The other night around 2am, while my family was sleeping soundly, I was hungry. It had been quite some time since dinner and my tummy was growling. I decided that I wanted some cereal. It’s one of my favorite foods. Just love me some cereal.

I filled up a bowl with Frosted Mini-Wheats and went out to the living room to watch television. Things were going along just fine when suddenly I was choking on a tiny sliver of wheat. A mini wheat, if you will. I have no idea how

this happened. One minute, chew chew chew and the next GAH! I managed to get to the point where I was coughing, which any medical professional will tell you means that I’m not actually choking anymore, but doesn’t do a lot towards making you feel better when you can’t seem to get a full breath.

So here I was, slowing dying in the living room, coughing so hard I actually peed a little, and the whole time I’m trying to defend my bowl of deadly cereal and milk from the damn cat.

I thought to myself, between desperate hacking, that there was very little dignity in death by cereal. I also figured it was apt that I’d die from eating something I had no business eating. I considered that I should try to crawl down the hall to wake up My Honey to let him know that I needed assistance, except that I’d have to put down my bowl and then Quentin would get the milk for sure.

This was how my family would find me in the morning, dead on the floor in the living room, a tiny fleck of wheat lodged in my throat, and dairy-free bowl on the floor by a contented cat with milk breath.

Clearly I lived to tell the tale. As I see it, the moral of the story is: Don’t eat cereal by yourself.

My Honey says it’s: Go to bed at a normal time.

My guess is that neither of these things are actually going to happen.

I’m going to start this post by telling you that the Sisters haven’t had any sugar all week. We’re easing in to our 2017 diets. We’ll see how that works.

Anyway, that being said we need to discuss cake. Way back in April of 2014 we heard of a cake. A mystical cake. A cake we needed to become personally acquainted with.

Huffington Post declared it, “the greatest cake America has ever made.” That’s a hell of a compliment and two women who love cake more than anyone we’ve ever met were intrigued, as we’re sure you can imagine.

The pit fall was that the bakery that made this divine comestible was in Pittsburgh and from our house that was 2,051 miles away. It’s not like we could very well hop in a car on Tuesday and fetch ourselves a slice. We checked into shipping it. Things went badly. The cake on-line was about $50 and, way back in 2014, they didn’t have free shipping like they do now. The shipping cost another $80. We don’t want you to think that we didn’t seriously consider ponying up the money and doing it. This was the GREATEST CAKE AMERICA HAS EVER MADE people. We needed to know.

Our financial advisors will be happy to know that we regained control of our mania and let it go.

We’d be lying if we told you that we didn’t periodically think about the Burnt Almond Torte from Prantl’s Bakery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We did. It made us sad. We couldn’t imagine any scenario that brought us close enough to Pittsburgh to get it.

And then our dear friend Pumpkin had to see family over Christmas. Guess where she was going. Guess. This is how Serendipity works, my friends. We asked her very nicely to find the bakery, fetch us a cake, freeze it, and then lug it on an airplane across the county while transferring planes in various cities, and then store it in her own freezer, then place it gently in a cooler, before meeting us for lunch.

We totally know that we’re epic pains in the ass. It’s part of our charm.

We want you to know that our Burnt Almond Torte arrived to us frosty and perfect. Nary a slivered almond out-of-place. Pumpkin might be the finest person alive.

So we ferreted the cake back to our office and plotted how we were going to get to eat it without anyone else finding out. We had absolutely zero plans to share. This cake was ridiculously hard-won and we’re selfish people. Imagine us in a dark supply closet. Not really, but we might have if we hadn’t found an empty office. We did lock the door.

We bet you’re wondering if it was worth it? Yes, yes it was. It may well be the very best cake we’ve ever had in our faces, EVER. It’s light and airy. The frosting tastes like fairies made it. The “Burnt” part is a misnomer because our almonds were lightly toasted and fragrant. Best. Cake. Ever.

We each had a tiny piece then carefully wrapped it back up to savor later. Then we locked it in a vault protected by medieval gargoyles, waved our wands and did our best Harry Potter incantations.

We highly recommend you get yourself a Pumpkin and coerce her into going to Pittsburgh in the very near future. You can’t have our Pumpkin; she’s all ours and we love her.