Oh, you are so very lovely. I want to invite you over for dinner (I am making tacos – will be sure to have vegetarian and diabetic friendly and gluten free options available, plus lots of guacamole and chips) and welcome you with an awkward hug that will be both slightly uncomfortable and yet supremely satisfying and then shine love and margaritas on you all evening long.
Because that cannot happen in real life, know that I am hosting you in my heart.
By the way, because of your Supreme Awesomeness, a) I did not yell at Carla this morning, even though we left the house twenty minutes late, b) I purchased a $10 rug from Target to use as a boot spot/mud-soaker-upper in our non-existent mud room, and c) I have some Very Good Ideas for what to get for my friend-having-a-hard-time and for my parents’ anniversary. ALSO also, I called my other friend and she didn’t answer but called me back, and we have a phone date later this week. THANK YOU.
Guess what? It is FEBRUARY. My birthday is later this month, and I am considering the cake situation good and early.
Cake is a food topic, which is why I am including it in a post ostensibly about dinners. Just so you are aware of my very logical thought process.
I recently became aware of a newish local bakery that I would like to patronize. The baker is this totally kick-ass woman who always knew she didn’t want to have a “traditional” job, and who nonetheless did all the studying she needed to become a pastry chef, and then put in her time working for a bunch of fancy local restaurants, learning, and making contacts, until she was finally able to branch out and start her own thing. I want to support her purely for that. And I have met her (in an instance where she was donating her services) and she is so cool and smart and driven and kind. But also, she makes really good stuff! She sells her baked goods at a local farmer’s market, but apparently you can also commission her to do things. (I don’t think commission is the correct word, but it is the word I am going with.) And maybe I want to commission her to make me a birthday cake???
This sounds like a good idea because a) I would be supporting this local kick-ass entrepreneur, and b) I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about requesting my busy husband bake me something. But I am not fully sold on the idea because of a few things. First, I don’t know what I’m getting myself into. Like… how much is a birthday cake going to cost? And will it cost enough that it’s worth her while? But not so much that I will feel okay spending it on myself? Second, I will have to make a phone call, and I don’t know what information she will want from me, or what questions to ask, or whether I can inquire about the price and back out if we are talking wedding cake pricing, and all those unknowns make me uncomfortable. Third, I already do a LOT of Mother’s Day myself (for ALL the mothers in my/my husband’s life), which is both good and cranky-making, and I don’t know if I also want to take on Making My Own Birthday Magical. I suspect that taking it on means never taking it off, you know? (Please note that asking my husband to take this project on is not an option. He hates making phone calls EVEN MORE than I do, and he just won’t do it, even if I specifically ask him to, and then he will feel guilty for not complying with my request, and resentful that I asked him to do something I know he hates doing, and I will feel hurt that he can’t get past his phone phobia THIS ONE TIME and resentful that I STILL have to do it myself. You know how it goes.) This is all to say that I’m considering my cake options, but haven’t fully committed one way or the other. Good thing it’s only the FIRST of February; I still have some time.
P.S. even though this is not a letter: I want a vanilla cake with lemon curd and lemony cream cheese frosting. That sounds amazing to me. It is the cake of my heart. If there were some sort of raspberry element involved, I would be all for it.
Oh right. Cake daydreaming aside, we need to eat dinner food at some point.
We literally ARE having tacos for dinner tonight. The rest of the week is less sharp in my mind, although I probably better get it together considering we may have an enormous snowstorm. And also Carla has another four-day weekend (WHY) so I need to get to the grocery store soon. We do have the happy plan to visit friends for dinner one evening, so that’s fun to look forward to.
Update: As I wandered around the grocery store, I came up with additional meal plans. Too MANY meal plans, in fact. Probably we will dump the salmon, or I will make it for lunches. (My husband doesn’t love salmon; although, last time I made salmon, I just made him a chicken breast. So we’ll see.)
Dinners for the Week of February 1-6
- Tacos
- Chicken and Zucchini Stir Fry
- Teriyaki Salmon with Roasted Asparagus
- Slow Cooker Balsamic Pork
- Dinner at a friend’s house
- Shrimp Fajitas
- TikTok Baked Feta Pasta (for my husband) and Mushroom and Goat Cheese Pasta (for me)
- Steak and Snow Pea Stir Fry
Let’s continue the cake talk: what is your dream cake? Or, if you are not a cake person: what would you eat instead?
