Adventures in Baking

Madison was bored. She had spent all day at school and now she wanted a snack. Sydney and I were there, having just returned from school ourselves. We tossed around the idea of different desserts. Should we make s’mores, brownies, or perhaps a nice strawberry angel cake? We racked out brains for the tastiest treats and decided on that beloved New York confection, the cheesecake. Pulling out all the stops, we found the easiest recipe possible. There were only 4 or 5 ingredients total. Madison got to work on the pie filling and I started the crust. Sydney “supervised.” I took out some graham crackers and placed them in a Ziploc bag for mess containment. Then I went to work with my rolling pin. Mashing and rolling, rolling and mashing, what once was cracker, soon became powder. I transferred the sandy looking concoction into a mixing bowl. A heap of sugar and some melted butter later, we had created magic. And by magic of course, I mean simple pie crust.
I poured the sludge into the pan, lined all the edges with delicious crusty crumbs, and then helped finish the filling portion. Catherine, Madison’s mom, came into the room. Being the food critic that she thinks she is, she pinched a small wedge of the crust right out of the pan. She placed it on her tongue and closed her mouth expecting sheer graham pleasure. We watched her face turn to horror and her mouth twist in agony. Gagging profusely, she leaned into the trash to expel the offending morsel. She turned to us, looking green. Trying very hard to be casual about it, she said, “You know, I think there’s too much salt in there.”
“Huh?” Madison looked perplexed. “There’s no salt in there. It’s just Graham crackers, sugar and butter.”
“Well,” Catherine replies, “You did something wrong.”
Sydney bravely decides to check the truth of the accusation. She got a small dollop of cheesecake filling, spread it on a little bit of crust, and opened her hatch. In went the snack, out came a scream.
“AHHHH! That is disgusting!” She ejected the abomination into the sink. “Ew, I’m running the disposal right now, so that even the sink doesn’t have to suffer!”
At this point, I was quite embarrassed. Where could I possibly have gone wrong? There were three measly ingredients. Really only two steps involved; mash, and mix. How did this happen?
Well, we dumped it out to start anew. Mashing and rolling, rolling and mashing. I felt déjà vu. Catherine, being the sweetheart she can be, got out the sugar.
I scrutinized the Tupperware container. “Where is the bag of sugar that we used before? I know there was some left and we should use that before we open a new thing.” What I had used before had been a large Ziploc bag.
Turning to the pantry, Catherine pulled out my original sugar container. She opened it, licked her pinky, and dabbed it into the white crystals. She rubbed her pinky all around her mouth and then on her front teeth. “Yup,” she declared, “that’s definitely salt.”
We had a pretty good laugh—for about an hour—about what an idiot I was. We finished preparing the untainted cheesecake and placed it in the fridge. After the appropriate 40 minutes had passed, we sliced and served it. We ate heartily, all the while laughing at what would have been if not for Catherine’s need to satisfy her palate. We probably would not have noticed the sodium level until we’d finished.
Sydney mused, “you know, that cheesecake would have been a crime against Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines and all the other beloved instant desserts.” The four of us looked at one another and burst into hysterics again.