Last year, I was at a total loss for what to give Jeff for his birthday. My brother-in-law, Taylor, had just scored a new-in-the-box PlayStation 3 from a police auction, and he gave it to me to give to Jeff. G-a-v-e. I paid him back the money he’d spent, but he never asked for it.

How much did Jeff like the gift? When I gave him the PlayStation, we were dating. Now, we’re married.

So, when my sister asked me to make a birthday cake for Taylor–a neapolitan cake topped with a huge catfish–I was all about it. Never mind that I’d never actually seen a catfish. Not without hushpuppies and tartar sauce.

Thank God for Google Image Search.

I started with three 9-inch cakes–one vanilla, one chocolate, and one strawberry–split and filled with vanilla buttercream, chocolate buttercream, and vanilla buttercream swirled with fresh strawberries. Then I crumb-coated the cake with vanilla buttercream and covered it in blue fondant.

While I baked the cakes and made buttercream, Jeff molded the catfish out of Rice Krispies treats. We let the “body” dry overnight, and then I wrapped it in chocolate fondant and sculpted the whiskers, gills, and fins the next day.

I held the cake on my lap while Jeff drove to Jenn and Taylor’s house. Rush hour traffic. Forty-five minutes. On the interstate.

I’ve never been so relieved to have something out of my car.

But the looks on their faces were worth it. Taylor was surprised. Jenn was beaming. My nephew, Logan, wanted the fish head, and his younger brother, Jackson, was pulling off the fondant and eating it by itself.

So, neapolitan? Check. Catfish? Check. A 200 proof sugar rush for the 3-year-old? Check.

My work there was done.

Happy birthday, Taylor!

Can you hear her?

Off in the distance, the fat lady is singing.

Yes, a mere hour from the deadline, I have completed my first Daring Bakers Challenge: an opera cake.

A traditional opera cake has layers of sponge cake, coffee buttercream, ganache, and a final glaze of chocolate. They’re usually decorated with a musical symbol, the word “L’Opera,” or a name – “Clichy.” Louis Clichy introduced the cake at the Exposition Culinaire in Paris in 1903.

The DB Challenge was to create a nontraditional opera cake: no chocolate, no coffee, no dark colors.

I decided on almond sponge cake moistened with vanilla syrup and topped with raspberry buttercream, framboise (aka Razzmatazz), and a white chocolate glaze.

Certifiably Daring Bakerish.

Unfortunately, the first sponge cake was a rubbery abomination. So flat you could roll it into a tube.

The second cake was perfect, but the fluffy pink raspberry buttercream tasted like a 3-day-old sink sponge.

The third cake had raw spots. The meringue deflated. The buttercream looked like cottage cheese. And the white chocolate chips wouldn’t melt.

I was ready to chuck the challenge. I was out of almonds. I didn’t think I liked cake anymore.

But this morning, I rallied. I didn’t want to wait another month to be a Daring Baker. I mean, have you seen the logo? It’s cute.

So, less than two hours from the close of Reveal Day, here are my mini opera cakes. I’m officially a Daring Baker!

The dirty dishes can wait.

P.S. The Daring Bakers are dedicating this month’s challenge to Barbara of Winos and Foodies. Barbara is the force behind “A Taste of Yellow,” a food blogging event that supports Lance Armstrong’s LiveSTRONG foundation.

Unless you’re in traction or trapped under something heavy, life’s too short to read Remembrance of Things Past. It’s more than 3,000 pages–roughly the length of War and Peace, Gone With the Wind, and Bill Clinton’s My Life combined.

What do you need to know about Marcel Proust’s masterpiece? It’s all about involuntary memory. The narrator tastes a madeleine, remembers ones his aunt gave him as a child, and starts remembering his childhood in detail. From there, he decides to write about his entire life. Proust kept adding details until he died. I’m surprised his editors didn’t kill him.

Today’s Tuesdays with Dorie assignment is the traditional madeleine. I’d always assumed madeleines were cookies, but they’re actually buttery, lemony little tea cakes. If you piped a little marshmallow fluff inside, they would taste like very high-end Twinkies. The shell shape comes from the madeleine pan.

How did they fare at our house? Jeff and I thought they were good, but Henry the French Bulldog inhaled them. I used them to sneak him his allergy meds. Do you remember the scene in Velvet Goldmine where the rock star snorts cocaine off a hooker’s back? That was Henry with the madeleines. Then he passed out on the couch and started nursing in his sleep. Dreaming of life as a puppy.

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When I was 17, a friend set me up on a blind date with her cousin. He picked me up in a monstrous white truck with extra stereo speakers installed where padding should have been. The windows rattled. Deafening. He drove me to his parents’ house, had his mother make him a grilled cheese and tater tots (nothing for me), and ranted about how his ex-girlfriend had cheated on him and women couldn’t be trusted.

What does all this have to do with Dorie’s Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake?

It’s like a blind date. You want to like it.

What’s not to like about polenta, ricotta, sugar, honey, butter, and figs? Separately, delicious. In this particular combination, grainy and cloying.

Still, I wasn’t ready to give up on it. I tried adding Dorie’s suggested whipped cream sweetened with honey.

Didn’t help.

Sometimes bad cakes, like bad blind dates, require dumping. But one woman’s frog is another’s prince, so I give you the Fluted Polenta and Ricotta Cake recipe.

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My birthday was last Sunday, and my sister’s was on Friday, which means last weekend was a birthday extravaganza, filled with grilled steaks and twice-baked potatoes, brownie pie, baked brie, fruit salad spiked with fried goat cheese, Belgian waffles, a picnic in the park, and a wedge of chocolate cake so uncompromising I know it’s still sitting, like the Lincoln Memorial, in one of my arteries.

Such gluttony, mere days after “The Biggest Loser” finale! Beatings, beatings, beatings.

This morning, I was back to the breakfast of the penitent: high-fiber cereal, 1% milk, and shame. But then I remembered this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie challenge, Bill’s Big Carrot Cake. And out came the butter, the sugar, and the cream cheese.

Oh, well. Everything in moderation. That’s why I turned Bill’s Big Carrot Cake into cupcakes. Portion-control and DENIAL.

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