Let Them Eat Cake

One fantastic thing about Troy's parents is their love of deserts, so when they come to visit, it is basically a given that we will be partaking of a sweet treat sometime during the day. Now, I am generally a salt-loving person, but I think it would be rude to be so unaccommodating as to deny my in-laws of their sweets, so out of the goodness of my heart, I eat desert too. I am such a gracious host. Last night we enjoyed a choice of red velvet cake or carrot cake. (I had a small slice of each! But I couldn't finish them . . . )

This morning, before church, my mother-in-law told us that she had a coffee cake in the fridge we could have before we left. I cut a slice for myself and as I let the sugary goodness dissolve in my mouth, I was wondering why this baked good was acceptable for breakfast while the red velvet and carrot cake was reserved for an after meal end cap. Both are cakes. Both are made with flour, sugar, butter and eggs. Both will take up occupancy on my hips creating a saddle-bag effect. Then I realized the difference. The frosting.

That's right, frosting. Add frosting to a cake, and it can be classified a dessert. Strip the powdered sugar and egg whites and you have yourself breakfast. The frosting is the one who gets all the credit but is really just a lot of excess calories. Frosting is like the debutant reality star that doesn't really do anything but is famous anyway. Frosting is the Paris Hilton of delicatessens.

However, I feel like I need to address the rebel in this scenario. The coffee cake with icing. You've seen them. They often have the two racing stripes of some sort of fruit jelly running lengthwise and then on the cake part are small piped curly-cues of frosting that are delicate enough to be appropriate for breakfast but provocative enough to laugh in the face at the rules of breakfast. What is with that? It clearly says coffee cake on those stickers that I am convinced are made with the same glue as duct tape. The stickiness of those suckers is remarkable! Coffee cake should be eaten with, well, coffee, which is consumed primarily in the morning. It is a sneaky tactic, but so far the dessert police do not have enough evidence to arrest the frosted coffee cake for obstruction of a breakfast food.

I guess the lesson learned here, kids, is that dessert, regardless of the time of day, has but one purpose: to satisfy that sweet tooth . . . and then rot it out. But who cares? In the words of Marie Antoinette, "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche." Let them eat cake.