That big one...the eldest...she's reached the momentous teen age years. sigh. I'm only 22...and some, how could I possibly have a 13 year old girl child??
Anyway...
A few days ago, I picked up a fun recipe magazine. It's one that I used to love and subscribe to..."The Taste of Home"....and this one was a special edition, it had kid-friendly, party-friendly foods. And just in time for the great child's birthday. She found a cake that must be made. MUST.
Isn't it cute?
And it seemed so simple. That middle section is set jello...blue raspberry jello. We found all the candy, made the cake...all was going SO well...
And then...
I think we nailed it...don't you??
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It was one of those slow motion things...we cooled the jello just so...and then poured the sorta set, sorta liquid blue raspberry goodness into the prepared middle of this cake...it seemed to hold for a few seconds...maybe a minute...and then the worst happened...
A fissure appeared.
I tried to stick my finger full of frosting into the hole...like the little boy who held back the sea with his finger in the dyke...but see, that kid only had to deal with the entire ocean and one small hole...I had blue raspberry goo, three screaming girls, an ever-widening crack and THEN the second side also SPRANG A LEAK...
Grandma was helpful though...she's the one who thought of the cup measures. Hat tip to ya, Gram.
Lucky for my girl, I was NOT in the mood to make another cake. So I handed everyone paper towels and told them to "SSHHHHHHH" and MOP or LEAVE...and commenced scraping that nasty looking cake, and as much of the blue goo as I could OFF the top of the bottom cake.
Luckier still was the fact that I had taste-tested the frosting recipe and found it scrumptious and so had intentionally made too much. I re-frosted that bottom cake...used some of the candy to spell out her name...told Beanie that she should figure out something to do with SOME of the candy we would not be using...and walked away.
A few minutes later...we had a mostly respectable cake.
I used this as a teaching moment...I'm good that way. I explained, "Sometimes things don't come out exactly as we expect...sometimes they are WAY funnier".
Happy Birthday tomorrow to my new Teenie-Girl Beanie...I love her very much. And I THINK we just made my favorite cake, ever.
See ya around.
