If At First You Don't Succeed ...

"Could you please bring a dessert for dinner on Saturday," my mother-in-law asked.

"No problem," I innocently replied.

And so began the saga of The Strawberry Cream Cake.

The recipe looked simple enough. I found it while flipping through an old issue of Kraft Canada magazine. Graham cracker crust, jello mix, strawberries and cool whip. How hard could it be?

The instructions read: "Prep time: 15 minutes". They lied.

Whoever decided the "prep time" of our recipe has obviously never had the help of a three-year-old and 17-month-old ... One and a half hours later the delectable dessert was finally chilling in the fridge.

Fast-forward four hours later. The recipe had read: "Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm". The dessert looked stable enough to me, so I gently placed it on a serving platter and popped open the spring-form pan.

Disaster!! My Strawberry Cream Cake went from culinary perfection to a melting blob of pink goo in two minutes flat.

"Ahhh! Help me Ben!" I cried. I madly scooped with the spatula. With a surgeon's precision, my husband refitted the ring around the sides of the pan. What a loss. My dessert looked like it had been made ... well ... by a three-year-old and 17-month-old.

What have I learned from this experience? It is probably best not to try an untested recipe for the big family holiday meal. And the next time I make Strawberry Cream Cake I will put it in the freezer "until firm".

Also, I am supremely grateful that Sobey's bakes tasty pies.