Once upon a time there was a chef named David Chang. Chef Chang was a very ambitious chef. First he opened one restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar, which specialized in crazy, real-deal ramen and overstuffed pork buns. Then he opened another restaurant, Momofuku Ssam Bar, which featured crazy, Korean ssam. Then he opened another restaurant, Momofuku Ko, which was known for being impossible to get in the door.

And then Chef Chang said, “Where’s my dessert?” and he hired mad pastry chef Christina Tosi to make crazy desserts for him at a place called Momofuku Milk Bar, next to Ssam Bar, and she did! Mad Chef Tosi made soft serve ice cream in all sorts of crazy flavors, like apple-and-cheddar and jelly donut, and she made crazy cookies, like blueberry & cream and corn, and pies, and cakes, and pastries, all of them crazy, crazy, crazy! Some of the things she made were so crazy that she had to trademark them so that no one could ever have the same crazy idea she did! Which is okay, because who else besides Mad Chef Tosi would ever think up such crazy things as cereal milk® (just like what is at the bottom of your bowl), or compost cookies™ (potato chips, pretzels, chocolate chips, and lots of other things), or crack pie™ (condensed butter filling in a buttery crust)?

And then Mad Chef Tosi made some crazy cakes, like banana cake and pistachio cake and chocolate malt cake. For a while, any person from anywhere in the land could come in for a slice of these crazy, delicious cakes, and life was sweet.

But then, Chef Chang and Mad Chef Tosi decided that cakes were only to be purchased whole, not in slices, and issued a decree: “No more cake slices!” The cake slices soon disappeared, banished forever, and people like me became sad, because a world without cake is no world to live in at all.

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