Thursday, April 7, 2011

Cat Butt Cake


There’s a new specialty in my house. Cat Butt Cake. Just bake Nigella Lawson’s fabulous Chocolate-Espresso Cake from her book FEAST (one of my favorite cookbooks of all time). Ready for my own original twist on it? Once you pour the Kahlua on it, and the cake is cooling, just have a cat sit on it.

Yes, that’s right. I said, have a cat sit on it.

That’s what my cat did. My cat sat on my cake. (That's him, above, looking all innocent).

My cat is strange. Most of you know this already. If you don’t, then you need to revisit previous posts such as Sleeping With Joey, My Assistant, Why the Cat Has a Bald Tail, and The Culinary Cat.

This is a cat who takes Valium, sucks on blankets, drinks from the faucet, and loves a spatula. He’s not right. So this shouldn’t have surprised me.

But as I recall, when I discovered him resting his hind end on the already-flat cake, my words were, “Are you [bleep]-ing kidding me?!”

But really, he SAT ON A CAKE? Aren’t cats supposed to be fastidious? Joey is missing that trait. When I let him in the garage (because he sits at the door and wails to go in there), I will frequently find him sprawling in puddles like a dog. Or sitting in the recycling bin. Or cuddled up in an open bag of potting soil. Sigh..

It’s a good thing I love him so much.

I had made two cakes that fateful morning, for friends with birthdays. I walked into the kitchen to find Joey with his butt plopped on one cooling cake. Once I’d wrestled him down to wipe the sticky Kahlua from his backside (that was fun), I had to cut the other cake in half and deliver half cakes to my birthday friends.

What did I do with the Cat Butt Cake? I scraped a layer off the top and kept it for myself.

Of course.

Wouldn’t you?