You Can't Have Your Cake And Eat It Too!

• Stephanie Gill, Grade 5
• Short Story
• 2007

I’m really craving one of my Aunty Betty’s cakes. They tasted like heaven compared to those sawdust cookies and cakes you can get from the shops. But she stopped baking long ago when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I asked her why she stopped. We had some tea and STORE BOUGHT biscuits.

“I was so passionate about baking. But that was ages ago. My Lucinda was five, you were six and your older sister, Jamie was a young twelve years old. It was the first work dinner with our new boss. Everything had to be perfect to make a good impression. I made the sweetest, richest and most moist sponge cake ever. But of course I never got to taste it thanks to you and the other rascals. The chocolate icing was so creamy and looked as fluffy as a tuft of hair on a newborn baby! I told you not to touch the cake. I told you don’t breathe on the cake; don’t even look at the cake! I was ever so anxious. I had to run down to the corner shop and that was the last time I saw that beautiful cake and also the last time I baked a cake.

According to your sister, you took the first slice, then Lucinda and finally your sister, Jamie. It’s amazing how much can happen whilst someone is just buying some eggs. Jamie tried her best to cover the cake again with icing to make it look normal. Soon the cake disappeared and I can’t blame you. My cakes- not to brag tasted like heaven on a plate! There were endless ideas in how to replace the cake. A dirt cake, a store bought cake and I believe you even asked the nice granny from down the road! In the end you used the cake tin! I would have come out clean and tell the truth. Well , the new batch of icing that you made looked almost as fluffy as a tuft of baby hair. I couldn’t believe you turned the tin upside down and covered it! You even use a fake, plastic rosebud to make it look like the sugar rose on my cake!

The boss didn’t find that ‘joke’ very amusing and I was furious and embarrassed! In the end it wasn’t something to laugh at five years later. I can still remember his tomato red face! Like Jamie when she was sunburnt after swimming at the beach! Well what did you learn from this story?” I grinned and stirred my tea. I bit into a biscuit and choked. She nodded. “Tastes like sawdust, eh?” We looked at each other and laughed. I put the biscuit down. Finally, I flashed my famous, cheeky smile and said, “If you don’t succeed at first, start baking again?” She laughed showing off her ‘sweet tooth’ that was now silver. She shook her head and laughed once more. “You can’t have your cake and eat it too!”