First, I would like to say that I make very good pies. People have even been known to request that I bring pies that I have made to holiday meals. I make my own crust, and while my pies may not be as beautiful as the ones you see in magazines, they are quite tasty. So in the future, if I am responsible for the dessert on a birthday occasion, you just might be getting a pie instead of the traditional cake.
Regular readers may be familiar with some of my other forays into cake making, and really, that angel food cake I made for my daughter-in-law's birthday last year tasted perfectly fine, even the parts we scraped off the oven racks when it erupted from the pan and ran all over the oven. It was the presentation that was a little bit lacking. I may try something else for her birthday this year, though.
It's just that birthdays are supposed to have cakes, normally. I had been trying different cakes for our son, Jake's birthday for quite awhile, (He doesn't like chocolate. I don't know where he came from.) so a few years ago when I stumbled onto a recipe for pumpkin cake I figured he would like it because he loves pumpkin pie. (See? That should tell me something.) In the picture it looked pretty impressive because there are four layers with gooey filling. The first time I made it, it turned out great.
The last couple of years, maybe not so much. You have to make the cake in two layers, then you slice those layers into four. Nobody tells you how to slice them evenly, and it's not like trimming bangs where you can just keep taking more off the sides, so when one side of the layer that you have sliced is about the depth of an envelope and the other side is a couple inches tall, you have to remember which side of the first layer is skinny and which side is fat and try to turn them opposite each other to line them up with the next layer. Are you with me? Then you slap the filling on, plop the next layer on that and keep going till there are four layers. While it is still gooey you might be able to kind of twist the layers to try to even them up, but that doesn't always work. (Don't think I haven't heard some people, who shall remain nameless, calling it the Leaning Tower of Cake, either.) But it still tastes good.
Which brings us to this year's cake. Jake's birthday fell on a Tuesday, which is the day Dennis usually only works a couple of hours, so when I take him to work I just wait for him since it's a thirty minute drive. I got up early, made the cake, (which I took over to my neighbor's to bake in her oven, but that's a whole other story) and figured I could do the slicing into four layers and make the filling in the afternoon when we got home. Of course! For the first time since I started just waiting for him, Dennis wound up working all day while I sat outside and totally finished my library book.
By the time he came out we barely had time to get to the restaurant in time to meet Jake and his family for his birthday dinner. I left them finishing up, in fact, and dashed home, bringing my granddaughter, Hayley with me, to finish up the cake. I called out directions and Hayley opened Cool Whip and cream cheese and mixed them with the pumpkin while I sliced the layers. I was just finishing putting the top layer of cake on top of the gooey stuff as Jake and the rest of the family came in the door.
That's when I licked my fingers. That's also when I realized that I had forgotten to add the sugar. "Oh, no!" I said, with dismay.
"Oh, yay!" Hayley said, with great joy. "Another cake disaster! It's a tradition!"
I definitely am going to start figuring out how to get birthday candles to stand up in a pie crust.
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