Bread-Mush 60-Watt Cakes

What was the first thing you ever cooked?

In all honesty, the first things I ever cooked were “Bread-Mush 60-Watt Cakes”. Never heard of them? No, you won’t find them on the menu at the French Laundry, and they are not burning up the Parisian bistro scene either. The taste of a properly prepared “Bread-Mush 60-Watt Cake” is a delicacy that is too magnificent to exist anywhere other than the mind of a six year old boy.

My older brother Stephen has exposed me to many things, some good, some bad, and some just plain bizarre. We were living at 1714 Cherokee Blvd. in Douglasville Georgia circa 1984’ish. One day Steve comes into the play-room with a salt shaker, a bowl of water, and a half loaf of Sunbeam white bread. I being three years his junior of course want to know what’s going on. He dunks the bread into the water, completely soaking it through. As he wrings out the excess he kneads the bread into a cohesive “dough” if you will. Then he pulls of a marble-sized blob and flattens it to an eighth of an inch disk the diameter of a quarter. Having preheated the lamp when he entered the room, he walks over and flops the disk onto the light bulb to a pleasant sizzle.

Once salted to perfection, all that is left to do is wait. If you try to flip it too soon, it sticks to the light bulb and shreds. Wait too long, and it’d be a dry puck. In the hands of a master, a Bread-Mush 60-Watt Cake fills your mouth with all that is right in the world. I’d spend the next weeks of my life encrusting that light bulb with bread-mush residue in search of the perfect consistency. After about my six thousandth attempt, I finally made the perfect bread cake… just like Steve’s. It was so delicious, I decided to try to repeat my success. The light bulb shattered the second I flopped on the dough.

I am sure there is some moral to this story about perfection, ego and greed. All I know is we moved away a few weeks later, and I never tasted another Bread Mush Cake again. That makes me sad somehow.

Thanks Steve.