CHEWY BUBBLE CAKES

A story by Linda J Hernandez

Do you love cake? I don’t really know anyone out there that doesn’t. Well, maybe with the exception of the average diabetic who can’t really have any cake, or maybe they can to certain exceptions. But to certain limits. We all are aware that all cake of all shapes, sizes and colors can be extremely delicious. One of my favorite kinds of cake is Tres Leches from Central America where my biological father was born, which stands for “Three Milks Cake” in Spanish. It is a real exotic Beige colored cake in the shape of a rectangle, or sometimes in the shape of a very large circle for birthdays with a large space on the surface to add candles on the top of it, just like a regular sized birthday cake. And I say exotic because usually when we have a yummy slice of cake it is always Yellow, Brown, Red, White, Green, Orange, Rainbow mixed or even Pink in color! Tres Leches usually comes with White very light, whipped frosting topping the dessert, or entirely all around the delicious dessert; almost as though the cake wore beautiful clothing wrapped all around it’s Beige, spongie body like a White Egyptian cotton towel. Hm. Can you just imagine? Four Milks Cake which is known as “Cuatro Leches” in Spanish is the cousin of the Three Milks Cake. It contains an extremely unique caramel icing unlike the average type of frosting that normally everybody uses all around the world. But Cuatro Leches is considered to be known for its extremity of high sweet sugary levels because of that caramel which is used in replacement of the cake’s original frosting. Ahhhhh, the aroma of just how sweet that sounds, and delicious. What makes Tres Leches even more interesting, is that it actually sits on a little puddle of an ooey gooey thin milk-like glaze. This would be kind of like the idea that this little cake guy went for a savouring dip in what we know as “frosting lake”. But then, just stop, and just imagine that you can actually pick up this little guy known as Tres Leches Cake, and as you hold him OR her in your hands, you are able to actually stretch em’ out, or squish her all around into, maybe a group of more miniscule cakes. Now that this cake has reproduced, what can we make happen out of this entire situation? Hm. I’m guessing these are the new generation of baby Tres Leches Cake. They formed from a situation known as “squishy cakes”, an almost immortal kind of dessert. This group of little cakes then were sprinkled with magic sugary fairy dust of powdered sugar from donuts when they fell asleep in the bakery, and they began to get onto their feet and walk! They found their way out of the bakery by simply sliding underneath the front door in the middle of the night, being the fact that they were elastic, flexible and squishable all in one like some kind of exotic new sponge cake. These cakes traveled through a large body of snow which was made out of pounds of White frosting and coconut sugar, when falling into a blissful sugar rush during the metamorphosis of sugared silver glitter that formed into snowflakes had actually fell upon them. This left a new and enhanced colorful design of rainbow sprinkles, the kinds we see on cookies, doughnuts and other kinds of cakes out there. There were frost clouds in the air that would pour out loads of sugary snow and glistening rainbow sprinkles were the snowflakes that designed the White grounds of colorful beauty. Next thing you know, these tiny Tres Leches cakes eventually reached a valley of some of the most beautiful gingerbread cookies whom were alive performing certain exciting activities such as playing dominoes, mowing their lawns which was a large, bright Red carpet, dancing to caramel quarter notes which were from that oldies all-time favorite song from November 12, 1982 we all love known as, “Our House” by the British ska and pop band known as “Madness”, playing dodgeball while picking off nuts from brownies and throwing them at each other, sweeping brownie crumbs from their carpets and discussing which carpet company they were going to hire to shampoo the smudged chocolate out of their gorgeous Red carpet road as not to attract roaches which terrorized their neighborhood if they did ever show up, these cookies were also seen making their beds which were obviously made from the softness of pillowy marshmallows! (By the way reader, you should definitely research that song called “Our House”, by Madness! Great hit!) This was the baked goods village. And squeezing those soft marshmallow bags feel so much like the texture of our soft, fluffy pillows we all lay our heads on and throw at each other during those exciting hotel stays! So, the Tres Leches Cake group began to have a conversation with the gingerbread cookies, explaining to them how they had attempted to actually get up and just simply walk right out of the bakery where they were sleeping between cookie sheets, and as they carried their little sticks which carried their bag of belongings and cookie dough, they began to make a deal with the gingerbread cookies. They came to a conclusion that instead of moving in with the gingerbread cookies into their tiny efficiency sized gingerbread houses, the cookie family actually had a better idea. They decided to be kind out of the goodness and sugar in their hearts and they ordered three large rectangle shaped birthday cakes which were soon delivered to their neighborhood by the Lactaid cow pulling a large, wooden trailer. The family of gingerbread cookies then began to cut the cakes in slices, eventually making them into houses for the exotic group of the Three Milks Cake. Then, everyone lived happily ever after in the land of sugar, eating shiny disco ball candy apples to celebrate; AND blowing out a few colorful candles on other cakes they had out there in that foreign faraway baked goods village. I mean, it was always so relevant how the word “casa” which means house in Spanish had always sounded similar to the pronunciation of a large cake in English or in Spanish. Can you imagine seeing a large cake shaped as a big house getting cut into some of the most delicious pieces of cake? While you are simply cutting the house into pieces or subdivisions while designing the house into a set of efficiencies or studios or hostel rooms which would each hold a separate living party, it is the same idea as cutting the house into pieces….OF CAKE! Of beautiful cake! We can actually eat houses! And actually fill them with fruit designs or even food coloring to make them look even more interesting and so beautiful! Playing with sugar or playing with our food has somehow reached a new, modern extravaganza. Then there is the sound of that name of the “Grand Canyon”, which when pronouncing that name also sounds JUST as delish as