The Cake

It's a good thing mothers give us some slack.

When I decided to make my Mom's 80th birthday cake, I decided to do everything I could to make it look perfect. 

Looks like perfection wasn't in the cards.

  I made the layers a couple of days ahead of time and froze them so that the buttercreme icing wouldn't melt.  I crumb coated them and chilled them again.  I kept chilling the icing and then rewhipping it to keep it cold and workable (note, when you chill the icing, rewhip it real good or it may have lumps...pretty much the opposite of the effect you were looking for.)

The hard part, for me, was plastering it on smoothly.  I started with the 14-inch bottom layer and coated it good before adding the middle layer, then the top layer.  But when I tried to get  a smooth effect it was analagous to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle---it would be smooth in one place, but a ridge would pop up next to it.  I couldn't have all aspects doing what you wanted at the same time.

I finally gave up shoving the frosting around, and my sister-in-law and I decorated it with the marzipan.  (Everyone wound up thinking the oranges were tomatoes. "What perfect little tomatoes" they cried.   Why they'd think I'd decorate a cake with three types of fruit and tomatoes--(I know, I know, tomatoes are fruit, but still...) escapes me.)

After dinner, we lit candles (they were tokens...we put ten on the cake), and dimmed the lights and carried in the cake, singing to Mom and to my sister's mother-in-law, whose actual birthday it was that day.

They loved the cake, and said it was beautiful (that may have been the champagne talking) but whether it was beautiful or not, everyone agreed it was delicious.

And don't forget to dim the lights.

And just for being a sport and reading all the way through this, here's the recipe for the buttercreme.

Comments

[keewee]

Happy birthday to your mother.
The cake looks grand indeed.

[Stryder]

You sure went to a lot of work. You must love your mom very much.