged Keith to stop by our church to snitch borrow the leftover ice cream in the freezer to hopefully camouflage the dessert's shortcomings, only to discover the bucket was one thirds full. I prayed God would miraculously make that stretch for 21 people.

We arrived late (sigh!) and I set the dessert on an a bench on the deck outside, hoping the cold air would firm up the dessert and delay the unveiling a little longer.

I told my friend that the dessert had flopped and she kindly and politely said that she was sure it would taste all right. I didn't hold out much hope.

As people finished their meal, I knew the dreaded moment of truth had come. I whispered to my friend, "It's really ugly. I just can't carry it in with candles and sing Happy Birthday."

She smiled and said, "I'm sure it's not that bad."

I helped wash dishes and she went outside to fetch the bedraggled brownies. She came into the kitchen and whispered, "Did your dessert look like that when you brought it?"

I took one look at the big spot without white chocolate frosting and Christmas sprinkles and immediately knew what had happened. I whispered back, "Was your dog outside?"

She nodded and we both giggled, for now the dessert, if possible, was even uglier than before. We discreetly put the part the dog licked into the garbage, put one piece on the plate, added a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and a lit candle and walked out to sing Happy Birthday.

Turns out the dessert tasted fine. Very rich, but tasty if you didn't know what it was supposed to be like. Speaking of which, Rachel said, "Is this my recipe? I didn't recognize it with the white chocolate."

Either the birthday boy was being polite, or it tasted better than it looked, but he came back for seconds. No one asked for the recipe, but it's just as well as there's no possibility the recipe could be reproduced. It was an original, that's for sure.

Next time I'll either bake a birthday cake, buy one from the Wal-Mart bakery, or offer to bring Guacamole.

Or Little Smokies.

Or both.