How I Spent My Friday Night

I spent tonight baking. Specifically, I was baking a cake for a party that will get cancelled. Why bake a cake for a party that won't happen?  Because if I didn't, we would only get a half inch of snow rather than the 8 inches predicted, roads would be dry, and we would have a birthday party without cake. That would never do, so I spent my night baking a cake for the 0.0003% chance that Nina's party won't be cancelled tomorrow morning.

My mom tossed out the thought that Nina must have bad birthday karma from being born during an ice storm. She has had one birthday party cancelled when she was in the hospital with croup and at least two parties cancelled or postponed due to an ice or snow storm (here in the South, we get at most one ice or snow storm every winter, so what are the odds that the one storm always falls on her birthday party date?). I realized tonight though that may be there is more to this bad birthday karma thing. Elise was supposed to have a swimming party this year. We had to cancel it because she was in the hospital with ITP. Since it was too far into fall to plan another swimming party, we had the Not Quite a Slumber Party instead. Ice, snow, and hospitalizations... good stuff for birthday parties.

Anyway, I digress. Suffice it to say, I am quite certain this cake will not be delivered to a birthday party tomorrow. We already have about two inches of snow on the ground, and the weatherman just said that the heavy snow hasn't even started yet. He also said that we've had much more accumulation in this area than he was expecting at this point in the storm. Who knows... those 8 predicted inches may end up being 16!

That said, if you're going to go to the trouble to make a cake for a party that will be cancelled, you might as well make a fun one, right?

It is hard to get excited about plain cake batter.

So, let's jazz it up a bit.

There - that's much better! (Shut it about the grey one in the back. I was going for purple. Just ignore that one and admire the other pretty colors, OK?)

Do I have ratty looking cake pans, or what? I'm guessing these were a wedding present for my parents 40+ years ago.

 
  

Do you think anyone will notice the blob of blue in the yellow when they are eating the cake?

Again, please ignore the big grey blob on the left. Just focus on the gorgy rainbow cake on the right heading into the oven.

As much as I'd love to show you a slice of the finished product, it is entirely possible that the snow could stop falling this very second (even though it shows no sign of slowing and is supposed to snow all night and all day tomorrow). If the snow stops, this cake could be featured at a birthday party tomorrow, so no slice pictures for you tonight. You'll have to let your imagination run wild from these.

Tomorrow, I'll share a slice... from Nina's party... or more likely, from home where we're trapped under a foot of snow.

Comments

[The Planet Pink]

Looks yummy! As I was out this morning taking pics of our snow aftermath I was thanking my lucky stars we had Princess #2's party last Saturday. You'd think after growing up here I'd know that planning ANYTHING in January is risky. I hope you guys have a fun day, no matter what!

[SMcCoy]

Wow...clever cake baking!
And if you ever need to make an 'elephant cake', you'll know how to make gray.

[Michele]

Those are so cool! I can't wait to see a slice. Hmmmm, maybe I will do that for Abbie's party, or Sam's.....or maybe you can just send those. LOL

[Robin]

very cool! I hope you were able to have the party today!

[kerry]

So cool! I am looking forward to seeing how the slices looked. That would have been perfect for the art party. I guess you can think of it as practice for the rescheduled date? Your luck with winter parties makes me want to just go ahead and start a tradition of throwing my kids' parties in the Spring. What was I thinking with January and February birthdays??

[Audrey]

How neat! I actually have some boxes of cake batter that i am planning to make tomorrow - wish i had food coloring so i could do this! I will remember this, though.

[Michele D]

Ann, did you just use vanilla cake mix? Seriously wanting to do this for Sam's birthday cake :-)
You Rock!