American Tragedy: The Demise Of The Costco Sheet Cake
And what is the meaning of life anyway?
I vividly remember when I first tried the Costco sheet cake. It was summer of 2019, and I was sitting on Santa Monica Beach, next to lifeguard station 25. It was Sydney’s birthday, and her friend Laura carried the cake, along with her toddler and all sorts of toddler things, across about a quarter mile of sand. When she got to us, breathless, she gently placed it in the sand and lit the candles. I thought it was ridiculous. A whole sheet cake with thick icing at the beach is ridiculous. But then I tasted it.
I’m not going to spend too much time explaining why the Costco sheet cake was divine. If you love food, and cake, you will understand the formula: perfect cake to icing ratio + buttercream frosting + perfect level of chocolate intensity + sweet but not too sweet = perfect cake. (Many of you will understand this; those of you who eat a bag of carrot sticks and a can of tuna for dinner because it’s easy and nutritious won’t understand, and I’m not talking to you anyway). The Costco sheet cake was (rest in power) the Platonic ideal of a cake. Plato’s cake. If there was going to be a reflection on the collective cave wall of a cake, it would be the Costco sheet cake.
