New Quote of the Day

Conor: "I'm going to have five quarters of the (inaudible) [probably some sort of candy]

Me: (unnecessarily pedantic) there's only four quarters in a whole.

Conor: What if it's a big hole?

Quote of the Evening

Context: Finn has escaped from his bed again, giggling and trying less and less plausible excuses each time. After a victory lap of the living room, he declares that he needs to go poo and parks himself on the potty. When asked, after five minutes, if he really, truly, actually, needs to be there, he laughs, points at his protruding belly and says:

"Just kidding! No poo's coming now - all the food is still in my small intestine!"

That one's up there with the time my older son tried to explain the birds and the bees to me and his grandmother (with predictably mortifying results).

Because it's never to late to be...ummm...late

In keeping with the sporadic postings, I think it's high time to grace the intertubes with pictures of birthday cakes from parties past. Since the eponymous she lives in Oakland, we dwellers in the house of cakes are hip to what the kids these days call "mash-ups". This means that she has a few tricks up her sleeves that even Danger Mouse (the hip hop producer of Grey Album fame, not the eyepatched mouse who, with his cowardly sidekick Penfold, battled the evil Baron Greenback) would be hard pressed to match. I, like most of this blog readership, would quail if my five year old informed me that his birthday party must reflect his twin passions of pirates and pokemon. It would just seem that the two don't have a lot in common, other than being equally likely to enthrall the six and under set. Undaunted, Lisa set out to create a mash-up birthday confection that would satisfy these seemingly irreconcilable themes - and so I give you Boris' Pokemon-Pirate birthday cake (circa late October - hence the posting title).

A couple of notes about the cake:

1) One of the pokemon (pokemons? pokemen?) pictured is pikachu. Duh, even I know that. The other three, I'm afraid I can't satisfy your curiousity. However, if you do happen to come by the house and have a few spare hours, Conor would be happy to discourse at length about their names, their powers, from whence they evolved, and the techniques they use to defeat their various and sundry enemies. I am assuming that the Oakland Unified School District is implementing a far more poke-centric curriculum than was favored in my tragically unhip Vermont kindergarten.

2) Each of those creatures was sculpted out of fondant by Lisa the day before the party. I believe that they are still living in Boris' fridge, as he loves them too much to eat them. That's kind of cute, though it has some serious Ms Havisham potential.

3) Why yes - the blog author did think of the "poke-ball and crossbones" motif. How remarkably clever of him. He did not, however, think to make the helm of the ship out of chocolate. That was all her.

4) Look at the ship. OK, now look closer - each individual plank was sculpted out of fondant. OK, now magnify the picture. Look closer....and yes, that's right you can see wood grain. Squint a little and look at the end of one of the planks...right again - nail holes! What am I saying here? I'm not sure, other than that the person who makes sure that every one inch long individually crafted plank on her giant fondant covered pirate ship has the correct number of nail holes is no one to be trifled with.

Thanksgiving is pie time

Gentle reader, we have have several options for dessert on thanksgiving. I present them in no particular order.

1) Pumpkin pie bought from Safeway. Served with Kool-whip (lite) refrigerated dessert topping.

Pros: Cheap. Pretty Tasty. Boys will want seconds of kool-whip. Finn will try and eat it without using hands.

Cons: Questionable nutritional value. Will cause foodie friends to throw organic, free range, hormone free eggs at your house.

2) Pumpkin cranberry pecan upside down cake from Trader Joes. Served with dreyers vanilla ice cream.

Pros: Relatively inexpensive. Tasty if you like pecans and cranberries. Conor will eat seconds. Both boys will demand more ice cream. Dreyers is a locally founded business.

Cons: Not, strictly speaking, pumpkin pie. Could result in dire vengeance from ghosts of our pilgrim forefathers. Also, Finn doesn't like pecans. Or cranberries. Dreyers is now owned by gigantic multinational corporation that probably celebrates thanksgiving by stuffing, roasting and devouring babies and kittens.

3) Homemade pumpkin pie (made by blog author).

