Catapulting cheesecake

I carefully mixed the cream cheese, sugar, eggs and vanilla in the big bowl with the blue stripe. Slid the cheesecake into the oven, then checked it regularly to make sure it didn't get overdone. Poured the sour cream, sugar and vanilla topping over the slightly cooled cake and then back in the oven it went.

The morning of the meeting, I gently rinsed and dried the fresh raspberries, and meticulously arranged them on the chilled cheesecake. When lunch time arrived, I removed the cheesecake from the refrigerator and carried it across the kitchen. The impractical plate it rested on matched the other dishes perfectly and I was pleased.

For a few seconds.

Because as I set the cheesecake on the counter announcing “Be sure to save room for dessert”, it slid on its spring form pan bottom, off the impractical-but-pretty plate – across the counter, and catapulted over the stools and onto the floor.

The collective gasp, huge eyes and lips formed into perfect giant O's would have been comical had it not been such a sad moment.

I couldn't look. I stood with my hands over my eyes. But one of the efficient ladies scooped up the raspberries and washed them off and another picked the cake up and set it back on the counter and we laughed.

And then those lovely ladies ate the cake. Almost every crumb. Not only did they eat it but they smacked their lips and licked their forks clean.

My husband heard the story later and looked horrified, not at the cake catapulting across the stools, but at the fact that the ladies ate the cake!

I chalked it up to good female friendships. They may have had their qualms about eating that cake, wondering when the floor was washed and did we have any pets in the house, but they cared more about making me feel better.

But after talking to a few of them, I realized it was more than that. They wanted cheesecake.

And that is the kind of friends I want to surround myself with. Throwing caution to the wind and collectively licking our cheesecake forks clean before we take up our knitting or our book club selection of the month or our pens to tackle that new writing prompt. Ready to support each other to the end. But mostly, wanting cheesecake!