Cake

March 28th marked my 25th birthday and this year we decided to spend it at Art's grandparents' house in the bay area. Visiting his grandparents is truly a vacation- they spoil us, cook for us, and absolutely adore their great-grandbaby (even though she wears them out). We took a drive to the Concord mall and bought some much needed summer apparel for Keira and had my birthday lunch at Johnny Rockets since we no longer have one in Fresno. Grandma Kathy and Grandpa George have made me feel like family since the first time I met them. We visit them as often as we can and on our drives home all I think about is how grateful I am that they make us feel so welcome and so loved. Keira has no idea how lucky she is to have such awesome great-grandparents, but it is obvious that she loves them.

Since I knew I was going to be out of town for my actual birthday, I had a small celebration at my house a couple days before with my family and Robyn, who is pretty much family. We had pizza and watched "The Other Guys." My mom has exemplary cake making skills and she made me her new specialty- an angel food strawberry ice cream cake with whipped frosting and strawberry topping. It's like heaven baked into a delicious confection. I wish I had even a fraction of my mom's cooking skills. My last cake making attempt resulted in one of my most embarrassing moments which I will divulge now...

It was about 3 years ago and our ward was asking people to sign up to bring cakes to some event. When I saw the sign up sheet, hardly anyone had signed up so I added my name to the list out of sympathy. I remembered having a lemon cake mix in the pantry that needed cooking so I whipped it up in my heart-shaped silicon pan, but when I attempted to remove it from the pan, about half the cake stuck to the pan and it came out (for lack of a better description) FUGLY. So I smothered it with frosting and called a neighboring member to ask if she had any sprinkles (for, at that moment in time, I thought that sprinkles might detract from the hideousness of the cake). She met me at the church with the sprinkles and I put them on the cake, but it just made it look even more like a five year old made it.

I almost took it back home because it was so unsightly, but I thought, "Oh it's no big deal. It will just get stuck on some big table with lots of other food and cakes and no one will even know I made it." So I went into the cultural hall to put it on the table only to discover that these cakes were intended to be on display with pedestals and name tags prepared for each one. To make it worse, the other cakes were glorious like something my mother could make. Some people even cheated and bought fancy store bought ones. Then there sat my ugly sprinkled lump of a lemon cake with my name all over it. I wanted to dig myself a grave and crawl in it. I do believe I am so emotionally scarred by that experience that I will never attempt cake making again.