Hour 12: Cake or death
Dr. Janet asked me what sort of crafty stuff I like to do in my spare time. My first answer is, what spare time? And my second answer is, I find some spare time, and do stuff with my hands.
I like doing stuff with my hands. My mother always thought I would be a surgeon for that reason. But as it turns out, I like doing things with my hands that don’t involve a lot of bleeding and potential dying and stuff.
There are two main types of docs, and if you watch Scrubs you will know exactly what I’m talking about. There are the medicine types- the JDs; and the surgical types- the Turks. The medicine types like to talk, and think, and meticulously debate and consider options A through K. The surgeons just go and figure it out.
Alas, I am a J.D. Deep in surgery, if something starts geysering I would ideally stop, peek around, adjust the lights, maybe consult a colleague when what I need to do is just shove my hand in, make an executive decision, and trust it was the right one. Too much pressure.
So how does one get the visceral pleasure of cutting something up and creating a masterpiece without the blood and guts and death part?
You make cake, of course.
I can go into a 5 hour cake surgery without having to muck about with any anesthesia at all. It’s amazing. If I cut something off by accident, stick some frosting on it and shove it back on. No one will know.
You can click on the Flickr link to see a few other more mundane examples, but you don’t need to, really. This is the only one you need to see:
This is the cake equivalent of separating conjoined twins, or maybe a heart-lung transplant. It was long. It was grueling. It was messy. But man, was it cool.
PRIZE ALERT: Treat bag from Biscuits by Lambchop for the first person to get the title reference of this post.






