Through a Glass, Darkly

It’s time, once again, for everyone’s favorite Super Bowl tradition: the Male Bakeoff. But how to top last year’s stunning victory? That was a question Mike struggled with for most of the year. And then, in the fall, I purchased the Classic Batter Bowl from Pampered Chef, and, suddenly, Mike had a theme.

You see, if you take the Classic Batter Bowl and bake a cake in it, it comes out rounded. You can use this rounded cake to do all kinds of things – Mike’s sister made a cake that looked like a soccer ball, for example. But the most well-known thing to do with a rounded cake is to stick a doll in the top part of it and make it look like a woman’s dress. With this idea in mind, it was just a matter of finding a female Bible character to illustrate. And what character did Mike choose?

Why, the Whore of Babylon, of course.

This year’s entry was a red velvet cake with white chocolate/cream cheese icing, covered in a dark chocolate shell. It was, in a word, delicious. As far as the actual baking, I think Mike really outdid himself. While I was at work on Saturday morning, he bought all the ingredients and baked the cake. It’s hard to know how much batter to use in the batter bowl, so he had a bit of trouble with that, but it turned out okay in the end. My one regret is that I didn’t take pictures of the stages of the cake as he was making it. He made the icing, iced it, and then melted chocolate and coated it. After that, he put the Barbie doll (sans legs) in the cake, with toothpicks to anchor her. Then (being very careful not to melt Barbie) he used our creme brulee torch to give the chocolate a nice shine. THEN he decorated her “dress” with pink icing. It was quite an ordeal. Of course, for the finishing touches, he had to fix her hair. And make a sign so everyone would know exactly who she was supposed to be. Whore of Babylon Red Velvet Cake, thankyouverymuch.

I drove to church, because I didn’t want to be responsible for holding the “lady.” We were both a little bit afraid that this year’s theme had maybe been done before, at some point, but we shouldn’t have been concerned. People’s responses soon made it clear that Mike’s idea was very original.

We had, as usual, a great time viewing the other entries and eating soup and cornbread with our friends as we waited for the awards to be announced. One thing I don’t know if I’ve mentioned before is that we always get judges from outside the church to come and decide on the prizes. That’s how serious this event has become. This year, we thought that Mike could perhaps win Most Biblical again, but we knew that he had a shot at some other trophies, possibly Muy Macho or (this was the one I really wanted) Best Looking. I mean, his was the only cake with a girl in it. It totally could have been Best Looking. In the end, Mike walked away with the Muy Macho award. I think this is somewhat questionable – there was, after all, a doll in his cake. I guess the “whore” part tipped the scale. hee hee. I don’t have a good picture of it, but the Muy Macho trophy has a man on the top holding a gun. Last year’s trophy had a bodybuilder on top. We’re getting quite a collection.

We took pictures of some other entries, just to show you what the competition looks like.

Jesus walks on water:

A real entry, just to prove that some people do play it straight – Golden Anniversary Cake (it was DELICIOUS):

This year’s Most Biblical – The Lake of Fire:

Our pastor’s Cinnamon/Sin of Men muffins:

Collin’s Colts:

The Colt X-press:

My plate:

Seth (Best Chocolate for his No-Frills Fudge) and Mike with their trophies.

Many people say that this is their favorite “event” that the church puts on, and I’d have to agree. We always have a great time, and it’s always fun watching the little boys and the teenagers with their trophies. I made sure to congratulate one young man who had his first entry this year, and the death grip he had on his trophy says it all, I think, about what fun this is for the guys of all ages.

Here are the remains of the lady of the evening . . . we put Barbie on someone else’s cake as we were cleaning up.