Repurposed refreshments

Like most of us, I imagine, I have skills that you won't find on my resume. One of mine is that I'm good at solving a minor crisis. I learned this early, back in college, when I was at a journalism conference with a well-dressed girlfriend who was having a come-apart because she'd lost the back of her earring. "Do you have a pencil?" I said. "Yes," she said. I told her to pop the eraser out and use that on the back of the earring, and she thought I was a genius. Really, I was just a young reader of "Hints from Heloise," but my friend didn't know that. When I was in the magazine biz, my colleague and I were arranging flowers to go in a watering can that was going to be photographed for a magazine cover. We cut one of the stems too short, throwing off the whole arrangement. "Wait a minute. You've got some tape, right?" I said. Yes, she said. So we took a discarded stem, taped that flower to it, and voila, our arrangement worked out fine. Readers never knew those pretty stems were being held in place by tape. So when I was running out of time to make the evening's garden club refreshments yesterday, and I just happened to have half a caramel sheet cake left over from my morning Bible study luncheon (as often happens when you have a dozen desserts on hand), guess what?

I pulled out a pretty new fall-themed charger from Michaels, sliced that cake into one-inch-square slices, and there you go. I'll bet my garden club buddies have no idea I didn't make these little cakes that way to start with.

The caramel cake, by the way, is the same amazing cake I found in Kathryn Greeley's book (and blog) three years ago and have enjoyed making as both a pound cake and as the iced caramel cake. I'd always heard that caramel icing was difficult to master, but hers is easy and delicious … and this cake recipe has never let me down. Happily, that sheet cake is so large, after serving it at two different occasions yesterday, I still have a few slices left over to enjoy myself with some caramel tea!