Pros. Commencement of thanksgiving feast will not be delayed by lengthy thanks for delicious looking pie.

Cons. Meal participants might feel obligated to try said pie.

4) Homemade pumpkin pie (made by Lisa)

Pros. Tasty, organic, and so perfect that a glimpse of its radiant orangeness provides the US RDA in vitamin D, and one small slice cures rickets and scrofula.

Cons. None for blog author, except perhaps weight gain.

In the spirit of generosity that is thanksgiving, we the Chandler/Hennessey household pledge to eat whatever dessert is chosen by the readership of this blog. We will also post pictures, and, if this proves succesful, we will open the floor to those who care to debate the superiority of cranberry sauce in a can over chunky, relishy cranberry sauce with stems and actual berries.

Cupcakes for Katrina

Not the hurricane. The muse of this blog is not of the old fashioned offering-baked-goods-to-placate-the-weather-gods persuasion - though if she knew of some way to ease the tension building in the Hayward fault by lubricating the tectonic plates with buttercream frosting, I'm sure she would give it a try. The pictured cupcakes were for our friend Katrina, who took them to a baby shower. What I was not aware of until informed by Lisa was that she drove from South SF to the nickel-dime to pick them up, then took them to Millbrae for the shower. I'm pretty sure she did this because, in addition to liking cupcakes, she really, really loathes the environment.

Katrina is very cool, despite her eco-hating ways (and not just because she praised Lisa's cupcakes effusively). This can be deduced from the fact that (i) she has a baby who can barf on cue (see attached photo - not taken after cupcake consumption, as far as I'm aware, anyway), (ii) she has an encyclopedic knowledge of early 90's hip hop, and can rap large parts of "Mind's playin' tricks on me" by the Geto Boys, and (iii) she attended the recent NKOTB reunion concert and enjoyed it in a non-ironic manner. Good things all.

Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

Better, even, than a headfirst fall onto a Berkeley driveway. Upon the insistence of the readership, I bring to you Lisa's concussion cupcakes. Try making some of those yourself. Easy, you say? Ok, now throw down a couple drinks and headbutt the pavement so hard it makes your eyes cross for two days straight and causes what appears to be a gushing leak in the heretofore undiscovered forehead artery. OK, now try making them again. Not so easy now, smart guy, is it?

The law does not concern itself with trifles

It does, however, concern itself with pastries. However, in order to make ends meet, it also concerns itself with global financial meltdowns. Not that I have any specific excuse as to why I've not put up an entry for over a month, but really, with an excuse like that, do I need anything more specific? Global financial meltdowns can really cover for pecadillos far more troubling than my not stringing together a couple of sentences for an audience of one. Or, at least, so I would have thought. However, said audience of one has been giving me the hassle that about the paucity of my posting, and demanding more incredibly nichey chatter, and so I type.

Really, it came to me over the weekend that I need to post more. When my reader/muse managed to suffer a concussion and minor head wound (though major enough to require stitches) on a Friday night, yet nonetheless rallied to whip up 4 dozen cupcakes on Saturday despite a hangover and a bruised brain, I really have no excuse not to at least post a photo. But I can't. The photos are still on the camera, and Lisa's baking of the cakes was akin to John Henry finishing the tunnel - she's still breathing, but has been pretty wiped out since and hasn't moved them on to the computer. Way to pass the buck to the concussed lady, but that's how I roll.

Instead, I'll post a photo of my neighbor, who is a respected white collar defense attorney, the hands down winner of the annual "fastest guy on the street award", a probable contender in any Anderson Cooper look-alike competition that Anderson Cooper hasn't entered anonymously because he likes the attention (note: same sentence applies to his wife if you switch out "Tina Fey as Sarah Palin" for "Anderson Cooper"), and a huge red sox fan. He also still has his glasses from high school. I post without further comment.