just biting into those warm yams covered in Brown sugar with melted marshmallows. We also have the beauty of White wedding cakes with buttercream which in itself is an eccentric pronunciation of wet cakes, similar to rum cakes which we usually discover in Cuban or Hispanic bakeries, or then again, it is some kind of distant relative of our Tres Leches Cake dessert! and the beautiful sugar icing which modern day cake designers use in their cake businesses that has almost like a plastic or fake spongie but somehow realistic look to it, soft beds and cushioned chairs have always given away that feel of softness texture once your body collides with the slushiness puff of the soft furniture. We can also say that the White comforter blanket is just like the cake’s frosting. Hm. Can you picture it, my dearest reader? The sound and idea of “eating washed socks” in a jail is the taste of apple jelly peanut butter sandwiches, because if you put two and two together, all of these have one main thing in common, and that is texture. It’s all soft, pillowy, and marshmallowy, even when we bite into it. The word, “jewelry” spikes off that “wet” sound of some kinds of delicious fruit mixed into cakes just as we have in our cherry or strawberry cheesecake delicacies! The sound of socks and the word jail sounds exactly like the texture of apple jelly being savored on some very squishy bread. And the greatest part of this entire situation is when you finally swallow just all of that together, the sound...AND the texture which makes life much more exciting and interesting! Pillows usually give off that impression of the spongie softness of angel food cakes, or smaller kinds of very unique kinds of cakes or desserts out there that contain that somewhat combo of soft puffiness in their texture. Sneakers is also a very soft word that we could sink our “Count Dracula” teeth into, especially if you just think about how squooshy they appear each time we walk with every step! Especially solid White ones, they resemble the chewiness of soft White cake texture, almost like when we cut into the cake just to get a piece out of it. Solid Black cake or chocolate is just sooo equivalent to the sound of the delicious pronunciation of Black sneakers; ahhh everytime I just SAY it I could just TASTE it.Tres Leches as well as gingerbread cookies both have that soft baked texture we all love to bite into. The satisfying chewiness and gushiness of that good stuff is the greatest life sentence curse that any diabetic out there has ever been forbidden to ever live for, or nevertheless, to experience ever again. Then finally, there is the ancient term that once was born years ago known as “chewy bubble cakes”, which is the image of a cat’s paw! Think about it, a cat’s paws are very soft and almost “chewy” in texture, and their toes (which also sometimes resemble the small Pink OR Black Goya beans from the grocery store cans in a way known as A.K.A. “bean toes”) have that extreme resemblance to itty bitty BUBBLES! That’s right! Actual bubbles that can actually be placed into the image of some sort of different kind of new and advanced cake project out there! Well, the very next day at the bakery where the Tres Leches group escaped from, there existed a group of bakers and chefs as staff workers of the biz, who after stepping into the bakery had finally realized that the Tres Leches group had vanished, or somehow were just mysteriously gone. The cake group had explained to the cookies that they were tired of being squished, rolled, beat into, kneaded, and stretched, and the cookies began to believe that the Tres Leches Cakes family were in sudden jeopardy of being abused. This was because of the fact that the cookie family had survived being baked in an oven before THEY too, ranaway. It took the gingie group quite some time to rehabilitate the trauma of what they experienced “in the heat of the night”. This was the reason as to why the gingies actually took action finding ways to harbor the Three Milks group in their baked goods village. The main chef of the bakery was named “Malcolm”, and he would not stop yelling at his bakers known as Pam and her brother named Nigel who wore a Pillsbury costume everyday to work due to his world of fantasyland which he lived in day after day. After they got into an argument about how the ONLY Tres Leches Cake which they HAD LEFT in the building had just mysteriously disappeared with all of the doors locked and no broken windows, that was when Malcolm finally became very loud and sarcastic when he scolded Pam yelling across the room stating, “how does the cake just disappear, Pam?! What, did they just get up and walk away? HUH?!” And THAT was when her brother named Nigel responded, “Yes boss, I think I actually saw them walk right out of the front glass door and begin to march away last night while I was throwing out the trash during closing!” Malcolm suddenly got mad and slammed the door in the back. This door slamming action brings us back to our nostalgic thoughts of the famous French Slam or Grand Slam we all eat at Denny’s with the delicious sound of the word, “French” when we use it in “French Toast”, or “French Quarter”, which then again actually makes us think about eating French Toast! It can remind us of the French Toast eating sessions we all seem to enjoy together. Oh how funny is that as to how much it reminds us, “of the slamming of the door”, as Celine Dion says in her song, “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now.” Hahaha! Okay so I mean, think about it. If Pam’s brother Nigel lives in a fantasy world wearing Pillsbury Boy outfits to work everyday of his life, Pam doesn’t speak unless she talks to herself, and if Malcolm is always getting loud losing his temper about ANY little thing that is going on at that bakery, don’t you think that it is a huge possibility that the Three Milks Cake group whom originated from Central America put on their chewy bubble cakes “sneakers”…...and just marched away in the sounds of deliciousness that just NOBODY could eat...and enjoy? (Clears throat) Not even a diabetic? Nigel doesn’t commit these actions of the slamming of the door or yelling and getting mad. Nigel goes to work to do his job, even though he is a little bit on the wacky side. If we just stop right now and think about it, could it have been a huge possibility that Nigel did indeed see the cake walk right out of the bakery that night while there was no one else in the building, or in the parking lot? Or was Nigel hallucinating when all of this supposedly happened, when he said that it did happen the way it did? Well, we must always never forget that in life nowadays, just about ANYTHING is possible. This means that maybe Nigel really isn’t that crazy or strange, AFTER all.

