Potato Cake by Lesley Whyte

Kayleigh paused and took a deep, steadying breath before she pushed open the door. She needed a second to prepare herself for the surprise birthday party on the other side of it. She knew what it would be like, pretty much the same as it had been fourteen months ago. Yes, fourteen months ago. 

She pushed open the door and everyone yelled and burst out at her. Kayleigh fixed a bright smile on her face and pretended to be surprised. She went around the room, saying hello to the few family members who had arrived, her father's 'friends' and the women who worked at the centre. She noticed her father was scrurrying around, adjusting bunting and rearranging badly-wrapped presents on the table. She avoided him, and the food.

"Kayleigh, sweetheart," Karen said, wrapping an arm around her. "You're such a good sport about all this stuff, it's wonderful. It means so much to him."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Is there any food?"

"Well, that depends on what you mean by food."

Kayleigh nodded. This was standard. She headed over to the food table anyway, since her stomach was rumbling loud enough to hear over the awful early-90s music. She looked at the chocolate digestives sandwiched between slices of bread and smothered in mustard. She looked at the crisps floating in what appeared to be Coca-Cola. She looked at the cheese-and-blue-tack-squares-on-sticks. Kayleigh sighed, then slid a cube of cheese off and popped it in her mouth.

At that point, her father appeared at her side and snatched the remaining blue cube from her.

"Hey, Dad. How are you feeling today?"

"You can't eat that yet! Kayleigh will be here soon!"

"I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't realise. How are you doing today?"

"Everything's gone wrong," he said, his face red and sweaty. "I need to make sure everything's right for when Kayleigh gets here. It's her birthday, you know?"

"I know, Dad."

"Don't eat anything else," he said, and scuttled away again.

Kayleigh wiped at her eyes, hating herself for thinking this time might be different. Karen, her father's nurse, came over and hugged her gently again. "At least the cake looks edible," Kayleigh said, not wanting anyone to see her cry. She picked up a knife and cut herself a slice. As she lifted it onto a paper plate, she sighed. Mashed potato. He'd piled a bunch of mash on a plate and then covered it in blue icing.

"Kayleigh..."

"Well, at least it's not my birthday," she said quietly.

Potato Cake by Emily Chadwick

The garden-variety potato cake is nothing to write home about. It’s basically mashed up potato, in a cake-patty form, fried until golden brown.

If you really want to make an interesting potato cake, you have to add other items to the recipe. This helps the potato cake from being bland and potatoverwhelming. My personal favourite is a tuna and cheese potato cake, but you can also add onion, chili peppers, bell peppers, chives, mushrooms… anything you want, really!

If you add an egg to the mix, it helps the potato to stick together whilst you’re cooking it. There is nothing sadder than a broken potato cake.

Potato Cake by Sam Smith

It was a game we played as children. Honestly, we weren’t the coolest bunch of kids, but we had our own little group and we had fun, so it wasn’t that bad at all. There were seven of us in total, more than enough to play.

Sometimes the other groups would pick on us or make us the butt of their jokes; we were frequently called “The Butt of the School”. Kids can be mean. That’s just what they were to us. Mean. But we were mean too, which is where the game comes into play.

Let me set the scene. We would just be sitting on our table, eating lunch or working or something, and one of the other groups would say something stupid to us. It was normally either they sporty group of the group that wore sunglasses during P.E., because no matter how obvious and cliché it is, that shit actually did happen.

Anyway, yeah, they would say some little remark and we would immediately start to play the game. Whoever said the first word to us would be the focus. We knew most of the pupil’s names and where they lived because it wasn’t that big of a school. A little glace would go around the table and we would have our focus.

The next day, we would all take the day off school. We weren’t smart and didn’t really care about grade or anything stupid, so it wasn’t a big deal. The meeting place would be behind the focus’ back garden at five in the morning. Everyone knew what to bring. A mask, a hammer, some E-Z Bake cake mix and a bag full of potatoes.

The focus would leave their house around eight or so, which was when we would go to work. Hopefully no one else would be home to hear us break the door down with our hammers. Sure, there were probably easier, less destructive ways to get into a house, but that’s not really the point. In the kitchen, some of us would get to work on making as much cake as we could. It was usually chocolate cake. The rest of us would start filling every nook and cranny with smashed up potato. Cupboards filled to the brim, under the beds, in the toaster, shoes overflowing, behind the radiators, between the pages of books and magazines, in VCRs, atop the mantelpiece, stuffed into trouser pockets, down drains. It was kind of awesome how much we could get done in an hour.

When the cake was cooked, we would sit at a dinner table or something communal and eat the cake. It was like a little present to ourselves for taking the mean comment so well. We would leave afterwards.

No one is sure how this game got started, but we damn well finished it.

Day Twenty-Seven

And today's prompt is...

Potato Cake.