Lots of cake, and it's all mine

Because it's my birthday, that's why. Lot of cakes recently, though photographic evidence will have to come later. I turned 34 on Sunday, and we had a big front yard barbecue. It seems like most of the street showed up, slurped down beer and ate cupcakes, courtesy of Lisa. Half were vanilla with white frosting, the other strawberry with strawberry frosting, and I believe that some of the vanilla were gluten free, as we had some celiac attendees. The night before, we'd also been to a friend's house for dinner and had a cake there too - a lovely little polka dotted lemon cake which went down rather nicely with the several glasses of port we were served with dessert. Rather civilized, really. I've not heard what kind of cake Mary (my twin sister) had, but I'm hoping it was a Fudgie the Whale ice-cream cake.

But frankly, my birthday was not even close to the most exciting thing happening in the past week. The big deal would be Conor's first day of kindergarten. He was absolutely great at dropoff, though seemed less than impressed after the first day, when he declared that all he learned was "Rules. Lots of rules." When asked if there was anything else he learned, he said "I learned recess is too short." As exciting as the first day was, it seems the bloom is off the rose a little - he's been less than enthusiastic upon realizing that (i) you actually have to go to kidnergarten every day, and (ii) Daddy doesn't stay home from work every day you go to kindergarten, and doesn't always take you out for ice cream afterwards to celebrate. Life can be unfair, sometimes.

Nevertheless, I'm sure he'll do well. And, in keeping with the baking theme, he's desperate to make zucchini bread with the garguantuan squash given to us by our neighbor. I can only hope that he aspires to provide me with the same delicious pastries that Lisa does.

Olympic Fever/Barnyard Animals

Here in the household of she who bakes cakes, we're quite into the Olympics. Given our focus on pastry, we're particularly interested in what people are eating there. So far, the two biggest stories seem to be (i) Michael Phelps consumes about 12,500 calories per day, and still has trouble keeping on weight, and (ii) one of the belgian women's beach volleyball players is 6'4 and 195 pounds. My thoughts on story (i) - that's tremendous. It also reminded me that in college my friends and I used to order a large dominoes pizza each for dinner, but we didn't swim 30+ hours a week (or perform similarly caloric intensive work). Needless to say, none of us entered the workforce in fields which require tight clothes and/or shirtlessness. On story (ii), not much to say really, other than it seemed a bit ungentlemanly to mention those stats roughly every two minutes during the beach volleyball matches. Churlish, really.

That aside, I'd bet that Michael Phelps could eat about 4 dozen of the cupcakes that Lisa made for a friend's baby's birthday. They look like farm animals. I wish I could link this somehow to the Beijing olympics, but it seems a stretch. Anyway, here they are.

She knows the time, with the fresh gucci watch...

But I make no comments as to her age, vis a vis Ed Koch. Points to the the reader who can identify the song, album and artist. These cupcakes were made for a friend of a friend's baby shower. The theme was "round the clock", which seems like a rather grim reminder of the fact that once one spawns, one never has a minute to oneself. I believe that my reader found the theme to be cute and practical, as it allowed for people to buy presents according to times of day. She's obviouly more in tune with these things than me, so I'll leave it at that.

Speaking of time and its passage, we took one wheel of Conor's bike today so he could try riding on three wheels. He took full advantage, and leaned heavily on his remaining training wheel, but it was a big step. Kindergarten starts in two weeks, and he's down to a prime number of wheels on his bike. Big stuff.

Ou sont les gateaux d'antan?

In the continued absence of pastry production by the lone readership of this blog, I'm forced down the cliched and narcissistic path of rambling on about my progeny. Dear reader, if you wish to have your ego flattered with stunning visuals of your cakes accompanied by florid praise, then you'd better get baking. And taking photos. You're rather better at that than I am too. Otherwise, it's rehashes of stuff that you already know about children with whom you are intimately familiar.

Anyhoo, a couple mornings ago, my older son sat at the breakfast table, looked at me pensively and declared "I wish we were dwarves. Then we could mine minerals and we could be really rich (pause) and get really dirty (longer pause) and live underground" I'm rather proud, and twenty years from now when his definitive ethnography of dwarven subcultures is released, I'll be the first to buy a copy. Or more likely, given the living situation of most ethnographers of dwarves and their ilk, I'll receive a number autographed hardcovers as payment in kind for room and board.

