Friday 3 April 2009

The Birthday Cake

Wednesday was The Man’s birthday. I always get a kick out of the fact that he was born on April Fool’s Day. I’m sure there are some excellent witticisms to be had out of that. So far they have eluded me. But one day I’ll come out with a real zinger, I can sense it.

The Man hates his birthday, as he says he hates being the centre of attention. Come to think of it, I actually met him on his birthday. Or maybe it was a couple of days after. It was his birthday dinner, anyway. He didn’t seem to mind too much then, but now I know him well I can imagine what was really going through his mind. Funny to think of a time when I didn’t know The Man from Adam.

So, The Man hates his birthday and having attention lavished on him, but I love his birthday, and lavishing attention on him. (See how compatible we are?). So I had been looking forward to it for days! I was busy on Tuesday and couldn’t make his cake then, so on Monday I did what I could, mixing the dry ingredients and beating together the butter and sugar. Then on Wednesday I rushed home from work – I literally ran part the way from the bus stop – added the eggs to the butter, mixed everything together, realised I didn’t have enough cherries but used what I had anyway, threw in a bit of extra milk to compensate for the lack of cherry pie filling, threw it all in the oven, got changed like a streak of lightning, then was all “Ahh, how relaxed I am. Shall we have a drop of champagne before we go out to the restaurant?” I had to do that because The Man hates it when I go overboard in the kitchen, and he’d tried to talk me out of making the cake on the grounds that I would make us all late. I was very proud of how quickly I made that cake, let me tell you.

After that, we (him, me and his nephew) went for dinner at a lovely Thai restaurant we like to frequent at one of the eastern beach suburbs. It was sweet the way he laid out all his presents on the table to open!

When we got back, I hastily threw together some icing, then assembled the cake. One of the cakes had broken on the way out of the pan, and believe me when I tell you the finished product looked something monstrous. But we all felt sick afterwards, so it was a success all in all.

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