The Cursed Cake

Yesterday was S's birthday: many happy returns of the day to you, my sweet! Alas, I was not able to give my hubby the sort of birthday weekend that I would have liked.

Granted, we'd gone out to celebrate his birthday as adults on Saturday and had a very nice time. We lined up a babysitter so that we could go see Avatar together. Not my kind of film, but that's what he wanted to do, so I was happy to oblige. Even got dressed up a bit for the occasion. After having adult time on Saturday, Sunday was reserved for the family celebration.

The plan was for me and the kids to make him an angel food cake in the morning and order Thai take out for dinner, both at S's request. No problem, I figured. I'd found time to go buy an angel food cake pan (since our old one had been tossed when packing up for the move; it had rusted out and needed to be replaced) and simply needed to walk across the street to the Safeway to buy a box of mix on Sunday morning. (Because while I enjoy baking from scratch, angel food cake in my opinion is one of those cost/benefit situations where the results from mix are good enough to justify not having to separate a dozen eggs with the "help" of a 3 year old and a 4 year old.) Well, guess which Safeway does not sell angel food cake mix?

That's right. When I sought the help of one of the employees, figuring that surely I was just overlooking it on the shelf, they informed me that they hadn't carried angel food cake mix in quite some time. Devil's food, white, yellow, chocolate, even spice cake mixes -- but not angel food. Cripes. What kind of grocery store doesn't carry angel food cake mix???

(Answer: a Safeway that has been remodeled almost exclusively to meet the needs and desires of a college student demographic. They are, after all, right across the street from the university. Which means, apparently, lots of single serving frozen food, an extensive beer and liquor selection, and no angel food cake. Who knew?)

"I'm very sorry, Ma'am. But you could always purchase one that we have pre-made in the bakery?" The young lady was trying to be helpful, but I'd promised the kids that we would make Dad's birthday cake together, so coming home with a pre-made cake wasn't going to work. So I purchased a white cake mix and chocolate frosting and headed out for the three minute walk home. (In the rain, I might add.) I tried not to take out my frustration on poor S, who very kindly turned down my offer to drive over to the other Safeway about 2 miles away in search of the correct type of cake mix. So I got started on the white cake with the "help" of the kids, making 2 pans of cake for a nice little layered creation.

Let's just say that BJ was already not having his best morning ever. It culminated in him needing repeatedly to be right in the center of everything -- grabbing what he shouldn't, not listening to directions -- and then him smashing his arm into one entire pan of cooled baked cake. It was broken up into half a dozen pieces. Sigh. While he went to time out, I worked on gluing everything back together with chocolate frosting. The end result was a bit lumpy and less than attractive, but better looking that it might have been. And tasted pretty yummy.

Thank goodness S is a forgiving and tolerant individual. He was very sweet about his less than perfect cake.

I hope he is as understanding about the fact that this morning BB had her own example of the I Won't Listen To What Mommy Says phenomenon that is so prevalent in the household right now. Which ended up in her knocking all of the leftover cake off of the kitchen counter. Icing side down onto the kitchen floor.

S, honey, it seems that your cake this year just wasn't meant to be! I hope your wishes all come true, in spite of your cursed birthday cake.