I was going to make a cake. I was going to make a cake for my Squeeze’s birthday, the first of his birthdays that I will spend with him. I felt I had a precedent to establish, and that the bar would need to be set high. Stick with me, my confection would boast on my behalf, and you will be given a wild sugar high with every passing year. Or something. When I began two days ago I felt as nervous as I had before the first dinner I cooked for him. During our courtship, I advertised myself as a cook and baker and when it came time to walk that talk, it felt important to prove that I was the real thing. The dinner was an unqualified success. This cake, I assumed, would be one also.

I was. so. wrong.

• Here’s what I imagined:
• • Chocolate buttermilk sheet cake: dense and intensely cocoa-flavored, sticky and moist.
• • Coffee buttercream filling: sweet, fluffy buttercream with a light but obvious coffee flavor.
• • Shiny chocolate ganache glaze: nothing more than cream and chocolate melted together and slowly poured over the whole lot, creating a smooth case around the whole cake.

I have tested recipes for each component. I have made this combination before. I would, I imagined, take something I already knew to be good, execute each piece flawlessly, and make a really, really great birthday cake. When I set down with my a.m. coffee in my favorite mug, I felt unstoppable. I was about to use my baking to put my baking to shame. This cake would be Love in sugar form.

I couldn’t find the cocoa buttermilk cake recipe. I looked in all of my files, called my mother, rifled through my cookbook library. When the recipe could not be conjured, I considered panic but then instead thought, fantastic! This is the hiccup! I’ll get over this small speedbump and then proceed unencumbered towards greatness! I have always admired optimism in the face of doom.

I searched around the trusty Internet and found a similar recipe to audition, expecting to make at least two batches (one to test and one to adjust) before generating a satisfactory result. I was disappointed that my recipe could not be found, but decided to cheerily press on and make the best of it. A lot of what happens in the kitchen is making the best of it.

I put the cake together and into the oven in nothing flat, spreading the batter out in a half-sized jelly roll pan so that I could punch circles out for each layer instead of having to slice a cylinder crosswise, which isn’t nearly as easy to do as it looks . Even as a raw batter, I recognized the cake as unacceptably flawed. It would be too spongy and not sufficiently chocolatey, but easily amended in the second batch. Once I’d scribbled some notes over the recipe, I got to work on the coffee buttercream. I figured I was home-free. This buttercream and I go way back, six years or more, and though I’ve read that buttercreams are finicky, I’d always had great results with minimal effort. I’d always had great results with minimal effort.

A buttercream frosting is a creme anglaise sauce – milk and eggs cooked like a custard but not nearly as thick – with whole butter whipped into it. At it’s best it is silky and rich and not-too-sweet. It is nothing like the stuff that is sold in cardboard canisters at the grocery store, and even less like the “white icing” that comes slathered on sheet cakes, just before the spray-on neon “Happy Birthday” is applied and the bright pink roses are globbered into the corners. Buttercreams are a little bit difficult to make because all of the ingredients must be the same temperature and because the cook must be patient. The Coffee Buttercream I tried to make calls for one cup of milk, eight egg yolks, and one and one half cups of sugar for the creme anglaise and a whole pound of unsalted butter. That’s a lot of butter. That’s a lot of butter that needs to be soft, but not too soft, as it gets slowly, gradually paddled into the anglaise, bit by bit, just like brioche. It takes forever and for the first three quarters of the procedure there is no visually-appreciaable progress with which to entertain oneself.

I knew all of this. I made my anglaise sauce, whipped it cool and full of air in my four-quart Kitchen Aid, changed to the paddle attachment, and began very gradually tossing in the pound of butter, bit by tiny nickel-sized bit.

And nothing happened.

And nothing happened.

And nothing happened.

And then it broke.

When a food item – usually a sauce or a batter – “breaks,” the fat that ought to be emulsified separates. It happens all at once: your sauce is smooth and then it is lumpy and greasy. Sometimes you can fix it and sometimes you can’t. Sometimes it doesn’t matter; sometimes the mistake is fatal. A broken buttercream is, as far as I know, fatal. And totally gross to look at. To be fair, I am prepared to admit that the butter might have been just a tiny bit cool and, OK, I might have been a bit over-eager in mixing. So I broke the stuff and there’s a first time for everything and it’s all right to make mistakes because how else do you learn? All right?