My younger son's obsessions are currently more mechanical in nature, with a particular focus on garbage trucks. He's learned from one of his books that (i) garbage trucks eat trash, and (ii) the grosser the garbage, the better it tastes. This could prove to be somewhat of a wrinkle in our attempts to stop him from reaching into the organic recycling bin to eat surplus frosting from one of Lisa's baking projects (phew - managed to stay marginally on topic with blog title). However, it is very amusing when I floss his teeth, as he demands inspection rights on any substance that has been lodged in there, and then, after identifying it appropriately ('dirty diapers', 'yucky yams', etc.), insists on scarfing it down. Lovely.

Now, dear reader, please bake more pastries or I shall be forced to share my opinions on the weather.

Somewhere, beyond the sea

I've always liked that song, and Frank Sinatra in general. Not that I'm a huge fan of his music in and of itself, but rather because it's one of those artefacts that pulls off the nifty trick of being so of its place and time that it almost forcibly drags you there (and then, I guess). Also, and importantly, for the truly abysmal karaoke vocalist (singer would be stretching the truth here), you can always get away with a Sinatra song by trying to copy his rhythms if you can't actually keep a tune. If you're unfortunate enough to be both tone deaf and arrythmic, just try and sing while holding a martini and wearing a tux with an untied bowtie around your neck.

Despite the laboured introduction, I actually thought of the titular song when viewing Lisa's ocean cake, which she made for the birthday of one of our oldest son's friends from school. The birthday girl had a definite sense of occasion - not only did she bring multiple outfits, but she showed up late to the pinata whacking as she needed more time to accessorize, and her pinata tiara was proving difficult to set correctly in her hair.

The cake was a mermaid themed. Lisa used fondant to make an ocean effect over multiple layers, and then sculped some fondant mermaids along with a lot of friendly sea life. Not to talk myself up here, but I did help with the crab, so I'm going to have to include some prominent shots of that. She managed to pull off the rest without my assistance. I've also included a picture of my youngest. I think he liked the cake too.

But cakes aren't all...

So last night we had dinner with some friends who put out a rather lovely spread for us. I'm not really an exhaustive list guy, but folks who go to the trouble of making cornbread, collard greens (with two kinds of hot sauce), pork and beans, corn on the cob and barbecued steak strips really ought to get some sort of recognition, and I guess that a shout-out on 'she bakes cakes' is, if only barely, some sort of recognition. The eponymous she of the blog title made a rather delicious strawberry and rhubarb pie, which went down rather well with some vanilla ice cream. I'm afraid that the time between baking and consumption did not allow for a photography session. I'd like to be able to appease you, the masses hungry for pictures of pastry, with a photo of a cherry pie that she made last month. We took the boys cherry picking in Brentwood, where we discovered that (i) it's not that hard to gather 24 pounds of cherries, and (ii) all of those $900K mansions we drove by last year are now priced to sell. $450K now gets you an enormous house, with proximity to stone fruit, chickens and empty elementary schools, along with a 90 minute commute to SF. We're considering it - the peaches are that good out there.

But, no pictures of that either. We eat fast around here. So instead I provide a generic pie photo (Lisa's are better) and a lovely five bedroom three bathroom testament to fiscal imprudence and the vicissitudes of life.

Drumroll please

As per the subtitle of this blog, I'll be posting when it strikes my fancy, with no real focus other than the occasional photo of my wifes cakes. And cupcakes. And, if you're lucky, pie. She bakes good cakes, and you, fortunate reader, get to look at them.

Given that she's been baking cakes rather longer than this blog has existed, there's actually a backlog of baked goods to post, but all in good time. I can use this surplus to post in the fallow times, when birthdays are few and far between and I can barely remember the almond smell of fondant.

So, without further ado, here is a train cake that we made for my 3 year old son's birthday a few months back. It's the perfect baked good for the hypoglycemic trainspotter in your circle.