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| There's a hilarious story behind this cake, read on.... |
I've not laughed so loud and so long in many years, but tonight I did. It is so funny I just have to share it with you.
This is a LOVELY cake. It's what I call my "Dr. Seuss" cake. And here's why:
My dear brother was born in Petaling Jaya, Malaysia. Yes, we've lived in many exotic and wondrous places, and this one was very special. A tropical land, where the jungle stole my heart along with what I called "chocolate people" because I was only four years old and I loved the dark skins of the locals, (still do).
My Dad was a civil engineer, designing all manner of wondrous things, and he worked not far from Kuala Lumpur, and Petaling Jaya.
While we lived there, my mother had "house helpers," who did all kinds of things, more than cleaning, they did cooking and childcare and put out sulphur around the house to kill the anaconda snakes that could eat small children, oh and the cobras too!
Our housekeeper was called Ah Ho, and she had hair that reached the ground it was so long, which she washed in a red bucket and my sister and I used to love to watch her wash her hair. She was not young, not old, fairly spry, and very helpful to my mom.
So came the time that Mom asked Ah Ho to make a cake. Welp, she did, but Mom wasn't all that specific with instruction, so Aho put the frosting on with a fork. Oh my! That was not done! It was unacceptable indeed! "We ice cakes with a knife and swirl the frosting just so!"
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| This is how a cake should look once the frosting is swirled just so. |
And if you do a good job, it has all kinds of smooooooth swirls with little tips, all just right, according to my mom's teachings.
Well, tomorrow is my brother's birthday, so I volunteered to make his very favorite chicken, rice, and green bean dinner, along with his ever so very favorite strawberry cake. Now you must understand, he fell in love with strawberry cake when he was just a wee one, and now he's going to be 59! And Mom's 88! And much as I'd love to have a parteee at our house, Mom doesn't go out much anymore, so Dave will celebrate his birthday with her at her home.
So I wanted this year to be all about him and all about Mom. His favorite dinner is cooking and I'll deliver it tomorrow, but the cake is another story.
My husband usually does the shopping these days, and I put on the list the ingredients for the cake, and he did his level best to bring home all the necessaries. But if you know anything at all about Pillsbury strawberry cake, you know it's got not a lot of real, natural ingredients in it, and it has a verrrry distinct fragrance. We all tease about how many chemicals we're ingesting once a year when we eat it, but it's special because David loves it!
So I made the cake mix that my wonderful hubby brought home. I knew the box didn't look right, "all natural ingredients," hmmmmm.
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| Wonderful, but "all natural ingredients" isn't what my brother fell in love with. |
Nope, when I make my brother's cake every year, you can first smell it when you cut the mix open. Then the whole house smells "pink." THEN the whole neighborhood smells PINK, even with all the doors and windows closed! So I said to my husband, "This isn't right. I can't smell it!"
Well he is so wonderful. He said to me, "That's all they had, they didn't have Pillsbury, but I'll go to the stores and see if I can find something more fragrant," and off he went. (Who has a husband so willing, so wonderful? I am blessed indeed. He's totally in on the whole thing.) So off he went after telling me we could just toss out this all natural non-fragrant version and try again. I padded outside in the rain with my slipper socks on and tapped on the car window just before he left on his quest for truly chemically laden smelly strawberry cake mix. "Honey," I said, "how about you pick up a couple of butter cream frostings and we can finish off the cake I'm making and you can have half and we'll give the other half away?"
"Okay!" he said, because he loves cake.
So he returned a while longer than I thought it might take him, because he had to go to three stores to find the suitably chemical batter mixture, and though it wasn't Pillsbury, it did promise some artificial ingredients.
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| See, the artificial ingredients are what makes this cake sing all over the whole neighborhood! |
So I washed all the accoutrements and started again, setting aside the all-natural cake and diving into the real thing. Though it wasn't Pillsbury, it comes a close second, and pretty soon the pink fragrance started wafting through the house the way it should. I wondered whether I should put the fan on so the pups wouldn't be besieged, but they didn't mind it.
Just a short while later, TA DA! It was a very pink cake, which rose to divine heights just as it should, and I put just the right icing on it, but I was stricken with an IDEA.
This celebration is all about my brother, his birth, which was in Malaysia, AND the memory of sweet Ah Ho icing my mother's cakes with a FORK. So I will ice this cake with a FORK! I wonder what will happen! How will it come out?!
Welp, I took a fork and started not swirling, but doing the thing, and YES! It was MARVELOUS! It was FANTABULOUS! It was INSPIRED! Oh my gosh I laughed so hard as I was doing it.
And here you have it, my Dr. Seuss/Ah Ho inspired cake, celebrating my brother, the place of his birth, and my sweet mother's challenges living in a different country with different customs and the blending of both.
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| What a fork can do to a cake! |
I will explain it in his card, and I would hazard a guess they'll both get a hoot out of it and lots of laughter. And I just might always ice my cakes with a fork in honor of my brother, my mother, and the challenges we all encounter, which can bring about much joy indeed.
So that's our story for tonight. Sweet blessings to you all and may you always have your cake and eat it too.
Namaste,
~Jen