The buttercream washed down the garbage disposal, the flavorless cake wrapped in plastic to protect it from the cats (or the cats from it), I ran away to meet a friend for lunch at The Goose Hollow Inn. The Goose Hollow Inn is not, in fact, an Inn, but a completely adorable neighborhood pub locally famous for their Rueben sandwiches and mayoral proprietor. I had a cup of pumpkin soup, which cheered and bolstered me sufficiently to march back home and begin my cake project with spirit renewed.

I won’t draw this out. My second try for buttercream – when I followed the instructions letter perfect, when the butter and the anglaise were both the correct temperature, when I mixed in the butter so slowly I wondered if I might not be done by his next birthday – was also a failure. Smashed to smithereens, you might want to say. And you’d be right. I don’t know what happened.

For the sake of preserving my sanity and sense of self-worth, I shelved the filling and measured out the two ingredients for my ganache, chocolate and cream. I had been saving six ounces of Dagoba’s New Moon. It is so delicious. And, because it quite dark, it would have served as a nice counterweight to the so-so cocoa buttermilk cake. I chopped the chocolate and scalded the cream with some coffee beans and let it steep. I poured the strained hot cream over aforementioned chopped chocolate. I waited, then stirred.

And here is the place in my story, dear Readers, where yours truly basically comes apart. I won’t tell you what happened; I can’t. You know what happened. The story could not be otherwise. Ganache is the simplest thing in the world to make. Two ingredients, three steps. I haven’t the first glimmer of a notion about what when wrong how or where – all I knew then was that between the two broken buttercreams, one batch of passable cake and the inexplicably faulty ganache, it wasn’t looking like such a good day for birthday cakes.

When the Squeeze came home from work some hours later, I wrangled myself into a hug and faked sobbing into his chest. “I’m a failure,” I cried, “I can’t bake anymore! It was a fluke all these years and now” – sob, sob, sob – “the jig is up!” More sobbing, possibly real, and a hiccup. “We’ll have to get you a cake from Fred Meyer with a race car airbrushed on it!”

We decided to go out for some air instead, hoping to push some hidden Restart Button in my head or my hands that would get me back on track when I returned to the kitchen. I harped on and on about what a miserable baker I am, and how I had wanted so badly to make this flawless cake to commemorate his special-freaking-day. “I’ve never had my own birthday cake before,” he told me when I took a breath from my self-depreciating rant. He explained that his father’s birthday is a few days ahead of his, and that his family celebrated both birthdays together on the day in between. He didn’t tell me to make me feel worse; he was just thinking aloud. My only thought was to rush home and make thirty cakes, one for every year missed plus extras. I then remembered that I couldn’t even make one.

Of course, I did finish a cake. I took the perfectly decent sheet of cocoa buttermilk cake, by now the star of the show, cut out three rounds and layered them with vanilla ice cream. I spattered some warm ganache into the ice cream when softening it, creating little flaky specks of mocha-y chocolate. I poured a thin covering of slightly greasy ganache over the third layer and froze it, figuring that whatever happened to it in the freezer I could hide with a glaze, or not, when the time came. For icing, I whipped heavy cream and mascarpone cheese together with some confectioner’s sugar and coffee liqueur. I finished the cake with chocolate shavings and rosettes and shoved it back in the freezer to set, frustrated.

I feel like a kid who has had a very bad day on the playground. Maybe two broken buttercreams, a mediocre sponge cake and failed ganache doesn’t seem so awful to you. Maybe you have real problems, like an overdue mortgage payment or a blood clot silently making its way towards your brain. Maybe I am making a big deal out of trifles.

I have changed my mind about how I will end this post half a dozen times. I wanted to avoid cliché, or some sunshiny moral about how “the true measure of one’s skill in the kitchen may be gauged by how one moves forward after a mistake,” and that this is actually a testament to my ability in the kitchen, having created in a pinch a passable product. Last night I tried to make a soup out of a some leftover tilapia and the contents of my fridge and, while it was hot and edible, I wouldn’t say that it was good. I threw away the corn muffins I made to go with it; they weren’t even worth putting honey on.

