Growing up, my mother made the birthday cakes for my brother, sister and I, provided that a birthday was remembered and that we had gas and electricity at the time. She didn't enjoy cooking or baking. This was just her thing to do. Any off-brand cake mix in a box with the coordinating frosting in a can would do. In her haste to get it over with she'd turn it out of the pan before it was cool enough and it would crack. Then, she'd frost it while it was still warm and the frosting would melt into puddle around the cake. "It ain't pretty, but it all eats," she'd say.Although my dad had strong opinions about what made for a good meal, he never complained about my mother's lopsided and lumpy cakes. He knew better. "It all eats," he'd say in response to our looks of disappointment over our birthday cakes.
Years later, my dad developed a heart condition that prevented him from preforming his duties as a security guard. Not one to just sit around and do nothing, he decided to take cake decorating classes. It was a far stretch from his more masculine profession, but he embraced it with fervor. He and my mother became a cake-making team. She'd bake and he'd decorate. Only then did he complain about her cakes. "You gotta have patience," he'd say. Eventually, he got her to stop cracking the layers but she never would invest more than 30 minutes total on preparing and baking. It took him hours, sometimes an entire day, to decorate her cake made of off-brand cake mix in a box. The cakes were beautiful, but they lacked that certain feeling of specialness a cake should evoke at a celebration.
Now that I'm grown, I bake the birthday cakes for my children. Like my mother, it's my thing to do. However, it's not just my thing. Like my dad, I also decorate the cakes. I've made a flower, a dirt track, a doll, an Elmo, a Telletubby (Po), a Barney, a round, a square, an oval, and shapes that don't have names featuring characters my kids can't even remember the names of. If they request it, I make it. I even made an ice cream volcano cake covered in fondant once. And if you think that's no big deal, try doing it, and then transporting it to the party 10 miles away, in August! In Louisiana!
Making my kids' birthday cakes is also my thing to do because I love doing it! The cakes may not come out perfect, but they know that I gave it my best and that their birthday is pretty special to me.
The flip flop cake is my most recent birthday creation. I affectionately made it for my second child, Chloe, who turned 9. Happy Birthday, Lola!
