Tales of the Dessert Imposter

Well.  I finally did it.  I wasn’t happy about it either.  Turning hot dogs, burgers and fries, tacos, and 7-layer dips into desserts is unnatural.  It’s an abomination.  But it’s also a challenge!  Naturally I had to give a try, despite my misgivings.  My baby girl turned 10 a couple weeks ago, and she wanted an Oreo ice cream cake.  Could I do it?  Sure.  But I let Cold Stone do the honors, because a good ice cream cake takes a couple days for proper freezing and setting, and I’m a lousy decorator.  Today was her “my-birthday-is-right-after-Christmas-and-no-one-ever-comes-to-my-party” late celebration, so I decided to make her a cake that was just for fun.  Enter the Grilled Cheese Sandwich and Tomato Soup…Cake.

You know how they say on Food Network that you eat with your eyes first?  Well, that is doubly true for me.  I taste whole dishes in my mind long before I buy the first stalk of lemongrass or bottle of capers.  It’s why I’m sometimes plagued with indecision about what to make for a given meal, causing me not to eat breakfast until 3:00 PM or spend $100 buying the supplies for 10 different menu options…  It’s a curse.  It also makes the very concept of eating what LOOKS like a savory dish but is actually a sweet dish totally repellent.  I can’t let go of the idea that the taco should be beefy, not chocolatey.  I decided to let all that go today and try for the aesthetics of the “sandwich” cake, even if I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.

Step 1: Mock tomato soup.  This was a simple puree of fresh peaches and fresh strawberries.  Which I did not have.  And it’s January in Colorado.  Frozen fruit to the rescue!  Make that “freezer burned” fruit; there was so much ice attached to these things I didn’t need to add any additional water!  A little bit of sugar and some lemon juice, and then all I had to do was cook it down and hit it with the immersion blender.  Please note the shameless Cuisinart plug below.  I’ll be expecting my commission check in the mail any day now…

Step 2:  “Grilled Cheese”, a.k.a. boxed white cake and instant vanilla pudding.  This sounds simple, right??  I managed to jack it up.  I let my son go into the store alone to pick up these two items, and unfortunately did not warn him of the perils and intricacies  of the Jell-O aisle.  He had no idea about the overwhelming amount of choices, and I didn’t check his purchases until it was too late.  Sugar free, fat free.  Blarf.  Ah well, I could still work with it.  I mixed up the cake batter (nearly ruining that by dropping whole eggs in instead of just the whites – had to scoop those out with my fingers) and threw it in the oven, carefully following the time and temperature directions on the box.  Bad choice…  I pulled it out when the timer went off and didn’t think to check the doneness.  We’ll get back to that…

“Cheese” was easy enough; instant pudding and enough orange food coloring to resemble the gold standard (pun intended!) of grilled cheese filling, the Kraft Single.  So now I had all the makings of a pretty decent imitation of a sandwich, once I cut the baked cake in half and “toasted” it.  Too bad I couldn’t get a knife through the ridiculously under baked cake I had on my hands.  I failed to read the fine print of the recipe, which clearly stated I should have baked it for 35 minutes instead of the 28 minutes recommended on the box.  It’s a cardinal baking sin, but I had to throw it back into the oven  after it had cooled.  Do you know it took a full 25 minutes more before that dang cake was cooked through??  Sigh…  By then the edges were pretty firm.  Ok, they were burnt.  On the bright side, I figured it added to the look of “crust” for a good grilled cheese.  It was finally baked enough to cut the cake in half horizontally, then brush melted butter onto the surface and put the poor cake under the broiler to get the toasted look.  So, you know, now it was even MORE baked.  I almost felt sorry for it.  Despite my best efforts to ruin this cake, it actually ended up tasting pretty good.  Even though I had to shut my eyes to eat it!