Fall and Winter is birthday season in my family. Between November and February, all of us celebrate our birthdays. This year, my girls turned 16 and 13, so each has their own special significance. For my 16 year-old, her girlfriends threw a surprise party, which my ex helped plan. I split the cost of the present and the meal, and baked and decorated the cake. It was a wonderful day, and everyone worked hard to make it a special evening. My youngest is turning 13 this weekend, and she’ll be in New York with my former in-laws. She is very close with her cousins and is going to see a show on Broadway.
We are very close and I’m going to miss her. But I also know that this birthday, like all birthdays, is about her, not me. I will celebrate her birthdaywith her next week when we go on vacation together with my family. So she shouldn’t feel bad, and neither should I. But that’s not how these kinds of things work out for many families.
Our family is no model of how get divorced, but I try to remember who I am compromising for and how the alternative worked.
So my contribution today is the Tunnel of Fudge: a wonderful cake from my childhood that has been “reengineered” by the Cook’s Country Test Kitchen. For us, it was the ideal “not quite a birthday cake.” My view is that you can get a lot of great baked goods at the store, so if you are going to go to the trouble at home, it better be worth it. Cake and box isn’t better than cake from a bakery, so it doesn’t make it into my house any more.
I don’t recommend a lot of baking here, since it is a site for beginners and baking from scratch often requires technique that is not ideally communicated in writing. This cake takes time, mostly waiting for things to cool, but it can be mixed with a standing mixer, a hand mixer, or just a whisk and a spoon. There’s no folding, no kneading, and no egg whites. It is virtually idiot-proof. The only trick is allowing enough time for the cake to cool so it comes out of the Bundt pan in one piece. It also requires having the right ingredients, so a trip to the grocery store may be in order. Rather than making the icing, I’d suggest warm hot fudge or Hersey’s chocolate sauce on top. It is also amazing with vanilla ice cream, which I’m quite sure is how they serve it in heaven!
0 Responses to “Birthdays”