Birthday Cake Meltdown (for Tara) My great and good friend, Tara (auntietk) has a birthday today. I wanted to do something special for her, a truly memorable image to post here on RR. My first thought was, of course, a really spectacular flower foto, or maybe something similar to one of her glass fotos. But then I realized that was too easy, too predictable (not to mention impossible to match with her huge talent!!) and tried to think of something a little different. I finally decided to bake her a cake, write birthday greetings, and have lighted candles on it. Then I would take fotos of the cake with the message all aglow. All this meant I had to go to the store, buy the cake mix (you don’t even want to know what my from scratch cakes look like~~they’re not a pretty sight!!), frosting, and candles. This isn’t really a big deal, I just had to remember to DO it. And I did remember, and a couple of nights later, baked the cake, frosted it, and realized I needed the OTHER kind of frosting to decorate the cake!! Back to the store, back home, and I did what I wanted to do. Now mind you, that here I was baking a cake for Tara, who lives in Washington State, while I live in northern California. There was no way she was really going to GET this cake, but I thought I’d just share it with the neighbors. I don’t really even LIKE cake, though I do love licking the bowl!!! The best laid plans…….. The cake is done, it’s decorated, I’ve arranged the candles just the way I want them. Now it’s time for the foto shoot. I wanted to wait till dark, so I could get the full effect of the candles. Oh yes, and this is where things got pretty crazy. I set the cake up on the kitchen table; my plan was to light the candles, stand on a chair and shoot it from overhead. But, do you know how long it takes to light that many candles??? And how much heat they put out? And how freakin fast those damn candles start to melt??? Well, it takes a VERY long time to light those candles, it’s hotter’n hell and they melt down FAST!!! AND, they set off the smoke alarm, which then freaks the dog out, and here I am, on the chair, trying to take these damn pictures, these perfect, wonderful birthday fotos I so want for my friend!!! I snap as fast as I can, watching the candles melt into a waxy mess on/in the cake. Pretty soon, my beautifully arranged candles are gone, leaving puddles of pink goo all over the bottom of the cake pan. It’s now so smoky I can hardly see what I’m doing; the dog’s howling, hiding in the bedroom, all I can do now is get off the chair and air the house out. My eyebrows are nearly singed, I have this ugly mess on the table, and I just hope to hell I got at least one good foto from this disaster!!! I calm the dog down, lure him out of the bedroom, turn off the damn smoke alarm, which has been emitting that horrendous beeping sound this whole time. It’s a wonder the neighbors didn’t hear it and call 911!! Everything is under control, more or less. The dog’s ok, I’m unharmed, the air is clear, though the cake is well, the cake is toast (toasted cake???). Now I have to upload these fotos and see if I managed to get anything worthwhile. Because if I didn’t, well, I’d probably do it all over AGAIN!!!!! But, I got lucky, and yep, got a few that’ll work just fine. I’ll be able to use one for Tara’s birthday post, of course, I’ll tweak one a bit for this one. But, now I have this ugly, pink, waxy, sodden mess of a cake to deal with. I can’t give it to anyone, I don’t want to eat it, so what can I do~~~~I HATE throwing anything away. I do what anyone would do, I scrape the bad part away, toss it in the compost bucket (see how I can still salvage SOMETHING out of this??), and end up with about ¼ of a cake. THAT much I can deal with!!! So, Tara, Happy Birthday, my WONDERFUL friend~~~but next year, well next year~~~NO CAKE!!!!!!!!! PS, Here's a link to the real foto of her birthday post and the cake before it melted, seconds before!!! click here 5/10/08