Sometimes, it pays to be redundant.

So, due to some still top-secret events, I had to switch cakes for this week and last week. It will be worth it, you'll see.

So last week, I was making out my grocery list and grabbed the Cake Book to add the cake ingredients to my list. I flipped it open, and imagine my surprise when I discovered that the cake was... pancakes. What.

First of all, pancakes are not cake. They're flat and boring and there's no frosting or crumb topping or anything that is good about cake. Second of all, as you can probably tell, I don't particularly like pancakes. This is more the fault of condiments than the actual pancakes themselves, but, when you don't like syrup or butter, really, how boring are pancakes? And third of all... pancakes are not cake. The end.

Clearly, Cake Day was in jeopardy. It's not Pancake Day, after all. I read through the chapter to gain some understanding about what surely must have been an oversight. Aside from learning some... interesting... things about my advisor I was not previously aware of, I learned that on that Cake Day, they were leaving for a spring break trip, and so to ensure Cake Day was fulfilled, they whipped up these pancakes. I can't decide if this shows more or less dedication than me... I would have moved Cake Day or had two the next week; they got their day in, but the authenticity is questionable.

One really cannot take pancakes anywhere, and I wasn't about to eat an entire batch myself, so I did some creative thinking and decided pancakes would be a perfect post-long run recovery food. I invited Chris for a 7 miler followed by a pancake extravaganza, complete with butter, syrup, strawberries, bananas, whipped cream, and chopped nuts (I need toppings too, ok?). As far as ease of recipe is concerned, this one really... takes the cake... ahem. I mean, pancakes are pretty simple as it is, although for me, the usual result is disaster. But even I did not fail using this recipe.

During the boring process of waiting for pancakes to cook, Chris got this crazy idea. What if we made... a pancake cake? A cake with pancakes as the cake and toppings as the frosting? Brilliant! We had enough extras at our disposal to make it work. So I present to you the most amazing recipe ever: Pancake Cakes.

1. Make pancakes. (Use the recipe from The Cake Chronicles, because they are legitimately the best pancakes I've ever eaten.)
2. Place 1 pancake on a plate.
3. Spread pancake with layer of whipped cream and top with banana slices.
4. Lay second pancake on top of first.
5. Spread second pancake with layer of whipped cream and top with strawberry slices.
6. Lay third pancake on top of second.
7. Cover whole stack with a layer of whipped cream "frosting."
8. Sprinkle chopped nuts over the top of the cake.
9. Serve and enjoy!

As you can tell by the pictures, it was fantastic. As you'll have to imagine, it was also delicious. To be fair, I did try a single pancake with butter and syrup as the book suggests, and it wasn't too bad... almost enough to make me a pancake convert.

Anyway, thanks to Chris' help, Cake Day was saved, the Pancake Cake was born, and two very hungry runners got very full tummies. Now that is a happy ending.

Some day I will tell this story as a bedtime story to my children: The Legend of Pancake Cake. There will no doubt be an epic movie based on this story as well. Hopefully I'll be played by someone awesome. Like Anna Torv. And then we can add this part about the failure to invent the Pancake Cake in time to save Cake Day in the alternate universe, and so agents from the other universe cross into our universe to try to steal our Pancake Cake, inadvertently triggering the destruction of both universes... I wonder if J.J. Abrams would be willing to work with me on this...