» Birthday Cake + Volcanic Eruption Yellow Jeep Blonde: What do you do AFTER the kids grow up? I COOK!

My mom’s birthday was yesterday. She’s a whopping 67 years old. It amazes me how that doesn’t sound so old to me now as it did when I was 20 and she turned 40. I thought she was over the hill already. Little did I know that several years later, she’d climb Mount Fuji in Japan. You don’t do that if you’re over the hill. But lately, as I stealthly inch closer and closer to “over the hill”, she seems younger and younger.

In my typical birthday tradition, I cooked up a big spread. I started cooking Saturday afternoon after not one, but two trips to the grocery store because I apparently can’t even put together a grocery list. I look at recipes and I see the ingredients and my head says, “Oh you have that” when in fact, NO, I don’t.

[A little sidestep (I promise it comes into play later) - While at the grocery store (where oldest son works), he had a strange request. "Mom, do you think you have a dress that will fit me?"
Me - "Huh? What?"
Oldest boy - "There's a Halloween party tonight at So-and-So's house and even though I won't get there till midnight, I don't want to be the only one NOT dressed up, and this is all I can think of."
Me - "Okay, but what are you going to do about your beard?"
Oldest - "I'll go as the Bearded Lady."
Me - shrugging - looking at his 200 lbs - "Child, I've got 'fat clothes', but I don't think I've got anything that YOU could fit in, but I'll look when I get home to see if I can find something with elastic."
But then, when I got home, I dove right back into cooking and totally forgot his request.]

As the afternoon went on, there were small missteps in almost everything I cooked, cuz that’s just how I roll. But nothing can be compared to the Birthday Cake fiasco. I made a Cream Cheese Pound Cake. It’s a recipe I got from a neighbor, Peggy, about twenty years ago. I don’t think I ever actually made it. I just enjoyed hers so much that I had to have the recipe. And in going back through my actual recipe cards (my tried and true), I found Peggy’s pound cake recipe and earmarked it for my mom’s birthday. I couldn’t wait because I still remember how delicious it was.

ANYWAY, I had been cooking most of the afternoon (I’ll share the recipes throughout the week) and I saved the cake for the last thing of the day. It was about 8 o’clock when I put it in the oven. I was cleaning up the kitchen when oldest called and asked if I’d found anything yet for his Halloween costume. Dangit, I hadn’t even looked yet. I told him I’d have to call him back.

I went upstairs and started digging through my “fat clothes” when my brother called. Brother – “Hey Sweet! Whatcha doin’?” (He calls me Sweet)
Me – “Oh looking for a dress that Oldest can fit into.”
Brother (who has NEVER left Mississippi/Alabama in his whole life) – “What’s wrong with your boy? Do I need to come up there and snatch a knot in his head?”
Me – “No. It’s a Halloween costume.”
Brother (who has NEVER left Mississippi/Alabama in his whole life still) – “I DON’T CARE! What is WRONG with that boy? He ain’t right!” I calmed him down by making jokes as I rummaged through my closet.
I found some stretchy elastic skirt and a sexy red stretch blouse. Satisfied that this was all I had to choose from, I headed back downstairs.

He bought a blonde wig on the way to the party. I just didn’t get a picture of that. I don’t think it’s really necessary. I think ya’ll get the drift. . . My boy makes an UGLY woman. And my boobs are HUGE. Nothing like a little perspective.

Anyway, as soon as I walked out of my bedroom into the loft, I smelled it. SOMETHING WAS ON FIRE! Holy shit! I went running down the stairs searching for what could possibly be burning. Smoke was coming out of the oven. I opened the door and was inundated with plumes of smoke. What the HELL!?! My cake was BUBBLING over like a dang volcano. It was even making the proper noises as it exploded (plthththpop) and the appropriate sizzle/burning sounds as it plopped to the bottom of my oven. Oh my God, there was HALF the damn cake on the bottom of my oven. HALF! How did this happen?

This was the beginning of my melt-down, my good old-fashioned Southern Hissy Fit. I was cussin’ a blue streak. My brother, who is about 1,000 miles away AND a man, simply said, “Oh, go get yourself a beer and let it burn.” I hung up. Not ON him, but I did quickly tell him to just go call our mother and wish her a happy birthday and I’d call him back later. I stood there dazed not knowing WHAT to do. Do I stop it mid-bake, waste all those ingredients and try to clean it up and start over? Is this thing ruined? How will I know? Will the dang thing catch on fire if I let it just burn (thinking it SHOULD be about finished bubbling over)? I decided to shut the oven door, get myself a beer and a fire extinguisher and stand there and watch the oven for the remaining 30 minutes. I was too tired and worn out to do much else anyway. I stood there and worried about what it was going to taste like. Would it have a nice smokey flavor? WHAT did I do to make it explode like that? Is it going to go up in flames? Should I go ahead and clean the oven tonight or just wait for morning when my melt-down had surely calmed down? (I still had things that were going to need the oven in the morning) I didn’t like either of the choices.

I started getting everything ready for the next thing on my menu so it would be out and ready in the morning, only to discover that I indeed did not have a crucial ingredient. Dangit! Everything was falling apart on me. I waited until the buzzer went off for the cake and pulled it out of the oven. I turned the oven off and left the door open so hopefully it would cool off faster, then I went BACK to the grocery store. By the time I got home, the oven had already cooled down so I proceeded to clean it. I was on a zombie-like roll. It turned out that it was pretty dang easy to pull up in big giant charred chunks of burnt cake and wipe it down.

Then I inverted the cake onto the cake plate and it LOOKED good. Shocking really. But the question was. . . How was it going to taste? My hissy fit had calmed down and I resolved myself to the fact that my mother REALLY wouldn’t care if I had a cake or not, that even if it tasted BAD, it wouldn’t be a big deal. I let it go and I went to bed.

All of this to tell you all that the next day after a disasterous Saturday, everything came together in perfect harmony. Brunch was amazing afterall. And you know what? The cake was SPECTACULAR!!! EVERYBODY LOVED IT!! It was SO good. I couldn’t believe it. You couldn’t look at it and tell what it had been through. So I highly recommend this cake. It is DELICIOUS!

This is what you’ll need:

PEGGY’S CREAM CHEESE POUND CAKE

3 sticks butter, room temperature
3 cups sugar
3 cups flour
6 eggs
1 (8 oz) pkg cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix sugar and butter until creamy. Add cream cheese; mix well. Add one egg at a time until blended. Add flour slowly and continue beating until it’s all added. Add vanilla and lemon extracts. Mix well.
Pour into a LARGE greased and floured bundt cake pan or tube cake pan, and bake for 1 hour.