Dripping Disney Cake

“It’s good to be bad,” I hummed to myself. I slid the dripping confection into the fridge, closed the door and licked blueberry jam from my fingers. Maybe the fridge would solidify the soupy mess. A homemade lemon cake with blueberry filling — four layers, sliced fairly evenly with a serrated knife and cooled on wire racks before assembly. Apparently not cooled long enough. The filling was too runny and the cream cheese icing too. The green food coloring I added to the icing to complete the purple and green theme — like Mal from Disney’s Descendants — for my daughter’s 6th birthday melded into dark, almost black swirls of color. It was for a small, family party at the height of COVID, so I wanted something special. The cake tasted sweet and sour. It looked … ugly. But it fit the theme, tasted delicious, and best of all, received no complaints from my daughter. I count that as a win.

Jacqueline Van Hoewyk, Mebane, a member of Piedmont Electric