Vanilla cake
It’s Helena’s third birthday tomorrow so today was baking day: the plan was cookies for her classroom celebration (swedish ginger ovals with 3s on them in colored icing) and a vanilla cake. Helena was very specific about the cake.
What kind of cake would you like for your birthday, Helena?Vanilla.
Okay. Does that mean pound cake? Sponge cake? Sarah cake without the cinnamon? Chocolate cake without the chocolate? What? What?
A vanilla cake.
What the rubbery inner-tubes of heck is a vanilla cake?
With chocolate icing.
I don’t know why a vanilla cake should confound me so utterly. I bake cakes. Lots of cakes. Of lots of different kinds. But vanilla cake?
Then today at Trader Joe’s I found a cake mix called (ta da) Vanilla Cake. Well, I thought karma was smiling upon me. The birds sang, the flowers bloomed and I bought cake MIX (sorry Mom, and all the McDermott women stretching back til the dawn of time). I even crowed about it to the checkout girl (althought they’re always happy to talk food-joy in Trader Joe’s). I came home, mixed it with a huge sense of satisfied rebelliousness, ignored the fact that the melted butter had curdled the milk and eggs, and stuck it in the oven.
If we were in England, we could soak it in sherry, lump cream and fruit on top and call it trifle. In Philadelphia, it’s just a mess.
The cookies worked out fine, though. And we had a good time decorating them, although my perfectionist tendencies cut in a little, as they often do, and I did the presentational 3s while Helena worked on some of the others. What’s really interesting is that I like hers better. I should have just let her do her funky icing thang and drank some coffee. It’s all about letting go, baby.
So I’m really going to practice letting go and go buy a cake. I think I can handle it.
It might be cheaper too…
First of all, HB to the H to the Waazaa! Second of all, I only found out on Tuesday night, after rehearsal, that you and the Excellent Walker are cousins. Blows my mind.
Happy birthday Helena! I hope you recover from the store-bought cake! It was very exciting to me the first time I was allowed to get a Carvel ice cream cake, though of course I would love for my mother to bake me a homemade birthday cake again.
ugh… I had a brief foray into “making cakes to sell” after I took the Wilton classes. The first one I made cracked in half down the middle as I was decorating it. I tried to hide it and it did not go well from there.
sigh…