Cake and Mom

Birthdays were an extraordinary occurrence in my family's household. My mother went overboard with the detailed invitations, decorations, games and prizes. As I have mentioned, you would pick a theme and Mom would run with it. One time she had a birthday party for me that included a scavenger hunt through the neighborhood that went several blocks, into the woods and down the creek. It lasted two hours.

The most celebrated part of our birthday parties was Mom's cakes.

Mom took a cake decorating class with our neighbor, Linda and suddenly, both of their kitchens turned into full-fledged bakeries. People would request an insane cake design and my Mom and Linda were up for the challenge. Orders began piling in. We were a birthday cake factory and we were in business. I believe this was a Wilton Cake Decorating class, now hosted at retailers like Michael's, but then hosted in department store settings, like JC Penney. It probably was JC Penney. And on an important side note, my Mom has always referred to this store as Pennies, as many moms do.

Prior to the cake school, our birthday cakes were delicious, but simple. After cake school, Batman could be a surprise guest at your party. When they made the Batman cake, I remember the buttercream icing being a pewter gray color and it would turn your teeth black. There is no other icing that has this high of a sugar ratio- I know this because I checked. They purchased really fun character cake pans and would recreate them to look just like the picture. Sometimes they designed their own using coloring books from the "client." They would bake a sheet cake and place the picture they wanted to copy on top and outline the design with toothpicks. When you pulled out the toothpicks and took off the paper, you had easy shapes to fill in with different color icings. It's interesting to me how far people would stretch with their cake design. They would give my Mom a little napkin or a sticker and say, "Can you copy this?"

Mom and Linda would stay up all hours of the night to complete a cake. Usually for another family member or friend. A lot of times, one of them would have to mix up another batch of icing while the other continued piping. Sometimes the icing got too warm from their hands and they would stick all of the pastry bags in the fridge to harden it up and make it easier to pipe. I used to try to sneak a taste before they pulled them back out. It never worked because inevitably I always chose the time they had the red or blue icing in the fridge and it always dyed my lips and teeth that color and it would get me in trouble. Who knows how many cakes they served where I actually licked the frosting first.

I remember thinking that I wanted to stay up to see the end of the Barbie cakes but it was way past my bedtime and I fell asleep. The next morning, when I went into the kitchen, there were what seemed to be a hundred different colored pastry bags with leftover icing, little tupperware bowls with remnants of mixing colors and toothpicks all over the kitchen counter. It looked like Barbie had gotten a little sick and threw up in the sink.

But when I saw the cakes later that day- they were beautiful dresses with little heads with hair popping out of them. One of them pink, the other yellow and one purple. I remember thinking that even I wanted a Barbie cake for my birthday. I wonder if they could have recreated Ken in his camouflage costume...

A few years after the cake decorating began, my Mom was driving us kids to the babysitter's house in the early winter morning before work. Her old Ford Galaxy let her down and stopped in the middle of a snow storm. We were all forced to walk on the side of the street. My Mom was carrying my baby sister and I was holding my brother's hand. She slipped on a patch of ice, fell to the concrete and never dropped my sister the entire time. She did end up injuring her wrist very badly and would see the effects a little later on. We did make it to the babysitter's, but my Mom would never be the same. She made countless trips to the doctor because she was in so much pain.

I remember how much trouble she had using her hand after the injury with so many things that she loved to do.... one of those things was piping beautifully colored icing onto kids' birthday cakes.