Guys, I don’t mean I sold pot. But I did intend to sell my wares to those who were using pot.

It was years ago, and an entrepreneurial friend of mine came up with the idea to start a late-night dessert delivery service and asked me if I wanted to help. I said sure. (Okay, fine, I totally wanted to date him and thought this was my chance. Whatever, get off my back). The idea was to bake desserts at his apartment, then be available to deliver them to Williamsburg-ers from 10pm-3am. (I really don’t need you to tell me how dumb this was, I knew it then. I know it now). Not only is it illegal to sell food made in a non-commercial kitchens, why I thought delivering desserts to strangers at 3am would be a great way to start a successful bakery business with zero knowledge of baking from scratch is beyond me. Maybe I didn’t watch enough “Shark Tank.”

We came up with some recipes – half we Google’d, some I’m pretty sure we winged (oatmeal-flax-chocolate-chia cookies? Again…Williamsburg. I don’t know), and one recipe we definitely stole from someone who said they’d bake for us, then bailed after one night realizing how non-profitable this was. I think we had 6 menu items total. This required us to bake pretty much every-other night (we might have been illegal, but dammit, if we weren’t fresh), then stay up all night holding the burner phone we bought as the business line. My astute business partner also paid $200 for promotional cards that we handed out in the afternoons, trying to drum up business. (I DID have a job during this time, by the way, which makes this whole charade even more ridiculous). I think we called it “Foodie Call” or something equally pun-y and derivative. Again…knocking it out of the park.

I think the business (and I use this term loosely) only ran for a month before we called it quits. We probably only made 10 deliveries the whole time, I didn’t even make more than $20, let alone get a boyfriend out of it. Total waste.

As it happened, Thanksgiving fell right after our shoddy business closed it’s apartment door, but I was ready to show off my “new found baking mastery” to my family. I’m the youngest child, and obviously the slightly-forgetful-doesn’t-really-contribute-much sibling. Well…I was about to show them! We made a plan that the night before Thanksgiving, my sister would make dinner, and I – the baker! – would do dessert. Even though I really hadn’t improved much during my stint as an Underground Dessert Pusher, I thought I was a regular Dominique Ansel (“The Cronut Guy” for you non-bakers), so I decided to make the most convoluted dessert I had sort-of learned to make, but by no stretch of the imagination perfected: a Peanut-Butter-Banana Chocolate cake with Peanut Butter frosting. I sent my parents the list of ingredients I needed, which was an obscene list that included semi-sweet chocolate chips, unsweetened chocolate chunks, and god-knows what else, but my sister told me it cost like $60 to get everything. Whatever, Mom, this cake was going to be SO worth it!!

I spent about an hour and a half in the kitchen whipping up the cake batter, melting the chocolate, prepping the frosting, and making a huge mess. But don’t worry, family-who-looks-terrified, I’m your newly grown up daughter and I’m going to blow your socks off so hard you’re going to offer to send to me culinary school, so it’s going to be SO worth it!

Well, you see, the thing was, I never figured out how to bake banana chunks INTO the cake without them becoming rock hard…but I figured that would magically work itself out. But then there was also the small detail that I could never remember if I was supposed to add baking soda or baking powder. I think I used baking soda. Although I don’t know. Who can remember such things. Again…lessons very much not  learned.

I put the batter in the oven and kept yapping about how good this huge cake was going to be. About 15 minutes in, I go to peek at my cake and see how she was doing. The following happened in slow motion: I turn on the oven light. I look in. The cake is bubbling up like a goddam active volcano. Huge dollops of my precious cake that was supposed to prove years of worthlessness wrong were just plopping onto the bottom of the oven. The cake on the bottom of the oven was beginning to smoke and burn. the cake was still bubbling over. My cake was ruined. I tried to think of how I could save this cake, but then it started to really smell. I walked over to my dad and said: “I think I fucked it up.”

I still don’t remember which was the wrong one, but I THINK the baking soda was wrong. I think that’s what makes it explode. Or I was supposed to use both? I don’t know, I have never tried to bake that fucking cake again because it was totally scarring to have to tell my family – as a 22-year old ADULT – that I messed the cake up and the majority of that $60 worth of ingredients now had to be scraped and burned off the oven floor.

I think what made me the most upset wasn’t that I screwed it up and there would be no dessert/redeeming of myself. It’s that my family didn’t seem at all surprised that the cake literally blew up in my face. Why did I tell you this story as I prep to go home for Thanksgiving again this year? I guess the lesson I learned that year was…if you’ve never been the one to help in the kitchen, don’t start now. Don’t try to impress anyone. Just offer to roll up those Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and call it a day. Holidays aren’t for showing your parents how much you’ve grown. They are for you to revert to your 14-year old self and whine all weekend, then try and sneak out after your parents fall asleep so you can meet your friends, get drunk, and spy on the loser who still works at the local Pick N’ Save.

Gobble, Gobble, underachievers!