Devil's Food Cake

The Baker’s Wake Contest was just three days away. I looked at the flyer one more time and stared at the image of a big flat screen Television on the front, the grand prize. I never knew that I could want something so badly. I didn’t have any friends, but if I won this flat screen maybe the kids in my neighborhood would come over to watch it with me. We could watch football or have a video game competition or have a sleepover with horror films that our parents wouldn’t let us watch. I hope they wouldn’t make fun of me for baking since that was a girly thing, maybe they will think it's cool and ask for me to make them food when they come over. Either way I had to try, I was tired of playing with my baby sister every day, I wanted friends my own age. My town has always had this bake off every year and every year my great aunt won it. When she passed away she instructed in her Will that her recipe book be given to my mom over her dead body. At first we thought it was a joke since when people would ask her for the recipe to something she would grumble “Over my dead body”. The executor of The Will took his job very seriously, and after the ceremony he handed my mother my great aunt’s cookbook over her grave. I remember this clearly because it was raining during the funeral and a great loud thundering boom sounded off as he was handing it to her. My aunt always creeped me out, she became blind in her old age but she always knew what was going on around her. One time while she was visiting I tried to sneak a cookie off her plate, she snapped her fingers and the cookie disappeared. I tried to tell my parents what happened but my tongue would swell up every time I tried. She also would say things that didn’t make any sense, almost like she was speaking a different language but my mother said it was “old-timer’s” disease. My mother kept the cookbook in a box in the attic, the book was old and smelly. The edges were cornered in a rusting metal that made the book heavy and the spine looked like it was an actual spine underneath the tattered old leather cover. All the pages are stained with different shades of brown, and I could barely read what anything said. After scanning through what seemed like a hundred oddly named soups I found a cake recipe. Devil’s Food Cake. I knew that Devil’s Food cake was a chocolate cake and who doesn’t like chocolate I thought. I have never baked before we had most of what was needed in the kitchen but there were a few that we didn’t have. Instead of chocolate I needed a fruit called Black Sapote, Amaranth flour and salt from the Dead Sea. I figured that my mother just doesn’t bake too much to have these things in the kitchen and thankfully she left her Amazon Prime logged in on the computer so I ordered the ingredients and they will arrive just in time. I figure she wouldn’t be mad about the cost if we won the television.

The rest of the ingredients came the day before the contest, so I immediately got to work. The cake mixture didn't look great or even smell great. It had an unappetizing mud like texture and bits that wouldn’t quite mix up even with my mother’s mixer on the high setting. I sighed and slid the cake pan in the oven, and hoped that it tasted better than it looked. I rechecked the recipe to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, I didn’t notice before but there was a poem at the bottom. It was written in cursive and I couldn’t read any of it. My older sister was coming down the stairs and I knew she knew cursive because she wrote her boyfriend's name in it all the time. I asked her to read it and tell me what it said. She read it out loud because some of the words were also hard for her to read and it seemed like she was sounding them out instead of reading them. She popped her gum and shrugged then left to go back to her room. It was finally time to pull the cake out of the oven but it still looked just as ugly as before. Disappointed, I left it on the counter and went to bed thinking of other ways to get the neighborhood kids to like me.

I woke up the next morning and the most amazing smell of chocolate filled my nose. I ran downstairs and the cake was there waiting for me. It didn’t look like the same cake I left on the counter, my mother must have decorated it overnight. My dad was itching for a slice for breakfast but I stopped him just as he swooped his finger in the icing, I told him it was for the contest and hurried it out the door with it before my sisters woke up and wanted a slice too.

At the contest there were only older women that entered and I was the only young boy. My face flushed red and I thought that this was a mistake. I turned around and tried to back out but then I heard a boy that I have seen on the bus a few times say how cool it would be to have this huge television in his house. I turned right back around, and as I was walking my cake to the table everyone was sniffing the air.

The judges did a “Blind Tasting” but they weren’t blind folded or even closed their eyes. My cake was one of the first few that were tasted, and the judges continued tasting the other cakes and pies but they made faces as they were eating them. My neighbor Mrs. Hardigrew’s jaw dropped as they spit hers out. It only took one minute for them to think it over and then my cake was held up and announced the winner. I let out an excited shout and ran over to the television, hugging it. Soon other kids were gathered around me asking if they could come help set it up. I looked over at the judges fighting over who got to take the rest of the cake home.

Finally I had friends, and I even invited them for a sleepover that night. My mother, who was just as excited, took my sisters to the new Disney movie to give me time with my new friends. As I was setting up the new Television getting prepared for the sleepover the doorbell rang. I ran to answer the door but it wasn’t who I expected, it was one of the judges from earlier today. He had a strange look in his eye and he asked if I had any more cake. I told him no, the man looked mad and he gripped the door frame hard. I shut the door and locked it. I was a little scared by the way he looked at me, but tried to shrug it off to enjoy the rest of my night.

The doorbell rang again and I jumped. This time I got my father first before opening the door. Thankfully it was just a few of my new friends Jake, John and Jenny. You could tell that they were related because they were fighting just before I opened the door. I showed them downstairs where we would stay for the night, then the doorbell rang again. I answered it this time with my new friends behind me. This time it was not another kid, it was another judge. She asked me if I had any more cake, I said no and tried to shut the door but she stuck her foot out to stop it. Just then my father came back down and introduced himself to her. She had the same strange look in her eye as the man before and she asked if there was any more cake. My father said no and she turned around without saying another word. My father locked the door then turned towards me and asked me hopefully “Is there any more cake?”. I looked at him weirdly, his eye twitched a bit, and he rubbed it. Someone else was knocking at the door and this time it was the kid I normally see at the bus stop, Danny. I welcomed him in and grabbed one of his bags and brought him to everyone else. After we played video games for a while, we went to the kitchen for a snack. I told my new friends how strangely everyone has been acting and what happened earlier. They thought I was trying to scare them. But just then there was a banging on the front door. Everyone jumped. We crept up to the window and there were the judges on my porch. They were banging on the walls mumbling the word cake. We jumped back, then started moving the furniture to the door to block it. I ran upstairs to my father, when I opened the door lunged for me, he was mumbling the word “Cake”. I pushed him and he fumbled backwards. My friends pulled back and we slammed the door shut. The two brothers held onto the door knob. “What is happening?!” Jenny yelled at me.

“I made a cake from my Great Aunt’s cook book and won the contest, now everyone is acting super freaky.” I showed Jenny and Danny the book. I flipped to the page where the Devil’s Food cake recipe was. I flipped to the other side of the page, there was a recipe for Angel’s Food cake. “I think this is how we counter it.” We scrambled to get the mixer and bowls. Thankfully it was a normal recipe. Jake and John were losing their grip in the last ten minutes, and all the cake needed to do was cool. We shoved a slice of Angels food cake under the door for my dad. He greedily grabbed it, within seconds he was back to normal. We threw the rest outside to the judges who tore at each other to get some. They slowly straightened up and looked at each other in confusion then dispersed. A few moments later my dad came down the stairs rubbing his eyes that were now clear. He was furious and asked us why the furniture was at the door when I tried to explain my tongue swelled up and it only came out as mumbles. Jenny tried to explain, then her tongue started to swell. We looked at each other confused.

They stayed my friends after that night and I never looked at the cookbook again. Until Mrs. Hardigrew asked me for the recipe. Where I replied “Over my dead body.”