Note from the author:

"Chewy Bubble Cakes" was an extremely imaginary name that I came up with when I was a little girl growing up with my Puerto Rican foster family in Miami, Florida during the era of the early 90s. It was a name that I had given to the paws of our cats, being the fact that we had so many growing up. I had imagined the paws of a cat as chewy bubble cakes, because their paw pads resembled bubbles that were chewy and soft with their round, circular-oval "bean toe" look, and they reminded me of some kind of possible exotic cake according to their extremely soft texture, especially when they are gently squeezed. I had always been in love with the cuteness of cat and dog paws, and I had also personally given dog paws a nick name as well, which were known as "crunchy-crunch cakes", because the dog paws were a little more rougher in texture. I had always imagined the paws as being cake-like with their cuteness and soft cakelike textures, which was why I named this short story after those good times from my childhood. My Puerto Rican foster sister known as "Maria De Los Angeles Almodovar" whom also took part in raising me during my childhood as a foster child, she then renamed one of her pet fish which was an actual real Blowfish as, "Chewy Bubble Cakes" several years later while I was actually in high school after her man bought her a beautiful giant fish tank, and I felt that with this story, I could certainly somehow carry on the tradition of the joys of my Never-Neverland fun childhood adventures which was a constant celebration of family, friendship, the power of good times, and togetherness!!!! I am very glad that you have joined me in all of my stories, God bless you always, thank you for visiting these adventurous pages, and hopefully you too will carry on these fun traditions of just holding that HAPPY thought and flying so you don't have to think about any more bad things!! Thank you again for just being here, my dear reader!! xoxoxo

Kindest Regards,

Linda Jazmine