Jeffree Wyn Itrich | author | writer | copywriter | ghostwriter | editor

My Kitchen Ceiling Will Never Be the Same

Much like life, baking makes a mess of things in the process, but the end result is worth savoring.

~Author Unknown

A few years ago, my husband and I moved to Texas, a couple of hours’ drive from my

sister and her family. It had been a long time since we lived near one another, a good thirty years.

That first year, my sister announced that she was going to make me a special meal for my

first birthday in Texas, in my new house, using my kitchen. Well, it wasn’t new. In fact, it was

over sixty years old, but it was new to me. My sister is a phenomenal cook, so turning my

kitchen over to her was a no-brainer.

On the day of my birthday, she brought all the fixins and proceeded to put together all the

dishes for my special birthday dinner. Honestly, I don’t remember any of the dinner except the dessert, but not for the reasons you would think. Knowing that my favorite dessert is coconut cake, she brought the cake already baked at her house and proceeded to start making a classic Seven-Minute Frosting, which is cooked for seven minutes on the stove in a double boiler. I asked her why she was making a Seven-Minute Frosting, as the only frosting I’d ever had on a coconut cake was buttercream, chock full of shredded coconut. She wrinkled up her nose and

informed me that a cake like this deserved a much better frosting than buttercream. I told her that I really like buttercream frosting. She assured me that Seven-Minute Frosting was sooooo much better than buttercream and that I would like it even better.

Well, what was I gonna do? Turn down a gift horse, as our Nana used to say? Nope, I

shut up and trusted that I’d love my birthday cake. I mean, she’s an amazing cook, so what could go wrong?

She got out all her ingredients and proceeded to start making the Seven-Minute Frosting

in the top of my double boiler. I don’t remember all the ingredients she used. I’m pretty sure that, besides the egg whites, she stirred in sugar, a bit of salt, light corn syrup, vanilla extract, and probably cream of tartar because that’s pretty much a given in Seven-Minute Frosting recipes.

Either she used a large whisk or maybe a spoon and began stirring and whisking away, her fingernails twinkling with some unusual, sparkly fingernail color that made it look like she was stirring pixie dust. In retrospect, the pixie dust might have been a good addition. Anyway, everything seemed to be going well—until it wasn’t. She was at least ten minutes into stirring the frosting concoction, but nothing was happening. I kept walking over and peeking into the top of the double boiler.

“Isn’t it supposed to be done in seven minutes?” I asked.

“Stop being so impatient,” she admonished me. “Sometimes, it takes a little longer.”

Well, what did I know? I’d never made Seven-Minute Frosting, but it seemed to me that

if it was named Seven-Minute Frosting, shouldn’t it take just seven minutes? I refrained from asking her because I could see she was getting annoyed. I wasn’t sure if it was with me or the frosting.

Time marched on. It wasn’t finished in fifteen minutes, or twenty, or even thirty. It just

wasn’t coming together. I vaguely recall that I suggested that we bag the Seven-Minute Frosting and make a buttercream frosting instead. Oh, if looks could kill, I would have been seriously dead. I backed off and kept my distance.

When we’d passed the forty-five-minute mark, or maybe it was an hour, I don’t know if

she turned up the heat or what happened when, suddenly, the No-Longer-a-Seven-Minute-Frosting exploded. It shot up in the air like a fast-moving helium balloon. It didn’t just explode upward; it exploded everywhere—all over the copper pots hanging on the overhead pot rack, the stovetop, the counters, floor, us, and even a few feet behind us into the sink. I was just about to burst out laughing when I saw her face. She didn’t think it was funny at all. In fact, she was about to cry.

I tried to reassure her that it was okay; it was just frosting. Wrong thing to say. It didn’t

help at all. She was devastated. Right about then, the menfolk came running into the kitchen, having heard the frosting explosion. They stood there frozen with their mouths wide open. I don’t know if it was one of my nephews, my husband, or my brother-in-law who asked what had happened. All I remember is that they got “the look,” too.

At that point, all we could do was start cleaning up. The sticky mess was stuck like glue to everything. Note: Cooked corn syrup is a really good substitute for Super Glue or that Gorilla stuff if ever you find yourself short of it. I don’t remember much else of that eventful meal other than we did eat the cake, without frosting, and it was really good. I also remember, with great fondness, that when I opened my birthday present, which was in a very large box and quite heavy, I found a brand-new KitchenAid mixer. Oh, was I happy! So what if I was going to be living with dried frosting all over my kitchen until the end of my days? I had a new KitchenAid!

About a year later, my husband was looking up at the pot rack and pointed to something odd. He got out the stepstool and peered close to the glob for a better inspection. It was the now petrified No-Longer-a-Seven-Minute-Frosting. Although it took a bit of elbow grease, he got it off. A year or two later, once again we noticed something strange on the pot rack. Upon closer inspection, we found another glob of the now-infamous frosting. I’m pretty sure there’s probably more up there, but I figure that if I can’t see it, then it can stay. It would likely take a jackhammer to remove it at this point.

Someday, whenever we move, which I hope is never, and we take down the pot rack,

there will probably be gobs of old frosting stuck in places we didn’t notice before. And there’s probably some on the ceiling that is fused into the crevices. I imagine that, a thousand years from now, some archeologists will unearth my house and find some ancient bits of fossilized frosting and initiate a scientific inquiry to discover what it is.

Jeffree Wyn Itrich