If I weren’t already having an off-week in the kitchen, after having yammered on about it I surely will. Last night I seriously considered the possibility that I’ve used it all up, whatever it is that’s in me that knows how to cook. I’d just read a piece in Best Food Writing 2005 about a young woman who moved to France right after college to learn how to cook. She secured a job as a personal chef for a pair of aristocrats and spent the summer botching up dishes and learning French from the good-humored butler and maid. Towards the end of the essay, she wrote about the development of her skills: from having to write out and plan a menu beforehand, making notes about how long each dish would take to prepare and how she would know that the roast is done, to being able to sense things with her hands and her eyes. The passage was so familiar to me I almost teared up a bit. When I am in the Zone, that’s how I cook. I cook with my body, with the intuition and knowledge and rhythm that’s somehow tied up in my hands, my nose, my skin.

Then I realized: I haven’t been cooking like that lately. And I miss it.

Occasionally, however, I stumble upon an eatery that I feel compelled to rant about. One such recent trainwreck of a meal was from Pizza A Go Go on N. Williams Avenue.

When I tell people that I had a disappointing pie from Pizza A Go Go, further stating that my allegiance in neighborhood pizzerias is henceforth firmly planted with the Mississippi Pizza Pub, the only response I’ve heard has been “well, at least they deliver.” That’s right, not a single person has come to the defense of A Go Go with anything more convincing than their after-four delivery service. Indeed, it is a draw. On the very day that the Squeeze and I had out pie from A Go Go, our first priority was to set on a meal that someone would bring to the house. That it was a new place that neither of us had eaten at was an extra-special bonus. That is was pizza was inconsequential. What I mean to convey here, is that I did not head out into the world on one chirpy spring day looking for culinary delight. I was merely home on a weekday afternoon, too busy to cook for myself and desperately hungry. To disappoint when the standards are set so low is quite an accomplishment, I’d say.

Strike one: While the website hawks their delivery service, nowhere does it say “but only after four p.m.” Then again, their website also states that they make the “Freshiest, tastiest, kickiest combos around.” I should have known. I would have been much happier making this discovery in print, before I called to place my order. When the polite young man apologized for not being able to deliver my pie, I was unable to admit that my choice of eateries was based wholly around my own laziness, not a desire to eat one of their “kickiest” pizzas.

Strike two: We picked up the pizza twenty-five-to-thirty minutes after placing the order, as instructed. The shop – small and hip and attractive on the corner of N. Williams and N. Cook – smelled incredible. As soon as I stepped through the door, I felt relief, assurance. We were in for a treat, I was certain, if the pizza shack smelled so good. The perfect pizza triad of tomato, garlic and oregano wafted into my expectant nostrils. The pie was sitting on top of the oven when we arrived. The transaction was smooth, speedy and satisfactory, inasmuch as paying twenty-two bucks for a pizza can be. When we got outside and lifted the cardboard lid I noticed the cheese had begun to congeal. This is something that happens, as we all know, when melted cheese begins to cool once it’s been brought out of the oven, boxed, sliced, and set to rest for the customer. This is why I make it a point to be as prompt as possible according to the readiness instructions I am given over the phone. So, the pie had been kept waiting, languishing, dying.

Strike Three: It tasted awful. This, really, is what it’s all about. The rest of my complaints are just straws, small annoyances that only serve to highlight this one unforgivable problem. The pizza was bad. The toppings were wrong. Not incorrect per my order, but just so badly done. The red onion was sliced so thin that, once surrounded by cheese (too much) and baked, they disappeared both in texture and in flavor. The cheese, as I mentioned, was too thick, and too cool by the time it got to us. And, I swear, the “parmesan” that came already sprinkled over the pie had to have been shaken out of a green cardboard canister. The “herbed chicken breast” was neither herbed, nor was it breast. It was unseasoned chicken meat, full of tendons and globules of fat. Futhermore, it was dried out and stringy and, it seemed to me, old. The crust, underbaked and flat, had a texture suggestive of partially-dried white glue. It was thin, but not crisp on the bottom and did not rise at all underneath the avalanche of cheese and soupçon of chicken, onions, and garlic paste.

