In my family, your first portion of dessert is just a jumping off point. After dessert has been served and everyone’s first slice has been eaten, we tend to make small incisions directly into the cake or pie for a final few bites. This gentle hacking technique is done while leaning over the island or the kitchen counter, balancing on your elbows, knife in hand, usually while having a conversation while your mouth is full about how good the dessert is. Clearly I have been raised by a pair of hackers. (Oh, the shame!)
My Mother is the real villain here. She’s been known to eat only the crumbs off of a Big Crumb from B&W Bakery– “The cake was too dense,” she’d cry. And then she would throw out the sad bottom of the topless cake. She’s eaten frosting only sections from strawberry shortcake bite by bite, leaving naked cake behind with nary a strawberry to be found. (Mom, you didn’t!) And she has attacked a Sour Cream Apple Walnut Pie from The Little Pie Company to such a scary degree that she was sent out of the kitchen once by my Father. (It was after her second warning, so…)
When I was in college, we used to buy sheet cakes from Kroger for no particular celebration and “irrigate” them. (I know you need a definition here. So let me explain…) My roommate would sit on one side of the cake at our dining room table, and I’d sit on the other side and we’d each start with our own fork and hack into the cake from our own goalpost, drilling toward the 50-yard line. (Yeah, I wish I were making this up, too.) I was way more into the cake part with just a smattering of frosting, so my side looked like a roof caving in as I burrowed into the cake leaving much of the thick white top and floral decorations intact. Unlike me, my roomie inhaled her frosting clear across to the 30, leaving the cake on her side virtually untouched. We were certainly well-matched when it came to dessert.
Whatever dessert you’re slicing into today, I hope the portion is satisfying enough that you don’t find yourself knife in hand ready to conquer the rest of the cake singlehandedly like The Mothership could… and if it’s too good to put down, I hope you have the willpower to not finish all of it in one sitting. But if at any point you need some help, I can forward you phone numbers for my clan. Our motto is, “Hungry Hackers– we travel for dessert!”
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