Just a typical Monday night...

At FHE the other night, Garrett came up to me and said, "I have some strawberries I need to get rid of, so I'm going to bake a chocolate cake." That is impeccable logic, and one of the reasons Garrett and I are friends. We had a brief conference over whose house to bake it. My apartment kitchen had still not recovered from the 4 batches of cupcakes I made the week before, but Garrett's house is the site of a nightly P90X workout.

For those of you following Challengers of the Unknown, you may be familiar with Charlie, or tonganterror, as he is known in the blogosphere. In addition to bearing a striking resemblance to the Rock, Charlie is in the midst of doing P90X with his buddy Rudy. Another interesting fact about Charlie is that he is Garrett's roommate, and the nightly P90X workout is his.

Imagine, if you will, the juxtaposition of hardcore yoga with cake baking. That was my Monday night.

I did not get any pictures of the yoga part, so you'll just have to trust me that it was going on. Charlie asked that his picture not be taken, and I respected his wishes, as he is in the process of "bringing it" and I did not want to be the reason it was not brought. Rudy, more of an exhibitionist, would have happily allowed me to take pictures, but I chose not to interfere with the integrity of the event.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, we were baking cake.

I brought aprons for everyone to wear. Here's Garrett tying his while he talks on the phone.

Here's a shot of the batter. Isn't it gorgeous?

This cake was odd in that it had a layer of frosting, and then another layer of ganache icing.

Here's a shot of the frosting. It was similar to the stuff inside Oreo cookies.

Here's Stacy cutting up strawberries.

And Stetson. He's an accountant. Tax day was three days later. In this picture, he is melting chocolate for the ganache. And, yes, he is also wearing one of my aprons.

While the cake was baking, we played Scum. Yoga was still going on. In fact, yoga finished at the same time we finally got to start eating the cake.

We were all sinking our forks into the decadence when Rudy and Charlie started "Ohm"-ing in unison. It's a pretty good thing I didn't snort chocolate cake.

Even good chocolate cake is bad when it comes out your nose.