I love chocolate.

 I love how it tastes, I love how it smells, I love its textures and how it feels in your mouth. I love how it looks, I love how versatile it is. I love everything about chocolate. I even love its tasty tasty calories.

I dont know when my first experience with chocolate was, but I can tell you when my first experience with chocolate cake was.

I'm pretty sure I was Five years old. Four or five.  I was in kindergarden, so it could be anytime between those ages.

My mom was returning home from the grocery store, that was when I saw it. The shiny plastic sheen of a store bought cake. 

I watched it intently, admiring its packaging. I loved shiny things. I especially loved shiny things that held within it such tasty treasures. Whats this? Is this a chocolate cake? yes.. it was a chocolate cake.

It was a German chocolate cake. the kind with the chocolate icing on the sides, covered in cake crumbs, and the top iced with that delicious mixture of coconut, chopped pecans, butter and a few other tasty tasty things. There was even a little poof of chocolate icing in the center, topped with a little cherry.

My mom unpacked the groceries, apparently the fridge was full, so the cake sat out. On the counter.

On the counter that could be seen if I popped my head out from my bedroom door and looked to the right.
It was RIGHT there. 

I admired this cake for probably 10 minutes (or a four year olds approximation of 10 minutes, more likely 2 minutes) before my mom noticed my interest. My thoughts of sticking my finger into the cake and having "just a taste" were immediately quelched by my mom's abrupt scolding. "DONT YOU TOUCH THAT CAKE! IT'S FOR THE PARTY TOMORROW!" 

Now that I'm older, I cant really remember what the party was for. It could have been a birthday party, an anniversary party,  we could have been celebrating anything. I really dont know. I've always just assumed it was for my dad's birthday.. mostly because of what happened later on. 

I walked away from the cake, deflated. I wanted that cake in the worst way.

We didnt get a lot of treats in my house growing up. My mom was constantly on a new diet, My dad was at work most of the time, and when he was home he was usually relaxing by the television. However,  my dad was the first person to introduce me to the wonderful world of  homemade slushies, and for that I gotta give the man his props. When my dad cooked it was usually very flavourful and ridden with calories (and butter). When my mom cooked it was usually dry and tasteless. This was before my mom really got into baking. I think she was still recovering from having brought me into the world. I was a terror, constantly getting into things. 

Anyways-

I wanted that cake. We didnt have cake very often. Cake was something always reserved for special occasions, so by the time another special occasion rolled around I had a hankering for cake something awful. 

I had to devise a plan, and quickly.
Soon it was bedtime, and I headed off to my overly pink top bunk. I had all my carebears lined up on a shelf on the wall, my bedspread was pink- hearts everywhere. I'll have to scan a picture of it and post it sometime. 

I fell asleep. My dreams were filled with visions of moist, rich, delicious cake.




I dont know exactly how I came up with the idea, or even if I came up with the idea at all. It very well may have been a completely spontainious act...

Exiting my bedroom wasnt difficult. My family was pretty used to me or my sister getting up in the middle of the night to use the restroom. My being 5 and my sister being 8, it was good that our bedroom was right across the hall from the bathroom... and only a few short steps away from that cake.

I went for it. I made the made dash for the kitchen. The floor creaked, but I moved fast enough that the creaking didnt last long, it probably sounded more like the house settling than anything.

I slid the cake off the counter. IT WAS MINE! I HAD IT!  A few more steps, opening the package as I moved.. my footsteps masked by the unmistakable crunching sound of the cheap plastic lid separating from the base.


It wasnt long before most of the cake was gone. My hands and face mostly covered in a mixture of cake and frosting. I dont remember even THINKING about what would happen after I finished the deed. Perhaps my mom would wake up and think "Oh, I guess I DIDNT buy a cake yesterday. I'll just have to go to the store and get one today!" or maybe she had another one hidden somewhere, and knew what I was up to. How could a child resist the delicious temptation of a german chocolate cake left out, lonely on the counter.. waiting for a friend like me to come and gobble it up.

...and then it was gone. the whole thing, gone. Before I had time to bask in the glory of a job well done, there was a sound. A door! FOOTSTEPS!

Oh no. oh no oh no oh no. what do I do? what is this? what did I do? Wrapper, must do something with this wrapper. My SHIRT! I'll put it under my nightshirt! Yes, thats a GREAT PLAN!

I dont think I really need to tell you what happened next. Just imagine a 5 year old girl with a belly full of an entire german cake roughly the same size around as her, with the giant plastic wrapper that once housed this giant german chocolate cake- crushed and shoved under her nightshirt and pressed against her body, sitting at a table that was covered with cake crumbs and frosting. 

Oh yeah, and since I neglected to use any utensils for my feast.. yeah, you know what I looked like.


So it was my dad. My dad woke up for work. He probably would have just gone into the bathroom to take a shower had he not heard the sound of my cake container crushing. 

I was pretty surprised by his reaction. He laughed. He thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. There I was, looking like a little piggy, having just acted like a little piggy. He asked what was in my shirt. I panicked. I started crying, I put my hands against my face and the lid dropped down to the ground. He laughed louder. Realizing how loud he laughed, he moved into the kitchen and sat down on a chair next to me. I dont think he went to comfort me right away, he was probably in shock. could a 5 year old's stomach really hold that much food?

Answer- no. 

I cried for a few minutes. I was freaking out. I was afraid of what my mom would do. My dad caught me. You know how it is, this was back before spanking was considered child abuse, and out in the sticks where I'm from, it was pretty normal to have to go "get the switch" (which to you non-hicks means go outside and pick a stick off of a tree, this is the stick that you will now be spanked with.) 

Right around when my dad went to comfort me, my stomach felt the full weight of its contents. A mixture of fullness and panic caused my gag reflex to be triggered and..

yeah. I ran to the bathroom. Luckily our house was small. I threw up for what seemed like forever. I can still remember it, and thats probably why I've never eaten german chocolate again.

I was lucky though. I think my dad figured what I had gone through in the preceeding hours was punishment enough, and he told my mom he ate it. When she asked why I was throwing up in the bathroom, he said he woke up and I wasnt feeling well.  This was a story never to be spoken of again amongst family. I still have never said a word of it to either of my parents. Strangely though.. We've never had german chocolate cake EVER again at any family functions.

I know that story sounds like a love of chocolate turned to a hatred of chocolate, but its not. I still love chocolate. I just hate german chocolate cake, more specifically the frosting, because that was what I had coming out my nose. 

So, I tend to stick with more... un-chunky frostings. Like cream cheese or marshmellow, or buttercream, or whipped cream. But most times I'll eat my chocolate cake plain, with either no icing, or the icing scraped off, and a healthy dose of ice cream seated beside it.

Which is what you have here-



Thats a slice of a swiss cake roll in the back, covered with a generous heaping of double chocolate gelato, chocolate ice cream, a chocolate bon-bon, chocolate shavings and chocolate and caramel syrup.



I dont think I have to tell you this was delicious. The texture of the swiss roll was just so that it sopped up all the tasty little meltings off of the ice cream. And I'm a sucker for anything with caramel sauce on it. 

-A.