Today I baked a cake for Lydia’s birthday with the girls. It was absolute, utter madness. Ammon wandered around trying to get onto their chairs and footstools so he could join in, and because there was not enough room for him, he kept falling down, bonking his head, and crying. Then Lydia was really anxious about Mary doing anything more than she did, so I kept having to reassure her that she had had more turns than Mary. Occasionally Mary would pipe up and say things just to set Lydia off, and so we baked to the wonderful chorus of Ammon’s crying and the girls’ bickering. Fun times!
To top it all off, the recipe told me to put ALL of the cake batter into one 9 inch baking pan. I questioned the wisdom of this and re-read the instructions at least three times. Now, I actually do know how full to fill a cake pan, but this was a recipe from my Dahlia’s Bakery cookbook, and I trusted it. I figured–hey, maybe these bakers know something I don’t know about batter to cake pan ratios! Maybe I will learn something new from this!! Maybe this is some kind of baker’s secret trick that they didn’t teach me in cooking school!!!
WRONG. I was so mad at the recipe and also at myself for not just doing what I knew was right in the first place and dividing the batter up into two pans. The cake ended up spilling all over the oven, and the burned batter smelled up the house. Hours later, I can still smell it and just took a shower to see if maybe the problem was just me. Nope! The smell is most definitely stuck in the house. Darn.
But the good news is, all I have wanted to do for days is revisit The Sweet Tooth Fairy for cupcakes. After our cake fiasco, I announced to Lydia that we will be buying cupcakes from The Sweet Tooth Fairy tomorrow. She was totally fine with that. We should have just done that in the first place.
Lastly, here is a selfie that we took at Lydia’s request. I did not even know she knew the word, “selfie.” But while we were cuddling on the couch she said, “Mom, take a selfie of us!” And then Mary came running over and joined in.