I ordered my parents anniversary cake from a local baker and it was delicious! It was 2 tiers and I think she charged $150. It was worth it to me because it was special and I was able to get my parents favorite flavors. We had lemon curd in one of the tiers – so good! So I say go for it. The baker will be very used to people asking about costs. She will probably want to know how many people you want to serve, and then can suggest a size based on that.
Oh, I am always happy to talk about cake! Whether I have anything relevant to say or not! I think your cake sounds delicious, even if my own choice would involve chocolate and caramel sauce and maybe toffee bits–although as a kid, I always wanted and got a Pepperidge Farm coconut cake, so who knows if I even know what I want.
Not being married, I can only imagine the part about not wanting to set a precedent, but I do think that if you might want to get a cake from this baker, it would be a good idea for YOU to talk to her–even though we all hate phone calls, I can imagine that talking to an enthusiastic baker about cake possibilities might end up being kind of fun. (I am imagining her listening to what you say, and then suggesting other delicious things that could add to the experience, and only you would know if they sounded amazing or slightly unappealing.
Here’s a thought: do you find phone calls less stressful if you are calling for a friend? Just to help out? Maybe you have a friend who could make a preliminary call for you? Like, I call her and say, “A friend of mine might want a cake for her birthday, do you do that? What price range would it be?” and it wouldn’t stress me out as much as doing it for myself, because I wouldn’t be expected to know all the answers to her questions, and could just say breezily, “Oh, that’s a good question, I will ask her that,” instead of feeling like an idiot for not knowing my own mind. Just a possibility.
(Well, this is a novel, isn’t it? I got carried away, because cake.)
You. Are. A. Genius. I will now make every single dreaded phone call pretending it is on behalf of someone else.
First off, I am here for tacos and margaritas! Who doesn’t love tacos? Taco is actually what our youngest son (1yo) goes by, at least for now. His older brother named him taco when I was pregnant with him and it stuck, so much that the grandparents, my husband, and other son use it almost exclusively, and he gets called taco or taquito at daycare, too, which is spanish immersion so fitting, I guess! I still call him Will/William but Taco does sort of seem to fit. We’ll see if it’s still his nickname in 5 years!
My birthday is on Sunday. Yay for Feb birthdays! I am not a big cake person but I have Celiac so need to eat GF and good GF cakes are hard to come by. Our 4yo loves to bake so he’d be on board with making a birthday dessert with me, but I think instead I will order some treats from a GF bakery that is thebomb.com. They make amazing cinnamon rolls so I will certainly get that and probably a few other things. And I will hope that my husband will maybe bring some macarons home from the bakery that catered the dessert bar for our wedding (which was delicious and worth every penny – we had an assorted of GF desserts, including tasty cupcakes, macarons, and a bunch of other stuff).
But your cake DOES sound good and I know a well-made cake can be delicious. And your meal plan is about as extensive as ours ever get. I’m posting about our spending on dining out/grocery spending on Friday. I think a look into quotidian things like that are interesting but it may bore people to tears. I only plan 3 meals/week and then we get by on leftovers or simple meals on the other days. This week I only planned 2 meals and we will get take and bake pizza tonight to round things out! I need to check out your stir fry recipe. I love stir fries!
I vote for you to order that cake for yourself. Your birthday comes only once a year, and that cake combination sounds MAGICAL.
By the way, I still haven’t made my phone call. There’s always tomorrow…
My dream cake is white and fluffy with a ton of frosting. I’m definitely into lemon and into raspberry additions. I fully support you in turning this over to the baker and getting your dream cake.
Dream cake? One I could eat every day and it wouldn’t make me sick, my skin for icky, cause me to gain weight, or raise my cholesterol.
Since I’m expecting if you had figured out a way to make THAT cake you wouldn’t be blogging but rather lounging on your own private island I will be more practical with my dream cakes (and cheat and give several options).
1) The unbaked cherry cheesecake we have each year for Christmas. It’s simple, it’s delicious, and it makes me think of family and the Christmas holiday. So yummy for my taste buds AND my heart.
2) Decadent chocolate cake with creamy and light whipped peanut butter frosting. One year, when we were very, very poor, my husband and I decided to bake each other treats for Valentines Day, each getting a set amount of time in the kitchen to work in secret. We hadn’t been married very long and we EACH made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. He even bought a little cardboard cupcake stand from the DollarStore. It was so sweet and, again, yummy for my tummy and my heart.
