Feliz Cumpleanos, otherwise Happy Birthday without the tilde

The mother of a neighbor child asked me to make her daughter’s birthday cake again this year. She wanted a three-layer cake with two white layers, top and bottom, a chocolate layer in the middle and with vanilla buttercream filling, top and sides, to provide cake for 18-20 people. I said that a 9″ cake would be perfect. I’m not a Charm City Duff kind of cake decorator, am limited to flowers and leaves and writing and such. She said that her daughter, soon to be six years old, would decorate my cake.

There’s one way to make three-layered cake in which two layers are white and the third is chocolate, and that’s simply to add chocolate to the batter for the third layer. Another way is to make two separate cakes, which is what I did.

Two days before the cake was due she confirmed what she wanted, said that she was going to buy some mini cupcakes in addition to the cake. Last year she “supplemented” the special half-sheet cake I made for her daughter with an additional cake that she made, a cake dripping with canned milk and covered in whipped cream. (Yuck!) I told her that I was making cupcakes with the extra batter and would provide some as, once again, she was surprised about the number of guests who late RSVP’d their intention to attend.

I went with minimal decoration, some Easter egg and flower sprinkles which matched the cake plate. The big decorating job on my cake? The mother wrote “Feliz Cumpleanos” in red slimy goo, then handed the tube of goo to her daughter to write her name. There is was, folks. The big decoration. There’s no point to post a shot of the ordinary. Well, the tulips are pretty.