I Baked a Cheesecake & It Went Horribly Awry
When I was eighteen years old, my good friend *Lana invited me over to her house to bake a cheesecake with a mutual friend named *Sicily. Getting together with the girls, doing something domestic and girly, and spending a night in the kitchen baking up something easy and delicious sounded fun, right? NOPE. I COULD NOT HAVE BEEN MORE WRONG.
I went to Lana's house and we started following the cheesecake recipe on the back of the Philadelphia Cream Cheese wrapper--it was supposed to be a moist Oreo cheesecake with a buttery, crumbly Oreo crust. The steps to bake a cheesecake sounded pretty simple even to me (my level of cooking skill was about on par with that of a prison line cook's). Give me a break. I was an undergrad college student. All my food came in a box. Lana went to the cupboard and brought out her electrical GE hand mixer to mix the ingredients for the filling. Lana turned on the mixer and handed it to me while she left to grab the vanilla extract. Meanwhile, Sicily snapped pictures of the creative mess we created in the kitchen. With the mixer still in my hand, Sicily excitedly said, "Smile!"
Lana inched in next to me so we could pose for a nice, wholesome photo. She smiled with the vanilla extract in hand while I held up the bowl with one hand and mixer in the other.
Me: Cheeee-EEEESEEHHHHAAAWHATTHEFUCK?!
In a momentary lapse of judgment, I decided it would be a swell idea to hold up a still-whirring metal appliance close to my head. You can only imagine what hair being pulled from your scalp at 280 RPM might feel like. Well, you don't need to imagine because I can tell you. It SUCKS. It feels like a million tiny, red iron-hot fish hooks have been pierced into your skin, and is then tugged with the blunt force of an 18-wheeler.
In less than a few seconds, the hand mixer had whirred up all my hair in its metal beaters right next to the side of my face. I screamed in a panic as I tried to find the off button while raw batter and cream cheese violently splattered all over the kitchen and into my eyes. The batter was literally flying EVERYWHERE.
Lana stood frozen in shock like she had witnessed the murder of a newborn puppy.
Sicily gasped in horror as she lowered the camera to witness the the horror taking place five feet from where she was standing...and then went back to snapping pictures. THANKS, SICILY, YOU BITCH.
With the electrical mixer still vigorously gyrating near my forehead and eyes, I couldn't see the off button. Then I remembered it didn't have an on/off switch like normal appliances. It had a knob which controlled the speed from zero (off) to ten speed. I clumsily groped for the knob and I turned it the wrong way, making the ends spin EVEN FASTER. OH COME ON. Why me, God?
Lana finally snapped out of her initial state of panic-stricken paralysis and jumped towards the outlet. She ripped the cord out of the wall and killed the power but it was too late. I had this PIECE OF SHIT kitchen appliance latched to my head like a fucking barnacle. My head was throbbing with heat on the right side of my scalp above my forehead. Fuck, it hurt like shit. Lana tried to untangle what she could but to no avail. The mixer was tangled down to the roots just centimeters from my scalp. She gently pulled at a few hairs and I shrieked in pain.
Me: OW! WHAT THE FUCK BITCH?!
Lana: I'm so sorry! It's just really stuck in there.
Me: Dude, it's not going to come out.
Lana: No, just let me try, maybe we can get it out without cutting your hair.
Me: I HAVE A KITCHEN APPLIANCE STUCK TO MY HEAD. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE HAIR. JUST PLEASE GET IT OUT.
Lana: If we just--
Me: DUDE. FOR FUCK'S SAKE JUST GET IT OUT.
Lana: I think we can save your hair!
Me: JUST GET THE SCISSORS. I AM BEGGING YOU. PLEASE JUST CUT IT ALL OFF. IT'LL GROW BACK. I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE HAIR. THIS FUCKING HURTS.
I really couldn't give two shits about my hair. It's HAIR. It' grows back. I get where they were coming from but their thoughtful but extremely misplaced good intentions had their priorities all out of wack. They were more worried about saving my hair rather than relieving me of physical pain despite me asking several times to fuck the hair and get some scissors.
Lana finally grabbed a pair of scissors and began to snap the taught strands of hair which had been practically pulling my scalp off my skull. By the time she cut off all my hair, my head was sore and bald with bits of blood. I went to the bathroom to wash off all the batter and to brush out the clumps of cut hair the best I could with my hands. I was in bad condition but Lana's hand mixer was in even worse condition. It looked like a disgusting mess--like two scratchy birds' nests resting in gooey semen. It took us a while to clean out all the hair that was tangled around the metal.
But wait, there's more. The kicker? We realized we fucked up the instructions and RUINED THE WHOLE CHEESECAKE. Instead of adding two full sticks of butter to the crust, we added two full sticks of butter to the filling. We ruined the cake and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
My hair eventually grew back completely after a year, but I had this weird bald spot which then grew into a very awkward clump of short hair.
The question people ask me all the time is, "Were you drunk?" Unfortunately, no, I was not. I wish I had been. At least it would have hurt a lot less.
Enjoy these pictures of me being a dumbass.
*All names have been changed.