Oh what the heck, let’s go for a third one. A REALLY good carrot cake with cream cheese frosting because man cream cheese on anything is really hard to beat and moist carrot cake is practically health food (right?)
Cake? I love cake. I like all kinds of cake. I encourage you to take control of your birthday cake situation and order the one, or ones, that you want. Mustn’t leave cake to chance.
I have had this reoccurring dream that I am meeting someone for the first time and I hug them. It’s all weird and dreamy, so I don’t know who this person actually is in my real life, but your first paragraph made me immediately think it was obviously one of my blog friends. (This dream started during lockdown, so I don’t think it’s hard to think about what it means.)
Can I get a turtle cheesecake for my cake? Mostly caramel flavored with just a hint of the chocolate? I would like this. That is my dream cake.
I love cake so much. My husband’s birthday cake 2 weeks ago was a family recipe for Texas Sheet Cake which, for us, is rich chocolate with a hint of cinnamon and bourbon in the batter and in the frosting. It is sublime and we all devoured it greedily, a few nights in a row. Not sure it’s my very favorite cake but it’s close. I also like a good, fluffy white cake with a strawberry jam filling and.
Might your husband at least be able to pick up the cake and bring it to you, if you order it? On his way home, maybe? For me, that would lessen the sting of having to order it myself.
So, what does it say about me that I bake my husband’s birthday cake and a cake for myself every year (because I insist that everyone deserves a birthday cake). It means either a) I don’t want to rely on someone else to make my birthday magical with a cake or b) that I do like things my way and therefore opt to make it myself. Mmh.
Either way, you should get a cake and if you don’t want to make it yourself, you could at least inquire how much custom birthday cakes run for… maybe Mr Google has some basic ideas about that sort of thing?
Thank you so much for inviting us to dinner! I adore tacos and margaritas; you know me so well.
No, definitely you are not allowed to make your own birthday cake (or Mother’s Day – yes, you can do it for your mother and mother in law – but draw the line there). I would definitely order the cake from the kick-ass woman. Does she have a website? A local bakery here does and I seem to recall that they listed prices depending on the size of the cake. And, it being your birthday, you are allowed to splurge a little – so get the cake that would make you happy.
I am HERE for the vegetarian tacos and margaritas. You know, virtually here, but HERE NONETHELESS.
Cake is my very favourite dessert. I love angel food, with berries and non-dairy whipped cream (confession: I LOVE COOL WHIP). At Christmas my mom makes a yule log, which is like a jelly roll, but with chocolate cake and filled with cool whip, and then with chocolate frosting. I love chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry cake and frosting, in any combination. I love carrot cake. I would eat the hell out of your vanilla cake with lemony frosting and raspberry. The only cake I don’t care for is spice cake with that coconut broiled frosting, if you know what I mean. I love coconut but something about broiled coconut makes me shudder.
Those sheet cakes you get from the grocery store, with the frosting flowers that everyone says are “too sweet?” I’d eat that. I secretly love those. I love those frosting flowers.
I know exactly what you mean, you don’t need to make your own birthday magical, I totally hear you.
I wish I was there, I would 100% make the phone call for you and order you that cake (seriously, I would do it from here, I would do that for you!) (who ordered this cake? Random woman from Canada.) (Actually I totally COULD do that for you! Do you want me to call?) In terms of cost, I have had a cake made by a friend who does that, and it was about $60, which seemed kind of high but kind of not, as she put tons of work into it. I mean, it’s still $60 for a cake but we only get one birthday a year so, it’s a nice splurge.
I also am a closet Cool-Whip lover. My beloved unbaked Cherry Cheesecake takes a whole tub and it is a dream.
Also, the sheet cakes from Superstore (or Foodland is actually my favourite); a few times a year I love it. And I want the corner piece with the extra frosting.
Oh. I and I also hate toasted/broiled coconut on cake. Too dry and…toasty.
We’re basically cake doppelgängers. And yes I googled how to spell doppelgänger (I was right) and wow that is a fun internet trail to go down…
Is it possible that the kick-ass baker has a social media account? It seems like even the smallest of businesses do these days. If she does you could just send her a dm instead of calling.
There is half a mandarin cake my aspiring pastry chef made two days ago sitting on my dining room table. It’s an orange-flavored cake with an orange glaze and candied mandarin slices on top. I can only have small slices, but it’s very good. It’s a blessing and curse, having a baking child.
