Thirteen Fourths

 

Today’s my wife Lucy’s birthday. I’ll be taking her out this coming Friday at the Texas Roadhouse for a steak dinner.  She already has everything in this world she needs or wants, at least that’s the way things appear.  If she needed or wanted anything she’d have had it by now.

She requested I bake a cake for her, a simple wish that I could accomplish without destroying her kitchen. She made sure to supervise and suggest rather than leave anything to chance.  Bobby Flay has nothing to worry about.

I used one of the store-bought cake mix boxes with simple instructions on the back panel. One package of mix, 1 cup of water, 1/3 cup of oil, and 3 eggs (without shells).  To keep it within my range of abilities, this was all placed into a greased 9 X 13-inch clear glass baking dish.  The photo was taken after it came out of the oven.  I’ll spread some store-bought chocolate icing over it once the cake has had a chance to cool down.

You might wonder about the title, Thirteen Fourths. 

When I was about seven or eight years old going to elementary school, we were learning how to work with fractions.  I’d figured out how they operated and considered myself ‘adequate’ in their use. 

My mother’s birthday was in June, and it would be a nice gift if I were to make her a birthday cake.  I’d watched her make cakes before and it didn’t look all that difficult.  All I’d need to do was find the recipe card and follow the instructions.

I should mention that all my mother’s recipe cards were handwritten, a beautiful example of script as was expected of young ladies growing up in her time period.  She liked to use a shade of blue ink that made it look even more refined; each letter or number being defined against the white index card.

I went down the list of items needed, placing each on the countertop. I didn’t think about anything other than following the instructions to the letter.  If I’d been a chef; but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The cake looked like it was supposed to when it came out of the oven.  I spread chocolate icing over the top, placed candles in a neat circle and presented it for the family to enjoy after dinner.

I noticed right away that it was a tad difficult for the knife to cut into as each piece was placed onto a dessert plate.  Eating the cake was something of a challenge as well.  It took quite a bit of milk to be able to swallow a piece of cake.  I was beginning to think perhaps I’d made a mistake while following the instructions.

Mom, being a gentle woman trying to keep my feelings in check asked me to show her the index card, the one I’d used to make her such a beautiful and thoughtful creation.  If that sounds a bit over the top, she was doing her best to keep me from crying.

I showed her the recipe along with the scratch paper I’d used to calculate how much flour was called for.  Ah, therein was the answer. 

Her handwritten instructions called for 1 ¾ cups of flour; however, since I’d learned how to reduce fractions this was literally a “piece of cake”.  There wasn’t all that much space between the 1 and the 3 / 4.  No problem, that was easy to figure out, 13/4.  Divide 4 into 13, comes to…a whole lot more flour than 1 ¾.

So, now you know why Lucy kept an eye on me while baking her birthday cake.