We ate it, because we were hungry and we’d paid twenty-two dollars for it. But next time – I don’t care if they deliver – I am going elsewhere. In fact, I’d rather just be hungry than gnaw on another pizza a go-go.

I will not attempt to justify its presence in my shopping basket or, later, in my freezer. Maybe I will: sometimes a gal gets hungry and she doesn’t think straight. How about that? I don’t know about their restaurants, cookbooks, or other convenience items. What I do know is that I would rather starve than attempt to pass this down my gullet.

I wanted to let Dad’s glowing review cover the evening. I wanted to never write anything shy of a rave for my favorite Pacific Grove eatery. Goshdarnit.

This is why a body can’t review a restaurant based on one night, one meal. This is why real critics go over and over – different nights, different service, different cooks. This is why you can’t really trust me.

My bouillabaisse in “Spicy Caribbean Broth” made me kind of sad. There, I said it. I’ve had the dish before – it’s a red bell pepper and coconut milk based kind of thing, sometimes heavy with cilantro. And when they do it right, geepers, it’s great. It’s this perfect balance of spicy and sweet, creamy but light on the tongue. It’s perky and fun but quiets down enough so that you can stil taste the fishiness of the items swimming in it. When it’s good, I soak up the last drops with their warm cibatta. Whipped butter’s for suckers.

It was not good this last December 23. It was flat. It was boring. It just lay there. The bouillabaisse – a dish with such possibility, so many promises and potential thrills – was having a profoundly bad night. The chunks of fish were just that: chunks, waiting to be goosed by this flop of a sauce. But the sauce was asleep on the job. Perhaps knowing this, someone put cubes of carrot and potato in the bowl (the underlip smeared with sauce), maybe to serve as a distraction. In abrupt contrast to the soft fish, they were barely cooked and had to be chewed somewhat aggressively. The icing, so to speak, was four sprigs of an unidentified green mass drowning in the sauce. I assume this was meant to be garnish but it got waterlogged somehow. I would have used cilantro, but maybe the kitchen ran out at the late, late hour of six p.m. em>Maybe the cook doesn’t know cilantro from watercress or peashoot or whatever tasteless, stringy gob of greenery I tried – and failed, utterly – to get into my mouth without dribbling that sad “spicy” broth on my chin.

Such a crime; such a needless, senseless, shameful crime to let this potential exit the kitchen unrealized. For the majority of my meal, I sat nine feet away from the Executive Chef who stood at the Host’s station, glad-handing outgoing patrons. Chef Walter, you should have been lording over your empire in the back of the house, teaching your line cooks or your point guy about picking leaves off of stems for garnish. They should know that if the menu reads “spicy,” the thing ought to taste, well, warm. There´s not a lot of wiggle room in that adjective, you know. And I know that you have the formula for a kick-ass “spicy Caribbean broth” rattling around in your head somewhere. The execution failed. Failed.

I can’t even say that the kitchen was having a bad night. It wasn’t. The salmon served across the table from me seemed fine and when I left Cali, Dad was still talking about those scallops. Our appetizers, the crab cake and BBQ’ed prawns were their usual exquisite selves. There was no panic in the air; no expletives emanating from the kitchen or the dishpit.

What does one do when an old friend, which is indeed how I have come to think of Passionfish, disappoints one so? Since I first “discovered” it in 2001, I’ve had many more amazing and wonderful meals there than I have had letdowns. The very first thing I ate there – a simple grilled halibut with sugar snap peas over scallion rice – actually made me cry. Everything about it was perfect. It was stunning, and I hadn’t seen it coming, hadn’t expected a literally flawless plate.

I will forgive Ted and his gang this (regrettable, embarrassing) oversight. I will surely drop in for a meal the very next time I am in the neighborhood. I’ll just make sure to have the duck confit.