AuburnChick's Adventures

Saturday was the Mr.’s birthday.

When you marry someone, with the extra family that tags along, you also get their traditions.

Hence, the white cake with chocolate icing birthday cake.

Folks, this cake is so important that one year, for Chicky’s birthday, I went through three cake mixes before getting the cake right.

It’s cake mix.  Who can possibly mess up three of them?  You add egg whites, oil, and water, for heaven’s sake!

But that year, for some reason, my cakes refused to come out of the cake pans.

It’s a good thing I wasn’t working back then because it seriously took the ENTIRE day to get two complete layers made.

I even called Pillsbury’s hotline for help.

Yeah.

We’re serious about cakes around here.

Here’s what I found works.

Using my air bake cake pans (which cost a small arm and a leg but have earned their keep), I first take wax paper and cut out circles that will fit inside the pans.

Then, I oil the pans, lay the circles of wax paper inside, and then oil the top of the circles.  I found out during try #2 on Cake Day from Down Under (and I don’t mean Austrailia) that the paper stuck to the bottom of the cake layers if I did not oil them too.

Then I bake.

Lots of trouble, I know, but you do what you’ve gotta do when you’re serious about cake.

Did I mention that this family loves cake?

heehee

Ok, so once we get the cake finished (don’t forget the tub of chocolate icing…of which I once accidentally used chocolate chip icing, which was TRES delicious!), we do the obligatory singing before digging in.

Here’s where the fun comes in.

The fighting.

Serious fighting.

Remember…this family is serious about cakes.

I’ll never forget the first time I sat down at Coupon Queen’s and Grand Pooba’s kitchen table to participate in this tradition.

Coupon Queen, been Queen Bee of the family, welded the knife.  She’s not prone to knife cuts like Your’s Truly (see post from last week).

The Mr. and Grand Pooba sat there…salivating on the table.

She cut the first piece.

I want to think that Grand Pooba got it since he’s the elder statesman of the group.

Well, you should have seen his eagle eyes as they watched while the Mr.’s piece was getting cut.

Somehow, either the Mr.’s piece was bigger, or Grand Pooba’s was.

Either way, a very loud argument arose over who had the bigger piece and how much more Coupon Queen loved that person than the other.

I sat there, all by myself, mouth open.

This normally calm, conservative group was doing everything but having a physical beat down.

You would have thought we were in a WWF arena.

Apparently, fighting for your piece of cake is an inherited trait, because Chicky and Rooster naturally fell into the pattern.

The grown women in the family are the only calm ones.  We don’t care if our pieces are smaller.  We’re just happy to get one.

Needless to say, cake does not last long around here.

But, getting back to the point of this post (yes, there was one).

On Saturday, while Chicky, the Mr., and I were eating our cake (Rooster is gone on a mission trip), the Mr. started making fun of how we eat our cake.

Observe his piece…

Yeah.

And he says we’re weird.

You can see what he’s doing, can’t you?

He’s saving the icing for last.

I kind of do this, except that I save the back of the cake for last.  The rest doesn’t matter.

Either way, we’ll enjoy our cake, while it lasts.

Don’t tell the Mr., but Chicky took a HUGE piece to work with her.

Shhhh.

And then we’ll wait until January, when it’s Chicky’s birthday.  She’ll be at college, so we’ll either eat her cake without her or take one down and surprise her.  Bet she’ll love that.

heehee

Filed under: This-n-That | Tagged: birthdays, cake | 3 Comments »