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.