This has been a frustrating day.

My boss (and good friend) John is having a big birthday party tomorrow and asked me to make him a great cake. He, like me, doesn't really have a sweet tooth, but wanted a cake for this mile50stone birthday. I've been really into Key Limes and Key Lime flavored things lately - maybe it tastes "summery" to me (and it's been hotter than fucking hell in NYC lately, not that I'm complaining).

I digress.

John agreed to a Key Lime white chocolate cake - vanilla cake with lime zest, megatart lime curd for filling, and white chocolate Key Lime buttercream (based on my favorite cookie - Brent and Sam's Key Lime White Chocolate) I've made this cake before and really loved it. It's not a terribly sweet cake to start with, but the lime curd is mouth-puckeringly tart. Love it.

So, like every other trip I've had planned this summer to leave NYC for a short time, I canceled the one I had planned today, as well (bitter much?). I woke up at 6:30 from an anxious night of sleep and a dream in which I was lost in a department store from my childhood, but it only sold magazines with covers featuring Tyra Banks' different outfits she's worn during every single judging panel on America's. Next. Top. Model. Never has waking up so early felt like such a relief.

I scrubbed my kitchen up and down. I made the curd, no problem. Delicious. I made two batches of batter (this was to be a 3-layer, 12" square cake). Baked the first layer, no problem. Baked the second layer, fine. While baking the third layer, however, I got really busy everything up and inadvertently overcooked it. Badly. Like, it was burnt.

Maintaining a relatively good sense of humor, I remade everything, then re-cleaned. Cake was perfect. Light and fluffy. It cooled, I continued to clean, then - WHOOPS! - I bumped into the rack on my table and WHAM! on the floor. The floor that I just scrubbed.

I mean, what do you do, you know? I still needed a third layer, so I REremade it, baked it and it was fine. By the time I finished, it was 3:00, and I was ready to get out of the house, which I did. I was irritated and hungry and needed coffee, but my blood sugar was ok. Know why?

Because I ate the fucking cake off the floor, marking now the SECOND time I've eaten something I've baked and dropped off my kitchen floor. The first was a blueberry pie from years ago, and I was drunk. Today, I was just clumsy.

So I'll finish this cake tomorrow morning and get some photos online. And only you and I will know what a nightmare this was.