Betty Crocker

What a day. Today is Abby's birthday - she turned 5 years old. Most of you mother's out there know what that entails. Spending the day creating a kitchen masterpiece - or at least trying to.

Abby was very clear in her instructions to me. Make a purple cake with red flowers. Fine. Easy enough. The problem arose when I started counting the number of people that would be attending Abby's party. We don't do friends at this age but we did have extra family in town. At any rate I figured I would just make the purple cake with red flowers and put together a pumpkin roll. Just real quick. Just in case we needed more dessert.

If you don't know what a pumpkin roll is imagine a thin, rectangular cake rolled up like a log with frosting in the center. Back to my baking disaster. I did make my pumpkin roll and I did do it fairly quickly. Unfortunately as I dumped my cake out I noticed that half of it remained on the pan - even though I had saturated the pan with Baker's Joy. At this point I was a little ticked but I had high hopes and a positive attitude and rolled it up in a towel anyway. And, yes, these are the proper steps for a pumpkin roll! (And just for the record, I have made a pumpkin roll before - once. And it turned out great. Now back to Abby's birthday pumpkin roll.) Later as I began to unroll my cake (after it was cooled) I realized the full extent of the disaster it was. There was no way to save it. None. So I took a deep breath, bit the bullet and started my new pumpkin roll. I made some minor changes that produced huge improvements. My effort was worth it! Or so I thought. This time my roll came out of the pan very nicely. Score one for me. I rolled it up just like I'm supposed to and let it cool. Score another one for me. Then I skipped around the house getting things done and came back to "unroll" it. Only it was not unrolling. It was more like a sticky mess that was breaking in chunks with every pull. Once again my cake began falling apart. Almost to unsalvageable....almost.

I was not going to have another failure so I quickly smeared the frosting on it, molded it into a log, wrapped it in Saran Wrap and threw it in the refrigerator. I have yet to check on it. My spirits can only take so much bashing in one day. The good news. Some of our guests weren't able to make it. My pumpkin roll did not have to be displayed and remains hidden in the back of the refrigerator. I'm trying not to think about the amount of time I put into the useless dessert! Oh, well. Abby did get her purple cake with red flowers and was happy as a clam about it. Happy Birthday Abby!