Lemony cake sounds delicious! Whatever the means, I hope you have a delicious birthday cake! I truly love a good chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Not too sweet and not too dark.
I love an apple and rye cake it is a recipe that I found recently and it is rather delicious. I made it for myself on my birthday which helpfully is in autumn so an apple cake is perfect for that time of year. It is also has a delicious layer of mascarpone and maple syrup in the middle which adds to the deliciousness.
I completely failed to comment on your last post which I read and did not have the time at the time to answer fully. I was sorry to read that your mornings are so fraught. It sounds really hard. When we are late with our children it is always the parents who get tut tutted at even when it is the children that have made us late, it doesn’t reflect well on us, does it? These may be things that you have already tried so if you have please ignore me. Have you talked to your daughter about why she finds it so hard to get ready in the morning? Could it be that there is something about school that she is not enjoying/struggling with/finding hard or something else about school? I have often found with my own children that when they were dragging their feet over things it was not about the getting ready it was the thing we were going to that was the issue. It took me a long time to work that one out. I know that she is only eight but I wonder if she had more ownership over how she is getting ready in the morning rather than you being in charge that would help too? I know that might mean a period of adjustment which could mean that is very late for a while as you both get used to that. I hope you find a way that works for both of you, clashing with your child is no fun is it.
I second Nicole with a love of sheet cake from a grocery store – the people the sneer at the frosting flowers, they don’t know what they are missing. Unfortunately, celiac disease has put a damper on my ability to enjoy cake. There is a place here called NOTHING BUNDT CAKES that makes a GF cake that is normal tasting, so I enjoy that. If I DIDN’T have celiac, I am all about chocolate cake. Really though, I will eat any kind of cake. I do hate tiramisu , like HATE. Otherwise, I’m here for it.
I’m supposedly making 5 trays of pasta today but I’m not feeling very motivated since I’ve just come out of the fog that came with my stomach bug. I will be feeding my family pasta leftovers for awhile. Otherwise, tacos. Maybe Italian Beef. Thankfully we have leftover meatloaf in the fridge, so I can eat that while they eat pasta.
Man, we have the EXACT SAME phone phobia! I hate when I don’t know exactly what questions to ask and it makes me all anxious. Does she have a contact form on her website? Maybe that’s a way to ask about the cake!
My favorite cake is a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting. MMM! When I worked in an office, we used to get a monthly cake from this great local bakery and whenever it was chocolate peanut butter cake month, I was always such a happy camper.
Oh, you are the sister blogger of my heart. When Matt’s grandmother (who I adored) was alive, I would be baking Eve a birthday cake for February 7th, Nana a birthday cake a week later, and the kids’ elementary school always had a cake raffle at the same time that, as a SAHM, I felt obligated to bake a cake for. This all felt way too soon after Christmas and square in my depressive time of year to be baking so many cakes. Now of course I would love to bake another cake for Nana.
I also hate making phone calls and would hate going in blind like that. Glad to hear from the next post how well it worked out.
My book club during non-covid times meets for book discussions from september to may and then goes for dinner in June to discuss the next year’s list. We were going to a place called The Foolish Chicken – a bbq joint with great food and service, and a revolving menu of really good cheesecakes. One year we were there and I said I would split a piece of lemon curd cheesecake with another woman, and then said cheesecake was SO EFFING GOOD I was exceedingly bitter that I had agreed to share it. On my fiftieth birthday party which was much altered because of Covid but still wonderful, we ordered a lemon curd cheesecake from the same place (and also a black and white chocolate one for those fools who don’t love lemon curd).
Sorry for the run-on comment!
My husband made me a lemon curd cheesecake for my birthday last year and it was so good!!! Maybe I should have asked him to do it again??? But it is so much work and I felt too guilty – better to have someone else do a cake.
I have been avoiding meal planning by catching up on blogs. I think the mushroom and goat cheese dish is going on the weekly menu. I need to put more veggies on the menu but the last time I planned out three salads that sounded delicious, I only got to eat one before leaving town suddenly when my MIL passed away somewhat unexpectedly. Then we came home to house guests (my husband’s family, planned from a few weeks prior to said funeral) and we went out to eat most meals and then I was gone for a work trip. So I am avoiding looking in the fridge to see what weird science experiments have happened since I bought all those veggies with high hopes.
If you are not the only one who will be enjoying said cake, then figure out what you’d happily spend on your husband’s birthday cake and spend the same (or more, since you have to plan it yourself!) on your own birthday, guilt free.