You think having the gift is all it takes? Injy El-Kashef finds out about mopping floors TWELVE EGGS: Twelve eggs -- no less -- slipped from the carton and crashed, one after the other, creating a gooey pool by my feet in a matter of seconds. In this quasi-cinematic moment, feeling more like the lead role in a goofy comedy than anything else, I just stared at the broken eggs, the slime, the broom I clearly had to use at some point, and the neatly laid out ingredients I had arranged on the marble counter in preparation for a night of baking. This was to be my very first order of cakes -- my goal being to perhaps one day establish a fully-fledged catering business. It all started out rather smooth and pleasant. In the company of my son, who was equally excited about the project -- he promptly proclaimed himself my assistant -- I headed straight away to a retail supermarket to purchase ingredients in adequately large quantities. For the first time, I was buying sugar by the five kilos, and flour from the attaar (spice dealer, in this context) -- who, I discovered, also sold chocolate and coloured vermicelli, red and green pickled cherries, and unsalted roasted nuts -- at astoundingly reasonable prices. The supermarket trolley was piling up with aluminium platters, paper-cut trays, butter, jams, syrups, cooking chocolate, decorating tools and many more wonderful toys. Careful not to loose the invoice stating the broken down cost of the huge bill, which I would later need in order to calculate exact prices for each cake based on ingredients, I set for home in wonderful spirits and expecting to have a blast every step of the baking way. GREASE: "There ain't no danger we could go too far. We start believing now... that we can be who we are..." -- I bellowed in the kitchen while rolling up my sleeves, accompanied by Frankie Valli blasting from the CD player -- "It's got groove, it's got meaning..." The moment was delicious. The music was loud and pumped energy into me. I slipped on my white Hungarian apron with the pink flowers, my new yellow plastic gloves, and felt quite like a professional -- until the eggs leapt to the floor. I had never, in my entire life, made such a mess. I wasn't sure what to do. Oh, I know! Burn the kitchen. Neither broom nor mop would work, this had to be gathered by hand. Seeing as I had already greased the tins that were to receive the batter, I felt compelled to wash my hands first (no idea why) before kneeling to gather the smelly, viscous mass with the help of a dustpan. Probably some of the most disgusting moments of my existence. REGRESSION TO CHILDHOOD: By now, the mood had somewhat deflated, for the next thing that happened was that I seemed to have all the clumsiness of a toddler, and to have entered a kitchen for the very first time. Why -- for the life of me, I could not understand -- did both sugar and oil spill over the counter; why did the bag of flour burst as I attempted to tear but a small opening with the kitchen scissors; why did the electric mixer play its first dirty trick on me, sending large lumps of batter to the four corners of the kitchen, and why -- how, also -- did the same batter, in the same oven, at the same temperature, in the same tins, produce one burnt cake and the other undercooked? THE DISAPPEARING CAKE: My colleague S called me up, her voice robotic from disbelief. "You will not believe this. I don't know what to say. It doesn't make sense. We ate from it, then it disappeared! It just disappeared!" Following repeated requests on my part to explain exactly what happened, S finally spoke coherently: "I bumped into J quite by chance in the street and she gave me my cakes. I placed them in the car. The children and I went to the supermarket and returned hungry. We ate a couple of slices from your cake and drove home. Once parked, we searched for it among the bags, and it had simply disappeared. Vanished. We never left the car, and I know I ate from it in the car. This is too weird, this is scary." This was the straw that broke the camel's back. I can take the dozen broken eggs, I can handle sweeping the slime up with my own hands, I can deal with bags of flour exploding in my face, and even with batter splashing on the ceiling, but cakes disappearing inside people's cars... that was a little too uncanny for me. When I was asked to write about baking at the beginning, I had politely declined. What is the issue, where is the problématique, I had asked -- what will I be telling the reader other than that I bake nice cakes? Then, when the idea of money crept into the equation and I realised I could start a nice little business doing something I very much enjoy, the request for a story was repeated. Women's empowerment was a legitimate angle to adopt, it was said, and I was being persuaded that I would help female readers in feeling encouraged to take whatever gift they had seriously, to render it beneficial to themselves, their families and, on the macro-level, even to society at large. Still, however, I declined. That is, until the night when the evil forces of nature all seemed to gather in my humble abode to teach me a lesson. Today, as I bask in the certainty that it has not been decreed for me to earn an income selling my baked goods (though older and wiser people attempt to convince me otherwise), a whole new light has illuminated my perception of "colleagues" whose fortune was differently ordained. I tried calling Madame Khashaab, the household name and beacon of home-cooked food known to us all through her delicious frozen and baked goods found in major supermarkets. I wanted to ask for her guidance; I needed to know from someone who's already been there, already done that: is what happened in my kitchen normal? And can one ever become accustomed to phenomena such as cakes disappearing from a customer's car? Madame Khashaab, unfortunately, was unavailable for comment, as she completely and absolutely shuns attention. Probably the smartest decision she ever took.
