Surprise Cake

I'm not sure how old I was when this happened, but I think I was just old enough to stay home alone, so I must have been eleven or twelve. Carol was swimming at a meet, and both of my parents went to watch her. I think it might have been a championship meet. I was home watching John and my parents and Carol weren't going to be home until late in the evening.

I thought I would be a nice brother and surprise everyone with a cake when they got home. I got a box of cake mix and get out the stand mixer. I started adding the ingredients to mixing bowl while the mixer was running. When I got to the eggs, I accidentally dropped the shell in the bowl. The beater immediately crushed the eggshell into tiny pieces. I tried to stop the mixer, but it was too late. 

I was pretty young and inexperienced in the kitchen, so I got the bright idea that if I mixed the batter really fast, it would break the eggshells into such small pieces that no one would notice. So I beat the batter on high for as long as I thought it would take. Then I poured the batter into a couple of round pans and baked the cake. 

I can't remember if anything looked off at this point, but I pulled the cakes out and frosted and assembled them into a nice round cake. I was probably pretty proud of my accomplishment, and I had the cake all ready to server as soon as my family came home. 

When my parents and Carol came home, I surprised them with the cake. I cut the cake into pieces and served each of them as well as a piece for myself. I can still remember the look on my dads face as he started chewing on the cake. Now my dad was the type of person who would try to be supportive no matter what, but with each attempt at chewing, there was no way for him to hide the shock of having small pieces of eggshell grind against his teeth. I had noticed the horrible feeling in my mouth, like eating a handful of sand, but I had hoped that maybe it was just my pieces of cake that had been contaminated. The look on my dads face made it clear that wasn't the case. My sister was probably the first one to mention how bad the cake was. 

I explained what happened, and we all had a pretty good laugh over it. I have never been able to live that one down even though I became a pretty decent cook within a few years. Of course I still avoid baking at all costs with the exception of eclairs.