Cake

 I have just finished making a birthday cake, with double icing. The events we are celebrating took place in August and September, and we usually try to have a cake party between the two dates. But the owners of the birthdays bogged off to Portugal for a fine trip, and we are only now getting to the celebration.

I make maple icing, mostly. Unless someone insists on chocolate, maple goes with most flavours of cake. And this recipe is both easy to make and easy to spread. I may have posted it before, but it is worth doing again. Cream six tablespoons of butter at room temperature together with six tablespoons of maple syrup, also ideally at room temp or only slightly below. Add two cups of icing sugar, half a cup at a time, in a mixer, beating well. Icing dust will adorn your jeans, so wear old ones. Spread. Chill. Done.

Chilling

A few years back, the ED gave me for Christmas a fine set of decorating bags and spouts in multiple sizes and configurations. This set replaced one that I bought in our first year of marriage, probably almost exactly sixty years ago. (I confess that I have not tossed out the old set because it is still good for some uses and easier to clean than the bag for a very small amount.) My cakes look pretty good, if I do have to compliment myself.

This is very satisfactory because before I found the maple recipe, I spent what seemed like endless hours struggling with a milk-softened icing recipe that did not spread well and ended up full of crumbs and looking crumby. And Jim’s mother’s cakes always looked wonderful, professional and delicious. One year my mother and I struggled with a cake for the ED during sugaring season at the cabin and ended up with a lopsided, although probably edible, mess. Then Mrs. G senior swanned in, and produced one of her gorgeous cakes. My mother and I very quietly hid our effort in the storage room to eat much later. It tasted fine, but Mrs. G’s cakes did too. Sigh. Since I switched to this beaten maple icing, my cakes, although not to Mrs. G’s standard, are acceptable.

And I have made, over the years, a lot of birthday cakes. Especially for the grandkid, whose nut allergy precluded her from a bought cake. One year when she was very young, she said, wistfully, that she would like a cake with roses similar to the ones she saw in the bakery. And Granma rose (sorry) to the occasion and produced flowers that, with a little imagination could be seen to be roses.

Happiness can involve pink icing roses, even small and inferior ones.