Ode on a Sugar-Filled Urn

Tonight was the annual MA/MFA student Literary Dessert Party, whereby everyone is asked to bring a dessert inspired by a work of literature. More points were given for creativity than taste, which only partially explains why we lost. (Also a big reason: some of the professors wanted a student to win and refused to vote for a professor. Which I thought, quite frankly, was idiotic. And no, that was not me trying to bribe my current students with extra credit points so that they would vote for our cake. And no, I'm not bitter that I lost the flashing tiara prize. Nope. Not at all. sniff...) Indeed, we were asked to vote before we were allowed to taste anything; after trying our cake, four profs came up to me afterwards and lamented that they had voted for someone else because they were just melting in the yumminess of our cake.

Anyway, the winner -- one of my former students -- was clear from the minute I walked in:In case it isn't obvious by looking at it, count the layers: it's Dante's Inferno Cake. That's right: nine layers of hellacious goodness. And yes, those are nine separate cakes stacked on top of one another. I mean, jeez, how could I not vote for that? Do you see how much frosting is there? "It's an architectural marvel!" one of us remarked. And it was actually tasty to boot.

Ours? Well, if you remember the last time Angela made a cake (that time for Xan's birthday), it should come as no surprise that we were also on the extravagant side:

Behold: Chocoblanca!
("It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of cocoa beans in this crazy world.")

Yes, not strictly "literary," but I teach film in a lit department, so my field must be asserted somehow. The cake itself is a ridiculously delicious chocolate cheesecake, containing Bailey's Irish Cream and a full pound each of cream cheese and dark chocolate. And yes, the rendering of Bogey and Bergman is done is dark chocolate on top. Naturally, Angela made the cake, I only helped with the decorating at the very end. I also bought the ingredients. ("So, should I buy any of the light or lowfat versions of these ingredients, Ange?" "For this cake? Hell, no.")

The worst part? Poor Ange didn't feel well, thus missed a party whose raison d'etre was dessert, which tells you how ill she was feeling. Xan, meanwhile, ate six of the nine layers of my slice of the Hell Cake pictured above and then started zipping around the party like a wildebeast. These were, by the way, only two of what were at least 35 different dessert entries (two inpired by Dante, two by Achebe's Things Fall Apart, one "Love Song of J. Alfred Pruefrock," a Life of Pi(e), one Bluest Eye, one Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and one basket of apples which came with the label Paradise Lost). I came home and immediately needed something salty.

Next year? Maybe One Hundred Cookies of Solitude.

The winner (a.k.a. Bitch stole my flashing tiara, dammit!!)

After all, it's just jello...

As indicated by the last post, we're becoming slightly obsessed with The Blob over here chez Middents-Dadak. Since Angela has been posting about this on her Facebook page, I suppose I let the world know why. For the last few years, our department has hosted a Literary Dessert Party, featuring all sorts of inventive confections inspired by works of literature. Since I am one of the film folks, we decided last year to enter with a film-inspired dessert instead. (You can see last year's entry here.) I still like the idea of One Hundred Cookies of Solitude, but our oven's being on the fritz prevents that from happening. In fact, that prevents most desserts... except, of course, gelatin.

Hence: our entry this year will be The Blob.

Angela gets all the credit for this, having heard the NPR story about the flick's 50th anniversary last week. I did go out, however, and acquire the flick from the library's collection. It was wonderfully campy and, I thought, hilariously funny, right from the opening credits with the fab Burt Bacharach theme song. ("Beware of the blob, it creeps, and leaps and glides and sliiides across the floor!" Priceless!) I watched it on Tuesday when no one else was home and was telling Angela all about it at the dinner table that evening.

Xan, of course, was listening. "Can I see The Blob, Dad?"

Angela looked at me and said, "I don't know. Can he?"

I considered this. Remember that he has been exposed to a grand total of about a half-dozen movies in his lifetime so far, mainly ones featuring musical numbers or trains like Singin' in the Rain or The General. So if we were to show him The Blob, it would be one of the very few we've allowed. On the one hand, I'm loathe to show him what is actually a horror movie at the tender age of three-and-a-half. On the other hand, when I taught my course on horror movies, my students indicated that they had been exposed rather early to really terrifying movies at the age of five. Besides, the boy has already entered Pirates phase and is all about swashbuckling and what-not. (There seems to be a progression of interest from trains to dinosaurs to pirates among young boys; if this is true, we seem to have skipped over the Tyrannosaurus for now.) So how much harm would cinematic man-eating jello cause? Certainly this is less creepy than Grimm's Fairy Tales (which we also haven't started) and I suppose there are worse things to happen than to develop jangelaphobia.

Luckily, I had to return the movie before Xan could watch it. But now he's curious about it. So I open the idea to you: do you think it's to early for The Blob? (It creeps!)

(By the way, we are not dressing him as the Blob for Halloween. Although maybe that's not a bad idea for me...)

UPDATE: In case anyone wants to see what the end result looked like (although it's a shame you can't taste it, because it tasted far better than it looks...):