The Golden Bowl
On the Accidental Creation of Tradition
Happy New Year’s Eve, friends.
This time of year, I see all of the “This year can get lost, next year is going to be GREAT!” posts, and I can’t help but think we’re all Charlie Brown and New Year’s Eve is Lucy with the football. Sometime come January 2nd, when the new year ushers it’s third heretofore unimaginable affront and upon horror’s head horrors continue to accumulate, we will find ourselves on our backs, looking up at the sky from a pile of leaves, and realize once again we’ve been duped.
But this year is going to be our year.
One year, decades past, I was poor. It is important to understand that I have been poor most other years as well, but this particular year was a doozy. Anyway, it came to pass that I was to make desserts for our family’s end of year gathering. I had previously made more ornate desserts—handmade truffles, molten chocolate cakes with minty fudge sauce, brulees and flambes and delights galore. This year, I was not financially up to the challenge and was basically stuck with what I could find around the house or get for a few bucks down to the Stop-n-Shop. This amounted to some whipping cream, yellow cake mix, some caramel syrup, and a dusty bottle of Dr. McGillicuddy’s butterscotch schnapps from the dark recesses of the booze cabinet.
I had the makings of a trifle. A cheap, overly-sweet, drug-store trifle, but a trifle. Of course, if I just told the kids it was a trifle, they would never even try it. It wouldn’t look fancy. It wouldn’t taste fancy. It wouldn’t be fancy. This would be the year that Dad Ruined Dessert, and my poor heart was stricken. Until, that is, I remembered something: I am a Storyteller (TM). This trifle needed a name: a name that denoted majesty.
Enter the Golden Bowl.
A trifle was nothing. Just a trifle. Forgettable. Lamentable, even. The Golden Bowl? This was the desert of majesty. This was the desert of kings and legends. Indiana Jones would have chosen the golden bowl had it been presented as the desert of Christ himself, and he would have chosen wisely.
My daughter is an adult now, and so are my nieces. And yet, every year, the demand for the Golden Bowl rings out across the decades come the Holidays. This year, I give it to you. Should you find yourself in the need of overly-sweet fanciness in a Dollar General bag, may this humble tradition brighten your table.
The Golden Bowl:
1 Box yellow cake mix
1 quart Whipping Cream
1/4 cup sugar
Caramel Syrup
Butterscotch Schnapps
Bake the cake in tow 8x8 inch pans as directed.
Pierce the tops all over with a fork and pour about 1/2 cup of schnapps over each cake. Let sit overnight.
The next day, whip the cream until stiff, adding in the sugar until it is sweet to your liking. If you are rich enough, add in 2 tsp of vanilla extract.
Once the whipped cream is stiff and sweet, stir in about 1/4 cup of butterscotch schnapps, until it has a light butterscotch taste.
Cut the cakes in half then in half again. Cut each quarter into about 1/4 inch by 4 inch strips.
Take your fanciest big bowl, and layer the bottom with a single layer of cake slices. Drizzle with caramel syrup. Cover with a generous portion of the whipped cream.
Repeat, alternating layers of cake, caramel syrup, and whipped cream until you run out of whipped cream (the whipped cream should be the top layer, hiding the cake and caramel underneath). Drizzle the top with whipped cream, and tell all of the kids the legend of the Golden Bowl—whatever legend you make it to be.
Happy New Year, friends.