the sleppys

On Saturday, we had a little get-together to celebrate Kyle’s turning 4. We had been preparing the house to accommodate the dozen guests. I made two cakes on Friday; I always make two cakes (just in case the first one doesn’t work out). Dad bought lots of junk food to feed everybody. Both he and I spent an hour and a quarter on Saturday morning tackling last-minute details. After that, he laid out the food and drinks, and I frosted the cakes.

One cake was a 4-layer peanut butter cake (made with real peanut butter) with a peanut butter & whipped cream mixture between the layers (that required me to “beat on high for 30 seconds or until soft peaks form,” but all I had was my right arm and a whisk. So I made whirring noises for three minutes, just before my arm fell off). After baking it on Friday, I let it rest in the refrigerator and iced it on Saturday. I chopped some peanuts but came out with a powdery mess and sprinkled it on the icing.

The next cake was a 4-layer chocolate cake that I had a hard time keeping stacked up as I couldn’t get the icing between the layers stiff enough. When I added more confectioner’s sugar, the chocolate taste would disappear. When I added chocolate, the mixture would become runny. So I let it sit in the refrigerator until it was time to frost it. Then I put it back in the refrigerator until just before we presented it to Kyle and sang “Happy Birthday.”

And we sang “Happy Birthday” (after reminding the guests that we would be singing in the key of E-flat). That boy, Kyle, covered his ears as we sang. Then he pouted and left the dining room, ran up the hall, and stayed in his room. “Kyle! Please come out here and blow out your candles!” I got him to leave his room, but he walked into the living room instead. We were all waiting for him to blow out the candles. I told him that the cake was going to be on fire if he didn’t hurry. Finally, Dad got impatient and suggested that we blow the candles out ourselves. Being that it’s not his actual birthday and the cake that took me two hours to bake was starting to collect ashes, I blew them out.

So I took out the peanut butter cake (that wasn’t presented to Kyle and didn’t have candles) and served it to the guests. I always make two cakes just in case the first one doesn’t work out. We all enjoyed Kyle’s peanut butter cake. Even Kyle enjoyed it after he stopped being a party pooper and decided that he would celebrate his birthday, too.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 23rd, 2008 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Kyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.