Broken Birthday Cakes

We decided on Friday night that the best birthday cakes are the ones that you completely demolish. Friday was my Dad’s birthday (consequently, my sister Rachel pointed out that my Dad, who was born in 1952 turned 55 this year, and last month my Mom, who was born in 1955, turned 52. Fun trivia). My brother, David, works at Cold Stone and has therefore been in charge of purchasing the birthday cakes for our family since he started there last spring. So after all the presents were opened, Dave went into the kitchen and put two “5” candles on the top. He lit the candles, and then carried the cake in to the family room where my Dad was sitting. We sang, Dad made a wish and blew out the candles, and we all cheered. Then, as David was turning around to take the cake back into the kitchen he must have tripped on something, because all of a sudden the cake ended up face down on the carpet. Whoops =[ We picked up the cake, still intact due to the hardened frozen ice cream inside of it, and took it to the kitchen. It took a bunch of dumb jokes and some hugs to convince Dave that he had not, in fact, ruined either the birthday or the cake. Luckily Cold Stone puts at least an entire inch of icing on the tops of their cakes, so I grabbed a large butcher knife and used the blunt side to scrape a good layer of icing off the top and the sides. Good as new, and with a bunch less calories! I then proceeded to tell Dave about the time that Rachel and I made Mom a birthday cake (we were probably 14 and 12 at the time) and decided that we wanted to make it fancy. We tried to tip the cake out of the 13x9” pan so we could ice it all the way around; unfortunately the cake ended up breaking in half. So Rachel and I decided we should glue the cake back together with icing. Well, it ended up looking ridiculous, and I’m pretty sure that when Mom and Dad got home they found the two of us standing laughing over the gross particles of cake that were still somewhat edible. And we ate that one, just like we ate Dave’s cake. Besides, Dave’s cake was chocolate chip cookie dough. It had to be done.