On Milkshake Contests

We Clarks often pretend to know a lot about things that don't really matter.  This blog is a reflection of that.  But it's best to not trifle with us on the subject of milkshakes. Take even more care if you want to talk about milkshake making contests.

I've offered up many of the details elsewhere, but as we near the 11th Annual Clark Family Milkshake Making Contest at end of the month, I feel like ruminating on and/or revisting a few highlights:

• The contest now enters its 13th year (11th actual contest). And it'll be the first contest since 2009 that we will all be together. What began as a simple post-mission effort to bond with family (and imbibe milkshakes) has evolved into an elaborate, creative, and often heated contest for the top prize. In other words, the days of the simple vanilla or chocolate shake are long gone.

How did it come to this?

• As the picture above indicates, Bryan took home the top prize last year (with "Orange Dreamsicle").  And he's obviously grown very fond of the trophy.  In fact, there are more than rumors that he's been carrying it around the BYU campus muttering, in a hissy voice, "my own. . .my. . .presshhious." 

• Of course, that's happened before:

Michelle and The Precious, circa 2007

• And then there was this back in 2005:

• With a record number of participants expected this year, we're now opting for a three judge format.*  It's doubtful the contest has ever been more anticipated, and it's almost certainly never been more competitive.  Planning among contestants for the next contest's entry often begins shortly after the last one ends as ideas are bandied about, embraced, rejected, and embraced again (all outside the earshot of the judges).  Hence, my family is holding a practice session tomorrow night for family home evening to test out our ideas.

May the best milkshake win (as long as it means the trophy returns to San Diego)!

* As one might imagine, being a judge is initially a great honor. . .until the contest is over.  A milkshake judge has to be prepared to engender controversy (whether or not it's warranted) and, for better or worse, be ready to be an object of scorn and ridicule for the hours, days, and weeks following the contest.  Indeed, some of us are still better at the 2005 milkshake contest judges for failing to address a certain contestant's use of illegal ice cream.

Nothing Bundt Cakes

Yeah, so it's been a year and a half.  Even longer since I've put out anything meaningful. 

Ah well.  It happens that way sometimes when you've been dabbling in the dark arts of chocolate chip cookies and molasses spice crisps, or working your way toward a new truth in homemade pizza margherita.  One simply loses track of time.

The truth is, I've had little intention of coming back here.  But here I am, drawn back in almost on a dare. 

I was contented enough this evening at a chili cookoff and pinewood derby for the Boy Scouts.  The company at my table was mostly pleasant, 'til the topic turned to cupcakes. 

The women across from me, respectable in every way, seemed to have lost their minds.  Somehow, someway, they scoffed at my affinity for Sprinkles cupcakes, claiming they could name a handful of superior cake/cupcake shops in San Diego.  Maybe.  Yeah, maybe.  I left open the possibility.

So on the way home tonight, we tried one: Nothing Bundt Cakes.   We bought two "bundlets" -- marble cake (particularly recommended), and pecan prailine, totaling nearly $9.

As with the donut tastes we've done in the past, Michelle divided up the bundtlets between the five of us.  My review needs only a few lines:  the cream cheese icing was completely unremarkable.  But I'd been warned of this -- it's the cake itself that was supposed to be amazing.*  And the cake was moist.  But my praise ends there.  Both the marble and pecan praline cakes were fine, but nothing much better than fine.  And nothing, really, that I couldn't have had at home.  So I paid $9 for two small, moist cakes -- with mediocre icing -- that I could've had at home at a fraction of the cost.

Ah well.  After putting the kids to bed, I made a quick trip to Sprinkles (fantastic strawberry and dark chocolate frosting, even if some of the chocolate cake was a little dry).  Yeah, those women, otherwise perfectly respectable, were out of their minds.



*I take issue with this concept generally.  The right kind of cake without frosting can be fine.  More than fine even (I'm thinking of a friend's chocolate hazelnut cake).  But a cake is not meant to outshine its frosting.  It's just not.  It sets up the frosting and creates an atmosphere in which the frosting can shine.  Deserved or not, when you frost a cake, you set up the frosting to be the star.  When this works properly, life is bliss, and all is right in the world.  But it's against the laws of nature to frost a cake and expect that cake to shine any more than it's frosting allows it.