Chemistry: It's not just for the classroom . . .

I know what you're thinking. This will be a nice little segue into some romantic story about "love" and "chemistry" and all things sappy. Wrong. This is a little segue into something much, much better.

Cake.

This month my grandmother turned 80. (See, we're back to birthdays already!) This is an amazing woman. She's also a woman who has EVERYTHING. So birthday and Christmas times are always a bit stressful, what with all the choosing of gifts. To avoid said stress, K and I made the brilliant, although not completely well-planned decision to bake Grandma's birthday cake as our present.

Four seconds after this plan hatched, we decided to make two cakes. Because Grandma likes chocolate, and we have a killer red velvet recipe. And, let's face it, it's our birthdays too. We'll bake two cakes if we want to.

Now, K and I are Food Network addicts. We watch the shows. We drool over the food. We even buy the fancy kitchen gadgets. But, if we're being completely honest, we don't actually cook that much. Especially when the cooking involves baking. Baking is hard. You have to measure everything, and add it at the right time and in the right order, and not open the oven early and blah blah blah. Too many rules. When I do descend upon the kitchen to make one of my culinary specialties, I like to just throw stuff in. Even my regular dishes are never quite alike two days in a row.

So here's where the chemistry comes in. I had to rationalize that cake is just a predictable chemical reaction. Mix eggs and sugar. Add flour and oil. Heat. Presto. CAKE. Suddenly, baking seems simple.

Of course, transferring the cake to a portable container, layering, frosting and decorating adds a bit of potential human error into the equation. But, I am proud to say we escaped with very little incident (besides a filthy kitchen) and two attractive cakes. And the nerd in me was leaping for joy to be able to apply my schooling to real life.

Thank you chemistry! You are quite delicious!