As three senioritis-ridden seniors who would rather do anything than college applications on a Friday afternoon, we set out to try the “blind, deaf and mute” baking challenge. We’re a little late to the trend, but we really needed a break and some cake. Or, to put it better, as the self-proclaimed dessert connoisseurs of The Saratoga Falcon (we had made tanghulu once last year, with very questionable quality) we had a moral responsibility to fill our bellies, for the sake of journalism!
The rules of the challenge are pretty simple: one person covers their eyes with a blindfold, another wears noise-cancelling headphones and the last person tapes their mouth shut.
Only the mute person is allowed to look at the recipe, and they are tasked with communicating with the deaf person on the procedures, ingredients and measurements. The deaf person then tells the blind person what to do, and the blind person does most of the actual baking — besides anything actually dangerous. A randomized wheel decided that Shirina would be blind, Amy would be deaf and Emily would be mute.
In a feeble attempt to be healthy, we chose to bake carrot cake with cream cheese frosting — following this recipe by Danielle Rye. Shirina pulled on a ski mask as a blindfold, Amy put on her noise-cancelling AirPods and blasted music, Emily sealed her lips with painter’s tape and we all donned our aprons to make, bake and decorate a carrot cake!
Note: At this point, Amy’s mom conveniently walked into the kitchen, somewhat concerned to see that her daughter had taken two culinary hostages. Emily’s tightly taped mouth looked straight out of a kidnapping scene, and a blindfolded Shirina was desperately groping at the kitchen counter in an unsuccessful attempt to orient herself.
Courtesy of Yang Zhang
Quick, someone call 911!
Part 1: Making the batter
With an applesauce cup Emily stole from the school cafeteria, we already had all of the ingredients to make the batter.
For Shirina, everything that happened here was a blur of “scoop this” and “mix this.” As the blind person, Shirina basically just stood still until Amy gave her instructions, and honestly, she felt quite left out.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” Shirina would ask, but there would be no answer — Amy couldn’t hear her and Emily couldn’t respond.
Emily played the part of a stereotypical bystander: While Shirina kept complaining about her loneliness under the dark blindfold, Emily had no choice but to silently listen while Amy was in another world, dancing and singing to the music in her headphones. After a few more futile complaints, Shirina accepted her fate to just shut up and listen to the random noises Amy made as she tried to figure out the measurements from Emily’s cryptic gestures.
Surprisingly, blind Shirina was a professional egg-cracker. She cracked four eggs total and none of the shells landed in the bowl. Her hands, though, were covered with raw egg and she thus began her expedition to find the sink.
Being the independent queen she is, Shirina didn’t need help to navigate. Carefully turned around, she tried to orient herself exactly 180 degrees. Then, she felt across every inch of the counter in front of her until she found the sink, then grasped upward to locate the faucet handle. After a hundred hand washes, though, she still couldn’t quite pinpoint the right coordinates and needed Amy to guide her to make the procedure faster.
At this point, we were pleasantly surprised by how smooth the process was. We had only made two small mistakes: Shirina spilled a little bit of flour while mixing, and Amy instructed Shirina to pour the vegetable oil in the wrong bowl.
Part 2: Break time while it bakes!
We allowed ourselves a limited reprieve from our sense-eliminating devices while the cake baked. Emily ripped off the tape and immediately ran to the sink, washing her mouth with soap to scrub off the sticky and bitter residue that had coated her lips.
After taking off the blindfold, Shirina was surprised to find that the kitchen layout was not in the orientation her spidey-senses had envisioned. The sink was further to the left, which explained why her fumbling hands always missed the mark.
While we waited, we rummaged through Amy’s concerningly full snack drawer, gobbling up some spicy tofu as compensation for our hard work.
In the meantime, Amy gorged down the biggest slice of watermelon ever.
Part 3: Frosting the cake
Up until this point, everything was going pretty well. We thought that we had bested all those online idiots — maybe something about our teamwork experience from dance and journalism had helped us achieve greatness so easily. But soon, it all came melting down — literally.
Our first mess started as soon as we resumed our blind, deaf and mute modes. Emily dropped the bag of powdered sugar on the counter, sending it flying all over the workspace. Shirina struggled to open the bar of cream cheese, which had a tricky package that was definitely not blind-friendly.
The cream cheese frosting required vanilla extract, but Amy did this part because Emily couldn’t bear to see her super-tiny-yet-super-expensive bottle spill in Shirina’s carefree hands.
But our biggest mistake was our impatience: the recipe had told us to chill the cake until it was cool to the touch, but we threw it in the refrigerator for just 20 minutes before taking it out while it was still warm.
When Shirina started spreading the first layer of frosting onto the bottom layer, it melted instantly into the cake. Amy and Emily wheezed as Shirina cheerfully piled on more frosting, unaware that it was dissolving right under her spatula. As the pair couldn’t stop laughing long enough to explain what was happening, Shirina remained confused and simply kept spreading.
For the top layer, Amy and Emily advised her to scoop large globs of frosting from the bowl, hoping for some to remain on the cake after the melting. But Shirina’s poor aim coupled with the dome shape of the cake resulted in almost all the frosting toppling over the side onto the cake board.
The final reveal
When it finally came time to remove Shirina’s blindfold, the kitchen light was so bright she was almost actually blinded. But most shocking of all was the sculpture that we had been working on for the past hour. The frosting was half on the cake, half on the turn table — but not too bad. We definitely deserve the title of dessert connoisseurs.
Ratings:
Appearance: 2 out of 5 Falcons
Taste: 4.5 out of 5 Falcons
While the appearance of the cake was slightly concerning, we remembered the wise old lessons from elementary school: never judge a book by its cover. When we finally tasted our hard work, we were pleasantly surprised by the soft, cinnamony cake and sugary frosting seeping through — extremely fitting for the fall season.
The frosting was a bit too sweet, despite us already cutting down the recipe’s sugar amounts by 40 percent. But overall, it was a warm and comforting treat — our “big backs” easily devoured the whole thing in two days.
This recipe was definitely worth making again, though we would really appreciate having all our senses next time. We highly recommend cake if you’re experiencing senioritis, or any other form of burnout.
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