.... And Then I Was Dubbed the Best Chef in the WORLD

We went to the Standa grocery store (the only "supermarket" in Florence and I say supermarket in the broadest of senses, it's really really tiny) down the street to pick up things for our first dinner in the house. We've eaten out or with the class up until now so tonight was a special occasion.

While at the store I found this cake in a bag thing. And of course, you say to yourself "Cake... in a bag!? Why, this is genious!" just like I did and then immediately buy it. So it comes with everything and the instructions were pretty basic even if they were in Italian. So all you do is pour it into a pan and shove it in the oven. Which is

A.) genious

and

B.) totally fool-proof.

Until you remember that you don't know how to work this strange oven in a foreign country and that you don't read instructions very well when they're in English and will therefore be much worse off when they're in Italian.

At this point you should realize that something fabulous happens during the course of this experiment to make it blog-worthy.

One of my flat-mates, Taya, smoothing out this totally awesome purchase in a cake pan.

Alright at this point we've figured out how to work the gas oven (something none of us has ever done) AND succeeded in avoiding death by accidental gas leak. So at this point the story will not turn into fodder for a new CSI episode. I stick the pan in and sit down to watch over the sweets for the next 30 minutes while it bakes. 3.5 minutes later I'm throwing open the oven as smoke starts to seep around the door. Of course the burner at the top of the oven is hot and OF COURSE you don't stick the cake right up next to them. Right?

WRONG.

That's exactly what I do. But since I'm sitting there I was able to save it thus far. It continues to bake on the bottom shelf for the remain 30 minutes and, when the knife test comes out clean, is pulled from it's oven-womb and into the cold, cruel world. My next BRILLIANT idea is to quickly flip it over and try to tap it out of the pan, pretty much immediately.

Have you ever started to do something and mid-execution thought to yourself "This is NOT a good idea" but continue to do whatever it is you're in the process of botching anyway because you just can't stop yourself? Well this was the result of just such an incident.

So I'm sitting there trying to come up with a way to repair it.

Frosting? Good thought, but there isn't any.
Whipped cream? Another good one, but none to be found.
Smooshing? BRILLIANCE! And I have two hands with which to smoosh!

I've got to give Taya credit for this one. Since we couldn't glue it back together or really even scrape it into a shape, she came up with the idea of making a jelly-roll, or something which involved rolling the cake. Sounds good in theory, I mean, it couldn't get much worse so what the heck?

Anyway, long story short this poo-log was the end result. It tasted fabulous, so kudos on the cake-in-a-bag invention, BOOOOoooo to my cooking skills. Perhaps next time. I hear it comes in apple cake as well....