The $5 Slice o' Cake

Today we made our annual trek to Whole Foods to purchase a few hunks of their dark, rich gingerbread, which they sell in cornbread-like squares. It's a much more flavorful gingerbread than we've found anywhere else, and we've made it a sort of Christmas tradition.

Usually, it's the only thing we buy at Whole Foods. I'm not a big fan of the store; even though it's owned by the same people who own Harry's, Whole Foods is a pale shadow of Harry's in its selection and its pricing. The same items are always more expensive at Whole Foods--but it's the items that aren't at Whole Foods that make me prefer Harry's. Unfortunately, the Harry's in Marietta doesn't offer gingerbread by the chunk, so we have to drive to Roswell.

While I was there, I noticed that their hot food bar includes a dessert bar, where you can buy whatever you want for $7.99 a pound. I started to ask why it's in the hot food bar area, since none of the desserts are hot, but my smark-aleckiness was sidetracked by the vision of an almost-virgin coconut cake that was included on the dessert bar. I say "almost virgin" because someone had claimed one corner of the square cake in order to get a heaping helping of the thick, rich, creamy coconut-laden icing. However, that meant that there were three corners left...

That left me with a dilemma, of course. I generally don't pay $8 a pound for cake. In fact, the very concept is anathema to me... but this wasn't just cake, it was coconut cake, the cakiest, desssertiest, bestest of cakes. My coconut craving overcame my frugality, and within a matter of moments, a $5.08 hunk of coconut heaven was all mine.

Yes, if you do the math, that's more than a half-pound of coconut cake, so it was actually two servings, not one... but even so, I felt foolish for wasting the money.

Then I had half of the cake for dessert this evening. All doubts went away. This was the best coconut cake I've had since Mom died; it wasn't the same as hers—in fact, it was more reminiscent of grandmother's coconut cake, which was always heavier than Mom's—but it was the best I'm likely to find, I suspect.

So yes, I bought a $5 piece of cake (that turned into two $2.50 pieces of cake)--and now that I've tried it, I'll do it again next year, if the opportunity arises.