Today is my mom's Birthday (and Ann-Marie's and, I think, the Supreme Coordinatrix's--Happy Birthday!). My mom doesn't like having a January birthday, because rotten stuff happens in January. For example, there are snow storms in January, so the doctor can't come and deliver you at your birth. And it's so close to Christmas that a January birthday sneaks up on people, and they forget to send you a gift. And the first Iraq war starts on your birthday and your favorite child's cat dies on your birthday. Things like that get Mom down.
The year the cat died was also the first year I attempted to make a cake from scratch by myself. I made it while Mom was napping, which is why it turned out completely inedible. Fold and Beat just didn't seem like they could be all that different, but they turned out to be the difference between a moist and delicious birthday treat and a flat, hard, chocolate hockey puck.
On my birthday, there is always a perfectly divine birthday cake, because my mom or my sister make it. They are excellent bakers and usually prepare an Italian cream cake or a German chocolate cake. (Cakes with a specified nationality in the title are always delicious.)
Birthday cake baking has never been my calling, even for birthdays NOT in January. My cakes are usually mediocre in the taste department, but they make a statement. The Technicolor Dream Cake and the porcupine cake that turned out looking like a demented deer stand out in my mind as particularly festive ("festive"). If I were in Tennessee today, I would make Mom a mediocre-tasting, love-filled cake, too.
Happy Birthday!
11 comments:
That, my dear, is precisely why Betty Crocker is so famous. :) At least you make lovely pies, which are better than cake any day. They're round. They look pretty with candles in them. They might even be healthier (is that fruit in your pie?). Pass on my happy birthday wishes to her, please.
Hmm. Since I used such ambiguous terminology, the "they're"s refer to pie. Not cake.
Happy Birthday to me. It is rainy and may snow. Tradition. Mom
I loved that little porcupine cake.
Nobody makes me cool cakes anymore.
That cake you made when you were 13 years old was the only laugh we had that day. We cried all day when the cat died. And, being our family, we ate the cake. Love, Mom
Sorry you had a gloomy weathered b-day, Mom. At least you had funny, marmoty b-day cards!
Hmmm. I don't remember ever owning a cat . . .
I said her favorite child's cat.
It was my favorite cat ever. Mom
And it belonged to your favorite child, right?
Actually, SCS did have a cat, named Boots, when she was 8 years old. Heidi used to carry her (the cat) by the scruff of the neck when we took walks, and Boots would go "Mew, mew", in time to the walk. I love you all exactly the same. Mom
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